Prime Venture Partners Podcast
A podcast for entrepreneurs who are looking to build & grow their startups. Avoid common traps & learn uncommon strategies & tactics from makers & doers of startup ecosystem. Prime Ventures is a early-stage venture fund which focuses on startups that not only need capital but also require mentoring to transform them into disruptive companies. We share a passion for working closely with entrepreneurs and enjoy sharing their journey in a high-frequency, interactive and fun environment.Read more about us at http://primevp.in
Prime Venture Partners Podcast
The Inside Story of Quizizz’s Rise to 70M+ Users & Its Game-Changing Growth Strategy
How do you scale a product to 70M+ users without spending a dime on marketing?
Deepak Joy Cheenath (Co-founder of Quizizz) reveals:
✅ The moment Quizizz found its viral growth loop
✅ How teacher-driven adoption fueled massive organic scale
✅ The mistakes they made along the way—and what they learned
✅ Why they held off on monetisation for years (and why it paid off)
Timestamps:
00:00 – Introduction
02:15 – The early days of Quizizz & WizenWorld
05:40 – The teacher-driven insight that changed everything
09:10 – Scaling to 70M+ users with zero marketing
12:30 – Why Quizizz delayed monetisation
20:20 – The lean team behind a global product
28:30 – Key challenges & lessons from scaling
36:50 – Competing with larger EdTech players
45:15 – The power of community & word-of-mouth growth
49:30 – Key insights & takeaways for founders
Prime Venture Partners backed Quizizz early, helping them scale from a startup to a global EdTech leader.
🎙 Key Takeaways from This Episode:
📌 Growth isn’t always about paid marketing—sometimes, organic adoption wins.
📌 The right users can be your biggest growth engine.
📌 Delaying monetisation can lead to long-term success.
📌 Simplicity scales—more features don’t always mean better engagement.
💡 What’s the biggest lesson from Quizizz’s journey that applies to your business? Drop your thoughts in the comments! 👇
🎙 This episode is packed with insights for founders, product leaders, and anyone scaling a startup. Don’t miss it—watch or listen now! 🚀👇
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They have caught lightning in a bottle.
Speaker 2:Pre-pandemic, we were at roughly you know, I think 25 million monthly active users. Today we sit at around over 70 million monthly active users. Looking back, I don't think we knew anything about anything.
Speaker 3:How come you guys are not thinking about monetization. And then we'd come out of the meeting saying, wow, they're growing so fast.
Speaker 2:Those, you know, five years that we weren't making any money. These were probably the wins that you know kept us going right. Not a day that goes by, when at least quizzes used in 150 distinct countries essentially summarizes, make learning fun bombarded with so much, you know, stimulating content. While we had built it for kids to use was actually teachers who were driving the adoption right Giving teachers a fun way to conduct an assessment with their kids, but letting them feed in the content.
Speaker 1:Hi everybody, sanjay Swamy here, and I'm here with Deepak, one of the co-founders of what today is known as Quizzes. But when we met Deepak, he constituted 50% of the company and his co-founder, ankit, was the other 50%, a company called Wizen World, and we met them sometime in early February. They had this game and then they came back two weeks later and said well, there's this new thing we have started and it seems to be getting some more traction and we think you should take a look at it. And that was the start of an amazing journey we have had over the last nine and a half years, close to 10 years now. So, deepak, welcome to the show.
Speaker 2:Thanks, sanjay, glad to be here.
Speaker 1:So maybe we can start right there. Deepak, welcome to the show. Thanks, Sanjay, Glad to be here, so maybe we can start right there. Deepak, right, what got you and Ankit together and what got you started? What was your initial motivation to be in this sector and how have you know, maybe the first part of the journey of what led to Quizzes itself?
Speaker 2:Yeah, sure, and I think, yeah, yeah, so me and ankit, you know, we actually uh, met each other for the first time in college. You know it was quite a coincidence that, you know, out of 800 kids, we got paired as roommates. And that's when you know, uh, at bits, yeah, it's palani and uh, we also happen to be in the same branch, which is also a nice coincidence. It doesn't usually happen. So so, yeah, we were together the whole four years in college and I think, you know we both enjoyed, you know, playing around with little apps and we did projects together, and so I think that's, you know, how we initially got to know each other and knew each other for like four years in college and it was around two years after we graduated. You know we were both working.
Speaker 2:I was at Amazon, ankit was at a company called Opera Solutions and we, you know, ankit actually came to visit me, just generally, you know, for a catch-up in. I was at Hyderabad, he was in Delhi. So you know we hung out and that's when, you know, ankit said you know, why don't you know, do you want to think about doing something together? And I was like, yeah, why not? You know, uh, you know better. You know, now is as good a time as any, I suppose, uh, and I think, looking back, I don't think we knew anything about anything. So we, we were just, you know, probably pumped to build something, and at Amazon, definitely while I learned a lot from my short time there definitely not a place where you can build anything. You want pretty big company. So I think I look forward to that.
Speaker 2:And so we actually didn't really have education as the only domain we wanted to be in. We actually explored a bunch of ideas for the next couple of months. We would just chat on the phone and uh, but interestingly, when we, you know, hit upon, you know, edtech and thought about, you know, building something which you could essentially summarize as make learning fun, I think that idea just appealed to us, you know, I think it felt like something we would enjoy building. We, you know, looked at what was out there in the market and it felt like there was a big need. You know, kids were being bombarded with so much, you know, stimulating content, you know, whether it's social media. Oh, we never really felt there was a big risk or anything.
