-Dipta Joshi (Mumbai)
Bengaluru-based Aayur Kaul is the India head of the New York-based Skillshare Inc. (est.2010) — “the world’s largest online learning community for creativity”. Skillshare, with over 13 million registered members worldwide, made its India debut last November. Kaul’s brief is to introduce Skillshare’s products and services to Indian learners.
Newspeg: Skillshare’s India debut fortuitously coincided with the company’s global launch of its Chroma courses. This cohort-based four-week course provides lessons in several creative subjects to small batches of students, ensuring personalised attention. Meanwhile, Kaul has also adapted Skillshare Originals for the Indian market. Through collaborations with accomplished professionals, Skillshare aims to provide its community the opportunity to learn valuable skills from the likes of filmmaker and YouTuber Ankit Bhatia, with a class on producing quality travel films, and Chaitanya Limaye, illustrator and animator who worked on the Oscar winning The Jungle Book.
History: Founded by Michael Karnjanaprakorn, Skillshare moved from in-person teaching to an online platform back in 2012 to “democratise learning and make acquiring creative skills affordable and accessible to everyone”. Skillshare’s two-sided marketplace connects teachers, who take online video-based classes, with learners who pay an annual subscription fee (Rs.1,788) to access over 30,000 video-based lessons in creative disciplines such as graphic design, photography, painting, illustration and interior design.
A computer engineering graduate of the Sardar Patel Institute of Technology, Mumbai, Kaul seems the perfect fit to lead this increasingly popular tutorial hub in India. Earlier, this ed-tech entrepreneur co-founded Chase, a digital creativity learning ecosystem in 2018, which was acquired by Bitclass in July 2021.
Direct talk. “India is one of the largest markets for Skillshare outside the US. The Indian edtech industry has witnessed phenomenal growth since 2020 and is now valued at $20 billion with an annual revenue of $2 billion (Rs.15,000 crore). With over 100 million millennials looking to pursue and monetise their creativity, India is a high-potential market for Skillshare. We plan to make significant investments in the country this year. The company currently has numerous creators based in India producing authentic content that resonates with creative youth and professionals,” says Kaul.
Future plans: Skillshare’s focus on the creative arts gives its “value proposition a unique edge” despite competing with several international and homegrown edtech companies. Besides running acquisition campaigns to attract new learners, Skillshare also conducts special programmes — ‘Teach Labs’ and ‘Teacher Success’ to help creators (teachers) polish their classes before broadcasting them on the platform.
“Skillshare wouldn’t be what it is without its teachers. We make every effort to ensure they have the right tools, training and resources to produce quality content through our Teach Labs and Teacher Success programmes. We want to boost India’s creative economy and aim to support creative professionals to expand our online learning community. Currently we have over 1,000 teachers from India on our platform and the plan is to increase that number substantially in the coming years,” says Kaul.
