With the support of his former company, he developed a Master Class with CEO Philip Wolf and that further validated his idea of developing a new form of e-learning platform and convinced other investors to buy into the idea.
“I was leveraging the 20-year journey of my education partner Sourabh Sarkar who I believe is going to revolutionize education. So it was really using what Sourabh had designed in scaling education coupled with my understanding of the industry that helped me set up a travel, tourism and hospitality domain learning company.”
GlobalTHEN (Global Travel & Hospitality Education Network) “leverage two of the most powerful forces of the 21st century: media & technology to solve the problem that emerges from scaling expertise and experts”, said Ram.
Ram, who is founder and CEO, says that capital in emerging markets is solving the infrastructure problem with the building of airports, hotels and roads. Technology is solving the distribution and information arbitrage problem.
“No one is solving the human problem, so I am trying to bring the high quality service industry knowledge from the West to the emerging tourism industry in APAC, particularly to frontline staff, drivers, guides, housekeeping etc.”
The change he wants to effect is to “build scaleable high quality low cost highly engaging learning experiences”.
“The traditional model of expensive real estate driven model with lack of high quality faculty focused on information needs to be transformed.
“Our objective is not to give information but to motivate behavior. That is secret of Sourabh Sarkar’s OmniDEL learningware. It engages the whole person. We use interactive multimedia, technology, entertainment, music and all the paradigms of engagement from the world of cinema, sports, performing arts and bring that together in the class room, online and now mobile experience.
“We want to scale this to the bottom of the pyramid and frontline who are the customer touch points.”
The first product, “Pawan Ko Kahin Dekha Kya?”, is a multi-media based programme for chauffeurs that aims to transform the way they think and work. “It aims to push the learner to evolve from a mere driver to Pawan, the Super Driver.”
This is Ram’s first entrepreneurial venture and he admits it’s not been easy. “Every stage is difficult but the first sale is definitely among them. That is when as an entrepreneur, you have to hold on and have motivate your team to be relentless.
“There has to be a missionary zeal to get that sale and many more. Once your first sale happens which is small, then immediately you need to think of the bigger number sale.
“The key to being a start-up in education and creating exciting learning ware is that you make a difference to the front line – the bulk of the industry. As an analyst I used to engage with only the senior management; now my products go to the customer facing frontline of the industry.
“The joy of seeing drivers in India who have never really been trained to be engaged by a whole day learning experience which awakens them to the journey of learning is fantastic.”
With proof of concept established, Ram said companies are asking the company for repeat workshops. It trained 200 drivers in February and customers include companies like Tata Motors, EasyCabs, Wings Travel, Olacabs.
“Our objective is to train a million drivers – that is the advantage of an IP model – it is scaleable and this product can be facilitated by drivers and does not require trained facilitators.”