Speaker 2:You know, I think that was one nice thing out of, you know, sitting in interviews, I felt like I'll, you know, even after a year, I think I can pass an interview, you can get a job. So with that confidence, we, and just with this seed of an idea, we quit. And I think we knew that we didn't know much about this field and I think one of the smart things we did early on was go to a school and, just, you know, use that as our test bed, right, so we would every week sort of build something and show it to a small group of kids there and I think a lot of our learnings came from that. Actually, versus you know, sitting in your you know apartment or whatever and dreaming up big things, you know, every week, you know, just making little progress and showing it and seeing what worked didn't work but okay so.
Speaker 1:So that was like sort of the early discovery, interacting with the end user, was the, the kids and and so on. And then, um, how long was that phase? And then what led to you know what the real start of of a product?
Speaker 2:uh, the first really interesting learning was we saw that, while we had built it for kids to use, it was actually teachers who were driving the adoption.
Speaker 2:Right, teachers found it and we could see, right, like we would, uh, you know, obsess over our google analytics in those days and just see, uh like, oh, there's a new user in the us or australia or whatever, and uh, we would always see them pop up in like a group of 20, 25 devices in one place, and we could, you know, we were able to connect the dots and see that teachers are, you know, using this with kids.
Speaker 2:And so I think, from that point on, a lot of our journey was really around empowering teachers, right, and what we realized is, while we had set off to essentially, you know, make kids eat their veggies from a learning point of view, right, that, uh, we thought, you know, we'll make these veggies so tasty that they'll come, and you know skip the sweets and nice analogy but what we realized is you know, if you put somebody in with the tastiest veggies and sweets and cakes and you know, donuts, they will eat all of it especially if it's kids who are you know yet to learn the value of you know some of these.
Speaker 2:You know delayed gratification in the other things, and so what we realized is why do kids eat veggies?
Speaker 2:is because their parents make them and force the kids to eat them, right, and so if we can make that easy, right, like, essentially, you know, give the teachers a few easy recipes, then maybe that's what will really work.
Speaker 2:And so from that point on, we started building it around teachers and that's what really led to the pivot uh, for quizzes as well.
Speaker 2:Right, because with wise and world and you know, you had met us even in the Wizenworld days and the big sort of bottleneck to that product's growth was that we were the gatekeepers of content In a way. We were really limiting how much teachers could do with that product and we were, in our view, building it really fast. We were doing automations and whatnot. But the reality is, looking back, we had built probably, like you know, 0.1% of what you know, or not even that much of what exists or probably existed on quizzes you know. A year later, right, because unlocking it for teachers, and that's when really the genesis of quizzes was giving teachers a fun way to conduct an assessment with their kids, but letting them feed in the content, right, and yeah, you know, that's sort of the seed that I think you know very quickly we could see that this was really a game changer, right Like just opening it up to teachers and then we just followed their lead, you know, in terms of what they asked.
Speaker 1:At some point. You know, I know when we met, we did a reference call with one of the teachers, I think in the uk, and she used this extraordinary expression saying they have caught lightning in the bottle and I think at the time quizzes probably had 20 teachers and maybe 400 kids on the platform using it. So it's probably two to three weeks old at the time. And recently I was talking with Ankit and he said that teacher is still using quizzes and still a big goal fan. So it kind of felt like something magical was happening here and, of course, when you use the product, you could see that it was just a lot of fun and very playful in the way in which it's done right.
Speaker 1:And of course, as I mentioned at the start of this podcast, it was you and Ankit at the time and I think when we invested, I think you hired one engineer and that also continued for quite some time. I mean, we used to keep saying where is the rest of the team? And we said, okay, we have one hire, right. But what used to keep happening is we used to meet almost weekly I think at the time, and these guys would have extraordinary analytics and charts and graphs and beautiful visuals, which I think was a core competency that someone between the two of you, you know, you all had. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Ankit is really great.
Speaker 2:Ankit is great.
Speaker 3:Okay, now we know who writes the code and who makes it look good.
Speaker 1:But you know, I think there was something magical about how you know that kept working. And one anecdote is you know, we used to always push the team saying, hey, you need to start some monetization. And they would say yeah, yeah, yeah, we'll do that, we'll do that. And they'd come back the next week and say no monetization.
Speaker 3:but we grew 30% week on week and that would happen week after week after week, and we'd go in at the start of the meeting saying, how come you guys are not thinking about monetization? And then we'd come out of the meeting saying, wow, they're growing so fast.
Speaker 1:But I think one of the keys was you kept the team very lean and your cost structure really low. Right, so you were able. So tell us a little bit about that thinking. And that continued even post the series a when nexus came in, and I think for a good four to five years you just stayed ultra lean and just kept growing. Share a little bit about those, the thinking there and and the journey yeah.
Speaker 2:So I think, uh, I think, at least with me and ankit, I think we always just ran it in a way that made sense to us first principles, right. So when we were, I think we saw the value in kind of the growth we were getting for the little burn we had right, and we felt like it was a good choice to keep that running as far as we could do it. But we also realized that we weren't making any money right, so we didn't want to throw the money away and essentially, you know, we said let's stay lean and let's see how long we can really be a product like growth company and we really did feel like we had, you know, the right size team to build that product right. And I think, you know, initially we really struggled with hiring. But you know, I think within a year or so we were around a 1520 member team. Our second hire was a recruiter and that helped us get to that you know reasonable threshold in a pretty short time. And then we felt like we have you, you know, a solid team that can do this.
