My latest orkut photo
posted by Vamshi Jandhyala at 1:20 AM
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Thursday, September 28, 2006
Monday, September 25, 2006
Edwise - exploiting the long tail of education
I recently finished reading Chris Anderson's 'The Long Tail'. It is one of the best business/economics/culture books I have read in recent times.In it Anderson talks about how the empahsis is shifting from blockbusters to niches and how infinite choice is creating unlimited demand.Anderson gives a lot of examples of companies exploiting the long tail of demand in various industries - e.g. Amazon(books), Google(adverstising), Netflix(dvds), Itunes(Muisc) etc. As I was reading the book I was trying to think of local companies trying to tap the demand in the long tail and players taking advantage of the long tail in other industries. The first company which came to my mind was this company called Edwise. Edwise provides educational consultancy (for free almost!) and value added services to students interested in studying abroad.
Unlike the big companies mentioned in the book which cater to the demand in he 'head' as well as the 'tail', Edwise caters to demand only in the 'tail'. The business model of edwise is pretty simple. It has tie ups with a large number of universities in countries like US,Canada,UK, Singapore, Australia, Switzerland, New Zealand and Hongkong. These institutes do not include the top rung universities which essentially makes them a part of the long tail of education in the respective countries. Consultancy here means helping the student choose a set of countries, courses and institutes.Value added services mean various services required by a student starting from couriering the application forms to the institutes the student has selected to finding accomodation in the place where the student has finally enrolled.
Ok now here is the interesting part about how Edwise makes money without charging the student a penny. Edwise gets a commission from the university(Edwise should have a tieup with it ofcourse!) for every student who joins it.It gets a commission from the value added services it provides.What about the costs??Almost all the costs involved are fixed costs.And the major costs I can think of are rents for decent sized rooms which can accomodate on an average 2-3 counsellors, a broad band connection at each of the places and man power costs. I leave it upto you to estimate the profits(atleast I think its a profitable venture).
What I like most about this whole idea is the way it fits beautifully into the framework proposed by Anderson in the long tail.In 'the long tail' he says:
1)Give people a lot of choice.
2)Help them choose.
Thats exactly what Edwise has done. Edwise gives the student enormous choice using the power of the internet, hundreds of universities to choose from and it also helps them choose by recommending institutes and courses to students. Edwise can provde so much choice because the marginal cost of a tie-up with a new institute is negligible.The demand for each of the universities from a country like India will be very low but the cumulative demand for all the universities will be a sizeable number given that not all students can get into the blockbuster universities like MIT, Stanford, Harvard, LSE or other top rung universities and that different students have different preferences.
The student wins because he does not pay anything, the university wins because it gets more students and in a lot of cases foreign students are charged more than locals and Edwise wins too.
Check out The Long Tail and Edwise
Unlike the big companies mentioned in the book which cater to the demand in he 'head' as well as the 'tail', Edwise caters to demand only in the 'tail'. The business model of edwise is pretty simple. It has tie ups with a large number of universities in countries like US,Canada,UK, Singapore, Australia, Switzerland, New Zealand and Hongkong. These institutes do not include the top rung universities which essentially makes them a part of the long tail of education in the respective countries. Consultancy here means helping the student choose a set of countries, courses and institutes.Value added services mean various services required by a student starting from couriering the application forms to the institutes the student has selected to finding accomodation in the place where the student has finally enrolled.
Ok now here is the interesting part about how Edwise makes money without charging the student a penny. Edwise gets a commission from the university(Edwise should have a tieup with it ofcourse!) for every student who joins it.It gets a commission from the value added services it provides.What about the costs??Almost all the costs involved are fixed costs.And the major costs I can think of are rents for decent sized rooms which can accomodate on an average 2-3 counsellors, a broad band connection at each of the places and man power costs. I leave it upto you to estimate the profits(atleast I think its a profitable venture).
What I like most about this whole idea is the way it fits beautifully into the framework proposed by Anderson in the long tail.In 'the long tail' he says:
1)Give people a lot of choice.
2)Help them choose.
Thats exactly what Edwise has done. Edwise gives the student enormous choice using the power of the internet, hundreds of universities to choose from and it also helps them choose by recommending institutes and courses to students. Edwise can provde so much choice because the marginal cost of a tie-up with a new institute is negligible.The demand for each of the universities from a country like India will be very low but the cumulative demand for all the universities will be a sizeable number given that not all students can get into the blockbuster universities like MIT, Stanford, Harvard, LSE or other top rung universities and that different students have different preferences.
The student wins because he does not pay anything, the university wins because it gets more students and in a lot of cases foreign students are charged more than locals and Edwise wins too.
Check out The Long Tail and Edwise
posted by Vamshi Jandhyala at 10:49 AM
1 comments
Wednesday, September 06, 2006
Books - My second love
My love for books is surpassed only by my love for Mathematics.The sight of books fills me with joy undescribable. I have always nurtured this dream(supposed to be a secret) of setting up a library because I know how difficult it is to get access to great/good books in India and I wanted to do my bit to make things slightly better.
The credit for developing the reading habit in me goes to my mom who made sure that never missed a single book fair when I was in school despite not being a voracious reader herself. I shall always remain grateful to her for this.
My love for books in mathematics was kindled during my IIT coaching days and the credit for this goes to one Mr.Koteshwara Rao, one of the best mathematics teachers I have met.Even after nine long years, I can still recollect with great fondness, the enthusiasm, passion and energy he exuded while teaching.It was he who introduced us to Bernard and Child's Algebra, Dorofeev's Elementary Mathematics, Tom Apostol's Calculus, Shklarsky's Problems in USSR mathematical olympiads, some of the best books of high school mathematics ever.The sheer joy of solving problems or reading these books is inexplicable.
