India’s contribution to the development of mathematics goes beyond zero—it includes negative numbers, arithmetic, algebra and trigonometry.
Now, an Indian edtech start-up wants to capture the lion’s share of the global mathematics education market (K12). Founded in 2014, Cuemath grew three times in FY21 over FY20, and expanded to more than 20 countries during the pandemic.
Today, it is present in 80-odd countries, and it wants to reach over 100 countries by the end of 2023.
“In the last two years, we have focused on streamlining operations in India and expanding to more than 80 countries, including setting up an office in Abu Dhabi, and building cross-country teams in the US, the UK and other international territories,” Vivek Sunder, CEO, Cuemath, told FE. “With over 200,000 students and 8,500 maths tutors, Cuemath is well-positioned to become the number one maths teaching platform globally.”
Raising funds
While Sunder didn’t share Cuemath’s revenues, he said the start-up raised $57 million in June 2022, in a fresh round of series C1 funding. The round was led by Alpha Wave at a valuation of $407 million—more than 2X jump in the company’s valuation. The fundraising saw participation from existing investors, including Lightrock India, Sequoia Capital India, Alphabet’s independent growth fund CapitalG, Manta Ray, and Unitus.
“Cuemath is self-sustainable to operate for the next few years,” Sunder said. “Our biggest priority is executing the global plan we have set out.”
Capturing global markets
While Cuemath has already reached 80 countries, the immediate plan is to strengthen its presence there. “We plan to bolster our presence in North America, APAC, the UK, Europe, the Middle East, and capture markets in Africa and South America,” Sunder said. “We are building optimised curricula for the UK, Australia and the Middle East, with a significant concentration on the US market.”
The Cuemath team is designing customised products and propositions for parents and students in global markets, and identifying the right price points and marketing mechanisms to reach parents.
Competition
Within mathematics education, one of the largest players globally is the Japanese Kumon. Before the pandemic, Kumon—whose model is largely bricks-and-mortar centres—had over 4 million students enrolled at over 25,000 learning centres. But the advantage Cuemath has is its digital outreach.
“While in India we have a mix of online and offline classes, globally it is entirely virtual. That gives us an advantage in terms of reaching out to students—we can teach 1:1 and 1:20, depending on the needs of students,” Sunder said. “Our curriculum is accredited by STEM.org, our learning outcomes are great, and we’re a Google for Education partner … all this gives us huge credibility.”
Indian teachers
As of now, Cuemath employs teachers from India for teaching foreign students. Mathematics is a universal need and the syllabus is also more or less similar in most countries, but it’s the teachers at Cuemath, which, Sunder believes, give it an edge. Indian accent is fairly neutral, and around the world Indians are associated with strong mathematics skills. “Being taught by an Indian is seen as a positive in many countries,” Sunder said.
At the same time, there are cultural differences between Indians and foreigners. So that teachers can better under the needs of foreign students and their parents, they are constantly trained on communication, cultural and related skills.
Covid-19 challenges
Last year, a Cuemath study (done with AC Nielsen) noted that maths learning had deteriorated due to Covid-19. Sunder said physical schools were not equipped to adapt to the lockdown, which resulted in the setback of maths learning globally. “But Cuemath proved to be an antidote to this global problem—the pandemic encouraged us to move to the online teaching model within no time. As part of our global expansion plans, we saw stellar growth through entry into newer geographies,” he said. “The last two years also allowed us to better understand our markets and parents’ changing needs. Our focus on teaching and obtaining deep maths learning outcomes has contributed to great retention rates (80%), with half of all new admissions happening via referrals.”
Edtech and teaching jobs
In an offline classroom, a teacher can teach a few dozen students at one time; on edtech, she can teach hundreds. Does this lead to job losses for teachers? Sunder said, on the contrary, edtech will lead to more teaching jobs. “No matter how much technology you employ, the human elements of empathy and encouragement are needed,” he said. “The role of a teacher may change, but her significance won’t reduce.”
Biggest or best
Sunder said that Cuemath’s goal is to become the best in the world, instead of biggest. “If in the process of becoming the best, we become the biggest, so be it,” he said. “But to become the biggest is not the end-goal, because if you set such a goal, you have to throw resources at it, and if it fails, it can lead to cost-cutting and layoffs.”
Becoming the best and the biggest won’t be easy, but it appears the Cuemath team has done the math.
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