The world’s most ambitious education portal

The world’s most ambitious education portalIn September 2006 Seattle-based Kal Raman accepted a challenging assignment to design, develop and operationalise an online education supermall. On November 2 last year globalscholar.com offering a rain of products and services became accessible to the global public On a cold rainy night in December 2005 India born, Seattle-based IT professional Kalyan (‘Kal) Raman received a phone call from Michael Milken, the legendary Wall Street financier turned philanthropist. During the 90-minute conversation Milken outlined his vision of a KG-Ph D online education platform that would use the internet medium to revolutionise global education. As he listened with growing interest, Ramans minds eye travelled back thousands of miles to the ramshackle state government school he had attended in a remote village in Tamil Nadu. Raman remembered his one-room school, housing several classes without a library or even desks and chairs. He recalled his early years, being raised by a widowed mother who notwithstanding her income of Rs.420 per month, put all her five children through school because she believed in the power of education to transform lives. In an epiphanic moment he remembered how he had made his way through the Guindy College of Engineering, Chennai on merit scholarships and was campus recruited by the Mumbai-based Tata Consultancy Engineers, later moving to Tata Consulting Services, Indias largest IT consultancy services company (1990). For nearly a year Raman mulled over this proposal, finally quitting his high-profile job as senior vice-president of Amazon.com in September 2006 to accept Milkens challenge to start-up the worlds most ambitious global e-learning platform to provide the gift of quality education to learners all over the world. A month later GlobalScholar Inc (paid up capital $42 million) was incorporated and promoted by the Los Angeles-based education conglomerate Knowledge Universe Learning Group, founded by Michael Milken and his brother Lowell; the Seattle-based Ignition Venture Fund led by Brad Silverberg and Peter Neupert, vice-president of Microsoft — a seriously deep-pocketed trio of investors. GlobalScholars objective: to design, develop and operationalise the mother-of-all education portals positioned as an education supermall providing a rain of products and services. Working furiously in typical American project execution style putting in 16-17 hour days, and jetting all over the US and back and forth to India, Raman recruited a 65-strong Seattle-based NRI (non-resident Indians) dominated team of proven IT professionals and web designers, and simultaneously set up a 125-strong backroom technical operations and content development team in Chennai — all within a year. On November 2 last year GlobalScholar.com — the eponymous website of the company — became accessible to the global public. Barely into its stride, GlobalScholar Inc has also taken the acquisition route to quickly expand its customer base. In February shortly after it raised $27 million in second round funding, GlobalScholar acquired Excelsior Software, a Colorado-based company which designs student gradebook and assessment software currently utilised by teachers in 1,000 school districts across the US. This acquisition has not only raised the profile of GlobalScholar within US…