Speaker 2:And it was really a very young group, a lot of kids out of college and uh, but I think you know, we were all really passionate about what we were building and that worked well and I think it allowed us to actually build, you know, even, a lot of the brand we have today. Of right, you know, being very teacher first and I think that's what you know carries us even till now, uh, but, yeah, it was sort of a choice based out of the constraints we had. Right like today people, you know, like one of our, you know, nice claims is that we grew with zero marketing and you know, uh, performance marketing spent and the reason is we had no money to do performance marketing but we found ways to then keep that growth happening, uh, but that definitely meant that we couldn't waste money on, you know, things like that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so that journey, I would say through until almost the series b uh, was a good six years yeah, I'd say five plus yeah, and I think the last two years of that five years, we were actually working on monetization. So, you know, if you recall, we tried ad revenue. We tried, you know, premium content for students. We tried even, you know, tutoring as a service, connecting, you know, teachers to students. We tried, you like, you know even gamification, you know, seeing if kids would pay for, you know, like a fun element, or parents would pay. So we tried a lot of things but ultimately we settled on, you know, what ended up being our core model, which is the subscription based revenue model where teachers and now, you know, schools pay for, you know, access to, you know, the full breadth of quizzes, functionality.
Speaker 1:So, deepak, maybe before we get into that phase, let's talk a little bit about the scale you all got to right, even as a free product, I think our seed round was a little more than half a million dollars, and then I think the series A round was also not that big. It was like three, three and a.5 million type of a thing and you hadn't even spent probably more than half of that, like $2 million spent over five, six years with an ultra-lean team and no marketing. But you know you were still seeing a lot of love with the teacher community. I remember you guys would go to SXSW and you know the teachers would be jumping over each other wanting to show how they were using quizzes and stuff. So you know, during that phase, you know you saw extraordinary growth. Right, tell us a little bit so people understand. You know what scale you were operating at.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think, you know, probably around four years into it we had gotten to, I remember, like you know, three months into our journey, we got to students solving a million questions on the platform right In March, which was, you know, just around the time you were speaking, you know, just around the time you were speaking and those were, you know, pretty insane numbers compared to what we had seen with, you know, weisenwald, just because it had just opened up the floodgates when we let teachers do what they wanted with it, right, uh, but as you mentioned that, I felt I always look back at it as we had a very steady but consistent growth, right.
Speaker 2:So, because it was largely driven through word of mouth, it wasn't that, you know, one day we were looking at it, so the growth happened, and next month we were focusing somewhere else, so it, you know, dipped it. We just really focused on building the product and, you know, rapidly improving that and that led to, essentially, you know, like every month it was a bigger base that was championing you Right, and so you know that compounding effect really added up over the years and so, while I don't think we ever had like a viral growth, I do feel we were able to sort of have this very steady and, you know, uh, fairly good sort of, you know, like a monthly growth number that we were able to really maintain.
Speaker 1:What scale, in terms of absolute number of MAUs, did you hit?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so you know, pre-pandemic, we were at roughly, you know I think, 25 million monthly active users and that is, I think you know, like a good probably, maybe you know 0.5% of the total market you can hit. And if you talk about like people with devices and all that, probably you know 4, 5, 10% of you know the addressable market in those days. So, but yeah, that's where we were and today we sit at around, you know, uh, over 70 million monthly active users wow, so maybe we can talk, step back a little bit and explain to our listeners what does quizzes do?
Speaker 1:yeah, right, so in fact, that's a thing that has evolved quite a bit, yeah, but I'm saying at that stage right, and you had the 25 million maus, and then we can come to the so, uh, at that stage, yeah, I think our uh, you know, I think, where quiz was really working was in the us in particular.
Speaker 2:Right, where, even in those days, around half the schools in the us had teachers actively using quizzes. Right, at least some teachers using our product, uh and uh. So, yeah, what it did essentially was allow a teacher to conduct an assessment with their students in a really fun way, right. And now, uh, I see assessment and a lot of people might think you know when, you know, depending on where you're from, you know, quiz or assessment, all these things have different connotations, but essentially it was used in multiple ways.
Speaker 2:Right, it was used as a, you know, self-paced, you know classwork assignment. It was used as a homework, it was used as a fun friday activity. It was used in all these interesting ways because, if you really boil down, you know what happens in a school. It is essentially, you know, half of it is consuming content, which sometimes the teacher is delivering. Sometimes you're reading a book, sometimes you're watching a video, and the other half is applying those learnings, which, in more often than not, boils down to answering a question. Right, and so that's where you know, while it seems like such a simple idea? Uh, it actually is a thing that happens a lot in every classroom or anywhere where learning is happening. Right is, you are applying those learnings, and that's where quizzes came in, essentially, and became a real mainstay for a lot of teachers got it got.
Speaker 1:So the first phase, I would say till that 2019-2020 phase, was really ramping up the usage for in-classroom for the most part and then slowly bleeding to the home and, of course, one of the biggest interesting challenges you all had was people did not have connected devices in the classroom, although I remember the state of Texas was probably the first one or amongst the first. But I remember the state of Texas was probably the first one or amongst the first and we could almost draw.