Though initially I was only interested in collecting good books on mathematics, it was IIT, Kharagpur's library (one of the biggest technical libraries in Asia) which exposed me to great books in a lot of other domains(though mostly scientific like physics, computer science, aerospace etc) and it was then that I started collecting non-mathematical books.
My love for books only kept growing and my intersts have only widened. While I was working for a software development firm in Hyderabad, I used to buy a lot of books about Computer Science and Engineering and software development.Bjarne Stroustrup, Gang of Four, Sipser, Ullman, Brooks, Kernighan and Ritchie, Pressman - all great authors.Thanks to the increase in disposable income, I also bought books like GEB, Selfish Gene and other non-fiction books once in while. During the 3 years I was in Hyderabad, my book collection swelled to around 800 books.
CAT coaching had a big big impact on my reading habits. The preparation for the RC section in CAT(considered one of the toughest sections mainly because of our reading habit which is almost nonexistent)consisted of reading passages from very varied domains including philosophy,politics, business, literature, sociology, anthropology, psychology and science. I started buying books like Arundhati Roy's the Algebra of Infinite Justice, Bertrand Russel's History of Western Philosophy, Jack Welch's Straight from the Gut etc.My reading speed no doubt improved but more importantly my perspective broadened.From here on a lot of books on philosophy, economics, business etc found a way to my library.
My stay at IIM, Calcutta reinforced this trend further.IIMC's library is one of the biggest Management Libraries in Asia,it was here that I got to read some absolutely fantastic books on economics, finance, mathematics(surprisingly!) and gerneral management.I also started buying a lot books thanks to the guy who came to our Hostel with the latest business best sellers.
I can proudly say that I am now an owner of more than 1000 absolutely wonderful books in a wide variety of subjects like mathematics, physics, computer science, artificial intelligence, philosophy, economics, business, genetics, biology and history.
Some of the books I have read recently:
My rating scale - very bad, bad, ok, good, excellent
Fooled by Randomness - Excellent
The Long Tail - Excellent
ROI selling - Good
Valuation - Excellent
Interpreter of Maladies - Good
The Google Story - Ok
Understanding Arbitrage - Good
It's Not About The Bike - Excellent
The McKinsey Way - Good
The monk who sold his ferrari - Ok
Currently I am reading "Blue Ocean Strategy".
The credit for developing the reading habit in me goes to my mom who made sure that never missed a single book fair when I was in school despite not being a voracious reader herself. I shall always remain grateful to her for this.
My love for books in mathematics was kindled during my IIT coaching days and the credit for this goes to one Mr.Koteshwara Rao, one of the best mathematics teachers I have met.Even after nine long years, I can still recollect with great fondness, the enthusiasm, passion and energy he exuded while teaching.It was he who introduced us to Bernard and Child's Algebra, Dorofeev's Elementary Mathematics, Tom Apostol's Calculus, Shklarsky's Problems in USSR mathematical olympiads, some of the best books of high school mathematics ever.The sheer joy of solving problems or reading these books is inexplicable.
Though initially I was only interested in collecting good books on mathematics, it was IIT, Kharagpur's library (one of the biggest technical libraries in Asia) which exposed me to great books in a lot of other domains(though mostly scientific like physics, computer science, aerospace etc) and it was then that I started collecting non-mathematical books.
My love for books only kept growing and my intersts have only widened. While I was working for a software development firm in Hyderabad, I used to buy a lot of books about Computer Science and Engineering and software development.Bjarne Stroustrup, Gang of Four, Sipser, Ullman, Brooks, Kernighan and Ritchie, Pressman - all great authors.Thanks to the increase in disposable income, I also bought books like GEB, Selfish Gene and other non-fiction books once in while. During the 3 years I was in Hyderabad, my book collection swelled to around 800 books.
CAT coaching had a big big impact on my reading habits. The preparation for the RC section in CAT(considered one of the toughest sections mainly because of our reading habit which is almost nonexistent)consisted of reading passages from very varied domains including philosophy,politics, business, literature, sociology, anthropology, psychology and science. I started buying books like Arundhati Roy's the Algebra of Infinite Justice, Bertrand Russel's History of Western Philosophy, Jack Welch's Straight from the Gut etc.My reading speed no doubt improved but more importantly my perspective broadened.From here on a lot of books on philosophy, economics, business etc found a way to my library.
My stay at IIM, Calcutta reinforced this trend further.IIMC's library is one of the biggest Management Libraries in Asia,it was here that I got to read some absolutely fantastic books on economics, finance, mathematics(surprisingly!) and gerneral management.I also started buying a lot books thanks to the guy who came to our Hostel with the latest business best sellers.
I can proudly say that I am now an owner of more than 1000 absolutely wonderful books in a wide variety of subjects like mathematics, physics, computer science, artificial intelligence, philosophy, economics, business, genetics, biology and history.
Some of the books I have read recently:
My rating scale - very bad, bad, ok, good, excellent
Fooled by Randomness - Excellent
The Long Tail - Excellent
ROI selling - Good
Valuation - Excellent
Interpreter of Maladies - Good
The Google Story - Ok
Understanding Arbitrage - Good
It's Not About The Bike - Excellent
The McKinsey Way - Good
The monk who sold his ferrari - Ok
Currently I am reading "Blue Ocean Strategy".
posted by Vamshi Jandhyala at 8:28 AM
1 comments