Speaker 1:If you drew a timeline of where quizzes was adopted. It probably mirrored the advent of the internet into the classrooms or connected devices for children. So that was sort of the first phase, largely US-focused, maybe some more developed countries having it. But you used to see extraordinary love from the students, from the teachers. You know you'd see Twitter stuff. So explain a little bit of how that made you all feel right. Because none of it was necessarily solicited. People are just sharing their love for the product and the company.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think you know when we those, you know five years that we weren't making any money, these were the wins that you know kept us going right, because numbers will only motivate you so much, uh, especially when they're, you know, non-monetary, so, uh, but yeah, I think you know what helped us. You know some of the you know hard lessons we learned. You know building those games for students in the wizen world. You know the year and a half we did that. I think that gave us a really good instinct, for you know what kids like, right, and it was actually very interesting because you know, initially you'll, you know you make one game and then you know you make something simple and it works and your obvious next thought is make something more fancy, right, like, add more bells and whistles. And one thing we learned really early on is that actually doesn't help. You know, take a game like chess right, it hasn't changed for you know, like thousands of years, right, and it's still such a popular game and it's because of the other person, right, like that format supports. You know, this great interaction, right, and that's kind of what we learned with quizzes as well is really we are there to create these moments in a classroom, right, like a moment of a kid answering a question and getting a kick out of it. You know, a leaderboard that you know brings some sort of competition and we found ways to sort of blend, you know, uh, like this fun activity with something that actually, you know, solved a lot of the core problems that teachers were grappling with, which was one is, you know, kids are just not interested in doing this boring content, right, but the moment you, you know, if you just tell the kid, hey, run, you know it's not really fun. But if you put five kids together and say let's see who gets to the end fastest, it's a very different feeling, right.
Speaker 2:So that worked for some kind, some set of, you know, say, the competitive kids, right, then there is a big segment of kids who are afraid of, you know, maybe even being heard in a classroom. Right, this gave them a way to, you know, engage, right, like it's very different when a teacher says you know who knows the answer to this? So always the same usual suspects that raise their hands. But this gave every kid a chance to try. Okay, if they get it wrong, you know it'll show them a funny image and say you know, try again, right. And those were some of the core dynamics that really actually teachers appreciate it Right.
Speaker 2:We built in, like you know, very organic ways for kids to who get it wrong, to reattempt a question and cover for that. So it was never built as a way to label a child but rather a way for a child to practice and, you know, overcome some of their hesitation and, you know, make it a lot more of an inviting experience. And I think that's what teachers also realized and what they really appreciated was that energy that they could see right both from. You know the toppers of the class, if you know, if you put it that way but along, but also you know the bot, the other, you know the main segment of the class that is often not super pumped about. You know academics and they don't necessarily see it as their strength, right, uh, but making you know something that even they found enjoyable I think was a huge unlock for teachers because otherwise it puts it's a lot of pressure to try to create that yourself right, and that is one of the places I think education really solves that need of helping.
Speaker 2:You know, I think if there's one teacher and one student, you don't need quizzes, you know a lot of tech really is not needed. You can do well with just a whiteboard, but the moment you have five kids itself it's almost an impossible task. You know. Two kids itself is twice as tough. But 25, 30, 50 kids, that's when it becomes really just impossible and that's where something you know, that's where technology can actually come in and help that teacher. Really, you know, engage this broad group at you know their own level in a way.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so that sort of summarizes the first phase, um, the second phase was, let's say, a little bit about the monetization phase, or the early monetization, the experiments you did, etc.
Speaker 1:And then probably the third phase, which is now, is probably just this whole advent of AI and how we all have been leveraging it, and then we can talk perhaps a little bit about the future. Beyond that, and the second phase sort of also sadly coincided with the pandemic, and you know, obviously that was a very exciting time from a quizzes product and, you know, opportunity perspective, but obviously a lot of other challenges. How did you all make the switch? I do recall one anecdote which we had discussed, that you know, of course the parents will pay for this, but when you try to go down that path, you know you were told, well, you know this is only going to favor the rich kids and you should not think so. That became a sort of a non-starter um. And so tell us a little bit about how you know you did some experiments and how did you arrive at a viable you know, financial model for the company?
Speaker 2:yeah. So I think, uh, when it you know, yeah, I would say even you know, uh, when it you know, yeah, I would say even you know, till date, you know, having infrared devices, internet in a classroom is something that is a requirement, you know, to really use quizzes. But I think, yeah, so the pandemic definitely, you know, really flipped the tables in a way, because suddenly everybody had the internet and devices, because they were at home and or, if they didn't, then they were essentially not there, right, uh, but people did, you know, thankfully, you know, most people were able to somehow, you know, get, even if it's on a mobile phone, uh, access to, you know, their kids to learn this way. And that is where I think we were also lucky that, as you know, engineers and product builders, I don't think we ever anticipated I mean, I am sure we didn't anticipate a pandemic, but we, we had actually built it in a way to support these diverse needs right. So we always built it in a way that if a kid is at home, it should work, you know, just because I think, as engineers, we thought, you know, we should support it right. And that really served us well when the pandemic happened, because suddenly we were just ready to, you know, capitalize on that. You know this what we call then the new normal right, and so teachers all over the world were able to just pick it up.
Speaker 2:And the other thing that we always focused on was which it should be super easy to use. Teachers should not need any sort of training, and again, that helped because of all the options they had, teachers found that quizzes at least is usable and so it picked up like crazy, you know, like you know, say, a typical school maybe has you know, 50, 100, maybe a few hundred teachers in those days, I think every week we would have, you know, around 20 000 teachers sign up on quizzes. You know new teachers and you know we had essentially one person doing support and that eventually became all of us doing support with that person, because it was just crazy, right, the amount of like every day. It's like, you know, like a couple of hundred schools are picking up your product essentially and not, you know, and it's actually worse than a couple of hundred because people from every country, every you know background you can imagine, and uh, so it was, yeah, definitely like a very challenging but I'd say super exciting time for all of us.
Speaker 2:You know who, who doesn't. It's a good problem to have Plus.
Speaker 1:you also, as a team, are certainly working remotely and distributed and all of that stuff. So one thing I don't mean to say anything to jinx you all, but I've never heard anybody complain about oh, there's some downtime at quizzes, or the system is, you know, not functioning to things, etc. Or the system is, you know, not functioning to things, etc. Some you know this is not something where a company with like 50, 60, 70 million monthly active users right, typically will go through some ups and downs. So what did you all get?
Speaker 2:right, I think that was probably just a consequence of having engineers at the helm, right, I think we always you know, uh, you know, for whatever downsides it might have. Right, it took us five, six years to monetize and things like you know, little issues like that. But uh, we, uh, that was something we were always, you know, very much in control of, right, and we had our eyes. I mean, we didn't have to work really hard to know what it took to have a stable system. And, to, you know, build these scalable systems came very naturally to us. And you know the new team members, you know you're able to work with them and you know, because we were very frugal and all of that, right, like you know, we didn't.
Speaker 2:You know, cloud hosting wasn't an expense for us for a couple of years. Right, we just managed on free credits and we were, you know, I think, the kind of things we were doing, though at the scale we had, probably a lot of people would spend five or even 10 times you know the amount on cloud hosting. But I mean, like you know, when you funded us, I think maybe a month before, that was when we actually switched from our free tier, which is like the smallest you know machine. You can have like that, whatever T1 micro instance of AWS. But till then the Wizen world was running totally on two free accounts of AWS, right, and that itself had like 50,000, you know, registered users and all of that. So we were, I think we knew how to you know build those systems and I think we've, you know, tried to maintain that. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Very cool, you know, but still, these things you know can be taken for granted, but they're not insignificant, right? There's the system stability and uptime. There's the data issues data privacy.
Speaker 2:You're having learning information around, millions of children around the world, Even being able to support these many users for free right Like only could happen because we were quite lean.
Speaker 1:Very cool, very cool. For free, right like only could happen because we were quite clean. Yeah, very cool, very cool. So, uh, the monetization uh experiment started also around the same time as the pandemic, when you're seeing crazy growth, growth at number of users. I recall there were a couple of financing rounds that happened back to back at the time, which, um, would have also been a bit of a distraction, would probably uh, helped, um, so what's the model now? What's the financial model of the company? How would have also been a bit of a distraction, would probably help. So what's the model now? What's the financial model of the company? How does it make money?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so essentially we sell a subscription product to schools, right, and teachers, and when we first started it you know, soon, like on the heels of the pandemic pretty much, which was actually a coin like or a thing we were working on. In fact, you know, from the beginning of that year, 2020, even before the pandemic really kicked in, we had sort of decided that we will do this you know subscription model and we had timed it for basically, you know, september 2020, which is when schools open up in the US. So we said we'll be ready for it for the new school year with this subscription product and so that you know, we decided also that we won't take anything away from our free product and we'll only add new things. So then we were furiously building enough so that people found value in you know upgrading and then launched it on you know the timeline we had decided and.
Speaker 2:But the great thing was, I think, from day zero I mean, I think basically I could say a week after we launched this product we were profitable, you know, and we've been able to be profitable since then. I think probably by the end of that year, we had recuperated all our funding till date. Till that day, uh and uh. You know, uh, and we also had a little money in the bank, so you know we were in good shape and we could see a path to growing it and all of that, uh, but yeah, essentially today, what has evolved since, you know, 2020 is that we built out sort of the school side of this product as well, and we continue to build that, and so today, the majority of our revenue comes from schools and even sometimes governments you know, ministries of education essentially buying quizzes to support all their teachers.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and are all the customers, the or the paying customers, uh, still in the us, or do you have also international customers?
Speaker 2:So we've actually been able to diversify that as well, and I think we're really bullish on the potential of quizzes outside of the US as well. Right, so I think in our early years, I think two things have. You know. It's been, you know, nine plus years, so I think even the world has evolved a little since then. But in those days, I think, and even till today, the US is very, you know, is very fertile ground, I'd say, for like a product led growth company, you know, especially in edtech.
Speaker 2:But the pandemic was sort of, you know, you know the jolt that a lot of, I think countries needed to look seriously at technology in the classroom and you know it exposed a lot of people to the benefits as well. I think countries needed to look seriously at technology in the classroom and you know it exposed a lot of people to the benefits as well. And so, while you know again, a lot of them went back to their old ways. After the pandemic it was still, you know, multiples more than was pre-pandemic right, and since then we've seen a steady growth Now with the you know, advent or you know, popularity of AI since 2022 and 3, even that has again forced a lot of people to think about that. They need to equip their schools and students and teachers with the right technology if they expect to be relevant in the future. So I think, uh, we've had some, really, I think, sort of.
Speaker 2:What is very heartening to see is a lot of our success again has been on the back of, you know, this product working right. It's not been a lot of marketing or, uh, you know, in fact, most of our marketing efforts go into community development, right, we just try to, you know, be there with our teachers, you know, try, you know a lot of that helps us both learn from them about their evolving needs are, uh, but also, you know, helps us create a nice buzz around you know, what we're doing and that, you know, being present at events and things like that has been, you know, the backbone of our strategy and even supporting teachers to actually organize learning events in their schools and that drives a lot of our growth and a lot of you know say, for example, one of our big success stories is, you know, a state in Brazil that pretty much, you know, exclusively uses quizzes for all their assignments and homework and it has been, you know, a tremendous success there, right, one of the few edtech implementations that has not only met but far exceeded their expectations. And you know, today we are in conversation with multiple other states, in brazil as well, on the back of this success. But you know they've well over, you know, I think, doubled or tripled. You know, the expectations they had in that state. Wonderful, yeah so. And you know now we are seeing, for example, you know, good growth in Taiwan, for example, and in Indonesia. You know UK, you know Canada, Australia. So while quizzes fortunate today to actually be, you know, present in pretty much, you know there's not a day that goes by when, at least you know quizzes used in 150, you know, present in pretty much, you know there's not a day that goes by when, at least you know quizzes used in 150,.
Speaker 2:You know distinct countries, you know, by teachers there, and you know, I think you know, as you mentioned, right, we're, you know, we've always been good at growth and we're still learning. You know how to monetize and you know find the right products and you know in different countries, you know find the right products. And you know, in different countries, though, the monetization strategy we've realized will vary, right and uh, while bottoms up works really well in the us right, where teachers have a voice and they drive a lot of these decisions, uh, but even in the us, for example, a lot of decisions are also top down right and so sort of you know getting closer to administrators and so sort of you know getting closer to administrators and building out sort of a product that really solves important needs for them as well is something that you know is evolving at Quizzes and we believe will be a big part of you know our global growth story. But we're already, you know, I'd say, seeing you know 15 percent, 20 percent of our revenues coming outside of the us.
Speaker 1:Yeah, in terms of usage, where does india stand? And you know how has the growth been in in india itself. I know y'all don't make a conscious effort on any specific geography, perhaps other than the us, um, but yeah, I love to hear you know.
Speaker 2:So India has been interesting. I'd say India is probably one of the countries that we've made multiple attempts at growing, you know like, in different ways. Sure, yeah, of course, right, we would love to see quizzes being used more. I think quizzes it's interesting, like recently I'd gone to, you know sort of a young entrepreneur budding entrepreneur event at you know, my alma mater, BITS in Goa, and there were around 190 kids who had come for this, you know, from schools all over India and probably you know good schools, I'm guessing.
Speaker 2:And you know, before I spoke, I just thought I'll ask them how many of you have heard of quizzes and I thought maybe you know five. I spoke, I just thought I'll ask them how many of you have heard of quizzes and I thought maybe you know five. Ten will raise their hands but interestingly, I think at least 80 percent of the kids raised their hands and all of them said we used it during the pandemic. So that's, I think you know, maybe a summary of our sort of story here is, I think, post pandemic. Most schools have gone back to sort of the you know traditional ways.
Speaker 2:We, you know pen and paper and all of that and I think india is still sort of, you know, finding its feet in terms of how to leverage technology. I think it gets used in a lot of other, like basically on admin and you know, for marking attendance and maybe sharing reports, but when it comes to actually learning, a lot of that still happens. You know the old way and so that's sort of my observation so far, and you know we've actually built out, you know, unique technologies to actually support classrooms that don't have devices. You know, you might know about sort of paper mode where essentially kids can answer questions with, you know, QR code itself and teachers can, you know, quickly scan that and while it works pretty well, I think it is more of a mindset thing, I feel, more than infra thing.
Speaker 2:I think you know the Indian system is still sort of very. You know we are so result oriented, right, that I think what works works and you know we, you know people are a little hesitant to try things and I think for good reason, because there's so much at stake for, you know, these competitive exams and all of that. Until we have that sort of system, I think you know people will tread lightly with, you know, experimenting, whereas a lot of other countries where, say, your performance on a test is only part of your, say, ticket to getting into a college. Right, there is your you know, your projects and your you know score in your you know school, you know, you know assessments and so many things that you know an essay and all these things that go into it, Whereas in India it's so you know, focused on you know, just like sometimes one exam right and so people then you know. Maybe the right thing for that system is to really zone in on what that needs.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so last couple of years has been an interesting time also with the advent of Gen AI, and I know you used to do a lot of controlled experiments around it. But you know, suddenly there was a strong impetus and we have seen a lot of exciting demos. Maybe you can talk a little bit about how the product has evolved in this whole AI world, and in some ways you know AI world and, uh uh, in some ways you know what. What are some of the new things y'all are working on? And and?
Speaker 2:so on. Uh, so I think, when you know, I think the whole world got really excited about AI when chat GPT came out, Right I think.
Speaker 2:I don't know years ago, yeah right, yeah so, uh, I think we saw that and I think all of us realized that. You know, if we don't be at the forefront of this wave, then we'll, you know, be going under, right, that wave, and you know that still, I think, is a very strong sentiment. Uh, at quizzes today, right, where, I think, a few months after that, you know we essentially, you know sort of you know listed down all these ways that AI can, you know, support, you know what we're doing at quizzes, and I don't think there was anything where AI didn't feel like it could be a game changer, right, whether it's creating content, whether it's adapting content that's there whether it's grading, whether it's, you know, student support, whether it's differentiation, like and I think it again stems from, you know, the core problem of one teacher has to cater to 30, 40, 50 kids, right, and that is, you know, impossible for a human to do, right, and that's where we believe, you know, ai is going to make a huge impact in all these aspects. And so I think a big part of our early journey was around content creation. And you know, you know building, building, you know this AI tool like functionality in a way that empowered a teacher to adapt what they are doing. Right, it wasn't really, again, you know, like, while in the early days, and you know, even now, I think AI does a great demo, right, like you can make a video, that's mind, you know, like with SORA. You know, these AI generated videos are mind blowing, right, a lot of these. But ultimately, you know, it's not that that video is like the ad that you put out at the Super Bowl, you know, or even on TV, yeah Right, there is a lot of work to get it ready and I think we all see that in a couple of years, that'll probably all be different, right, but today, and you know when I you know, even in 2023, I think our realization was that we need to help teachers to use ai.
Speaker 2:That's again, you know what is the need, because it's only a teacher who will be able to make it fit the syllabus. It's only a teacher that's going to be able to know what you know. A kid who is struggling really needs to be seeing you know, or what they need in their class tomorrow. And you know, I think we believe that quizzes is really in a sweet spot, because we've got these millions of users and we've got this technology that really needs them to make it work and, as you know, we get better. I think you know we'll use those learnings to make it better and better and we'll see how things evolve.
Speaker 2:But really, today, that's what we are pumped about. Right Is, how do we make this work for teachers and, you know, leverage their help to actually bring this to a classroom? Right, because today it's not that anybody is making their textbook from ai, that this textbook is still there, and it's about, you know, using ai to pick from there and create an assessment, create, you know, a lesson plan for tomorrow, and that's where you know we are focused on. You know what can save teachers time and leveraging their judgment to know where to you know, pick up the reins from ai and, you know, take things into their own hands.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I'd seen some early demos of you know point to a YouTube video and then you can use the quizzes database to like, if it's a topic on American history or something like that, then you know you can read the video and then immediately look at your database and come up with an awesome relevant quiz and things like that. Then you can read the video and then immediately look at your database and come up with an awesome relevant quiz and things like that. Very cool. So that's sort of the journey so far, which has obviously been super exciting, and I think it was fascinating as I was entering the building to see six-floor building, almost all the floors having quizzes on them, and it's been quite a journey. But of course the best is yet to come. So, uh, what is the strategic?
Speaker 2:direction in which you see quizzes evolving, um, yeah, so I think, in fact, the biggest change that we've been working on for the past in fact year or two, right, is that, you know, we've realized that we've, you know, built a core competency in terms of how to make, you know how to bring technology, you know, make it accessible for a teacher and a student, right, and you know we started, and you know I think there's a lot of depth in the, you know, quiz assessment, you know, practice space.
Speaker 2:But we're also looking at how do we support other jobs to be done, right, like how do we take a lesson and make that something that you know is enjoyable for a student to consume and that you know allows a teacher to maybe take a, you know, maybe, what would otherwise be a one-way broadcast and, you know, pull students into that experience, right. So you know delivering instruction, different modalities of learning, right, like sometimes you learn from, you know, text, right, like a passage or an article. Sometimes you learn by watching a video. So how do we support these formats? And, again, you know, you know bring that fun element and that interactive element to it so that, you know, even if they are veggies, at least you know they're made, uh, you know, uh, lightly fried and tasty, as tasty as you can, yeah, yeah right, and so that's been a lot of the last year of our journey is, you know, supporting new formats, supporting really all the ways in which a teacher you know tries to deliver instruction.
Speaker 2:And then you know sort of that whole how we describe it as you know the teacher, you know they have an I do, a we do and a you do. So first the teacher does it, I do it, I'll show you how it's done. And there again, you know you can bring a bit of interactivity into that as well, so that you're not just having kids zone out after 30 minutes of somebody talking to them but, you know, pop in a little question, interactive activity, so that you know they are pulled back into the instruction. Then there is the we do where a teacher is maybe going through a problem and showing them how it's done and then handing slowly, you know giving the reins to the kids, but you know supporting it. And then there is the you do where a teacher says, okay, now you know, do your best.
Speaker 2:And that's when a teacher needs, uh, basically eyes and ears on what's happening, right. And again it's a thing where quizzes can help, right, where spotty kids doing, you know, their own assignments on their own screens spotty kids doing, you know, their own assignments on their own screens. A teacher can, uh, kind of see which five kids really need help and go work with them, whereas the kids who are, you know, doing really well quizzes, you know, and that too, and now with the help of ai, can actually maybe give them another assignment. And the kids who are, you know, sort of on track, you know, it works for them. And now a teacher can just be free of all of that and focus on these five kids which no ai can teach, you know, on track, you know it works for them.
Speaker 2:And now a teacher can just be free of all of that, yeah, and focus on these five kids which, no, ai can teach, you know. But they really need to not just show them the material but probably, you know, work with them emotionally as well, right, like, encourage them a little, you know, give them a little treat to you know, get them to you know, give something a try which you know they probably feel like they can't do.
Speaker 1:I also noticed you've added like accommodations and lots of capabilities in the product as well.
Speaker 2:Yeah right, A lot of ways for teachers to support the varied learning needs and the ways that students want to, you know, express themselves. So you know, universal design for learning accommodations. These are things that, again, we really believe. Tech is a big enabler for it and I think we see ourselves as being at the forefront of that wave as well.
Speaker 1:yeah, cool so, uh, look, I think all this has been awesome. Maybe we can talk a little bit as we uh wrap up on the, the culture of the team, the company, how we all have uh fun. You know how you stay so close to the customer despite being, you know, neither the the prototype customer nor in the same geography, and a little bit about you know you and ankith have become avid runners. Uh, you know the culture that's come into the company around that. You know, um, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:So I think, uh, I think one of the big unlocks for us early on, you know, was really how, if we just listen to teachers, you know, a lot of problems get solved. Or, you know, listen to our users, you know, teachers, students or, you know, now even admins and principals. So I think that has really been close to our hearts, right. Even when we hire and look for people who will be leaders, we look for people who have internalized that right that if you are guided by your users and not by, you know, trying to do something cool or showing them how it's done, it is really, you know, a service mindset in that sense, and I think we invest a lot in terms of opening up new channels, right, I think, being a, you know, product development company, largely, you know, sitting out of india, out of India, I think we've, in fact, gotten a lot of leverage from actually having some people on the ground as well. We have a sizable marketing and sales team in the US that keeps bringing in. Most of those people are actually people who were teachers earlier and we've intensely tried to keep it that way, and so we, you know, like being close to our customers is something we very actively work on Right, so we've, you know, every year I think, we come up with new ways to get you know, evolving it for our evolving company as well. Right, when there were 20 of us, you know we were all very. You know, evolving it for our evolving company as well. Right, when there were 20 of us, you know we were all very. You know every ticket everybody knew about, right, because support person would make sure that. You know that happened and I, I think, more than a support, I think they acted as a champion for users, right, and we all really listened also, and you know, so that was our main channel. For example, right, even from day zero, you know we would work all day and then we would be up at night doing support chats, you know, and that gave us most of our early conversations and you know the person you spoke to in those days. You know we, we had that person because you know they had connected with us over this, you know, for a support query, right, and so, uh, but over the years, you know, like, as we got bigger, we realized, hey, we need to find a way to get the aggregated opinions also of people. Right, we'll never. You know, support is good to know their pain points today, but what do they want tomorrow? Right, like so then we made like a forum where teachers would vote on what they wanted and you know, so you'll put an idea and others can vote on it, right, so now we have this great resource where we can see what are the top requests from teachers, you know, aggregated over months and years now.
Speaker 2:Similarly, you know, then we started having, you know, calls with users, right, so that unlocked, you know, a lot for our. You know, calls with users, right, so that unlocked, you know a lot for our. You know, earlier we never had calls, weirdly enough. Right, for the first couple of years, you would. You know, for all the talk about customer centricity, it was all through support interactions, right, but then as we started, you know, building more, we started wanting to go deeper and understanding, you know how the systems work there, and that unlocked the next level of growth for us. Right, the next set of functionality where a lot of you know our current strategy and you know wins have come from, is conversations with teachers, right, so that's a big thing.
Speaker 2:Now, again, you know, like, as we get more resources, we are able to do more, right?
Speaker 2:So now we partnered with a lot of schools where our team goes and actually observes the classroom and they learn a lot of things about, you know, the you know practical realities of being in a class, right, sometimes we think that we'll build this great functionality and, you know, teachers will, you know, use it this way and that way, and then we go to a classroom and all that is demolished, you know, and we see, you know, just to get the kids to sit down, they took 10 minutes, you know. And now I'm thinking that they will, you know, make them jump all these hoops and it's not practical. So I think that's one core aspect of our culture, I think is just, you know, how do we keep being close to our users? And now, with users in different countries, and you know, we've actually, you know, today we have, you know, people, I think, in you know eight countries now, right, and we hope to, you know, build further, you know, in roads that way. So that's a big part, I think.
Speaker 1:The other so I'll pause you there. You know there's one particular metric that everybody looks at, which is NPS right, and what is the history of Quizzes NPS been and what is it at now and how low did it ever go?
Speaker 2:yeah, I think you know, upper 70s is the lowest we've gone. I think today we have a red round ET, nps and yeah, I think, something we're always proud of. But I think something we always say. You know, we always feel like, you know, we're a bit skeptical about that number. So we're always trying to say, you know, let's get it higher, because we see, I recall when it was it once dropped he's being very humble here.
Speaker 1:It was never below 80 for the longest time. It once dropped to 77 and the two of them almost had tears in their face saying our nps has dropped, has crashed or whatever. And you know, I think most companies would give an arm and a leg to have a 77 NPS. And kudos to you guys for being so focused and obsessed with you know making customers happy, especially when you have both the teachers and the students. And to me, one of the most gratifying things is to see some tweets where kids are tweeting oh, today is quizzes day, yeah, right. So, um, deepak, you know, you and ankit have done an extraordinary job. I think, at a time when the world says, uh, edtech is, uh, isn't the place to be, I think you have stuck through an incredible time and come out, you know. Even so, kudos to the entire team at Quizzes and to the two of you for your thought leadership and, you know, silent, extraordinary execution. And we're, of course, rooting for bigger things for Quizzes in the future. So congrats, and of the podcast.
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