TiE talk by Roby John, Tap 2 learn, Oct 2013

1. Roby John is a mechanical engineer from COEP, batch of 1999. He was the gold medalist in college – moved on to a higher education program, but did not like it and dropped out. He has a flair for teaching, and he has taught for more than 10 years at C DAC.
2. After passing out of COEP, he joined Cognizant, as one of their first employees, when they were located in a flat in Pune. He stayed on for about 2 years and then moved on to start a journey of serial entrepreneurship. Indigo Architects was his first start up. Roby has been interested in buildings and construction – hence the use of the word – architect. It has a nice concrete feel about it. Around that time 9/11 happened – and business dried up. However, there was a silver lining – in terms of there being a demand for IT services related to Corporate philanthropy. So the first code was written for CSR! 
3. Roby soon moved on to his second company, – O2 software. This one was started in his spare bedroom at home. O2 also got sold – and Roby and his partner at O2, moved on to greener pastures in the US. They joined Amber Point, a company staffed by veterans of Silicon valley, which included team members who worked on Ingress, one of the first RDBMS softwares. The company was into Anti spyware solutions. Silicon valley was an eye opener – and as Roby says, there was a 10 x difference in being there. After working at Amberpoint for 5 years, Roby moved on to his third entrepreneurial venture – June Software. They have a very cute logo – an Ambigram – which means that it reads the same even when you turn it upside down.
4. As Roby puts it the company was founded by 3 men and a dog. Charlie the dog is the official mascot of the company. What Roby had done was that he invested his life time savings in buying a bungalow in Viman Nagar. Enthralled by the Silicon valley culture, he decided that for his team to be creative and to have fun in coding, they needed their own space, which could only be found in such a setting.
5. Here is a story Roby shared as an introduction to tap2learn: “Among the tribes of Africa, few have warriors traditionally more fearsome or more cunning than the Masai of Kenya. It is perhaps surprising, then, to learn the traditional greeting among Masai warriors. One warrior would always say to another, “Kasserian Ingera,” which, in Swahili, means, “Are the children well?” It is still the traditional greeting among the Masai, acknowledging the high value of the Masai for the well-being of children. Even modern Masai with no children of their own always give the traditional answer, “All the children are well,” meaning, of course, that peace and safety prevail – that the priorities of protecting the young and powerless are in place, that Masai society has not forgotten its reason for being and its responsibilities. “All the children are well” means that life is good. It means that the daily struggles of existence do not preclude proper care for the young. Our societies do not seem to value children as much.
6. In educating children we have problems which are mostly related to: Short attention spans and lack of practice. Interestingly, by the time you are 21, you have probably played games for more than ten thousand hours, a number which is quoted by Malcolm Gladwell as making you an ‘expert’ in a field.
7. The best learning is always self-learning. Most elearning software today is busy replicating the classroom. There are pdfs, more evolved software would have videos. It should not be about replicating the classroom, but about engaging the student. Understanding the consumer is very important. A lot of effort was expended in talking to students, parents and teachers. The metrics and analytics are what is missing in school education today. Parents and teachers don’t know what students don’t know! The Ipad was seen as an engagement tool, and with an average tap happening every 2 minutes in a game – a good way of understanding the metrics of engagement.
8. June software was so named because the deadline for the first product roll-out was in June. 2 of Roby’s CDAC students joined as co-founders. The idea was to make learning apps for Ipads. The app names were chosen based on an analysis of search key words – so Grammar – not English. The content expert for the first app on Grammar was Roby’s mom who has been an English teacher. The design is very child centric, which means that the child learns by playing a cartoon based game. In tap2learn’s second game – they introduced the character of the Tiny Chicken, and found that engagement levels went up drastically after this, to almost 30 minutes per session. So it was decided to retain this mascot for future games.
9. If you have a great product, nobody can stop you, if not, nobody can save you. In 2010, immediately after its launch, tap2learn’s grammar app was the highest selling paid app in education in the Apple Store. The company has a very interesting marketing strategy. The total marketing spend of Tap2learn till date has been $ 8000. Interestingly, there is no one employed for marketing! Tap2learn’s apps are free for the first 15 days. To start using the app, the child has to enter her parent’s email address. After 15 days the parent gets a mail from Tap2Learn. For a geography app., the mail asks parents to quiz her child about where Vietnam is – and a few other questions whose answers the child would have learnt while playing the geography game. This is what Roby calls is the ‘Holy Shit’ moment – where the parent is pleasantly surprised about her kid’s learning. The mail then requests parents that if they want to continue learning please purchase this app for 99 cents and most parents immediately decide to make the purchase. And this is just the beginning. By maintaining this relationship, the parent is sold other apps – and now it is easier – because Tap2learn is a brand that she has started trusting now.
10. The company’s focus has been on the US market, because that is where all the IPads are. Revenues have been great – so far they have crossed 1 m $ in sales.  Initially all the capital invested was own capital – but the company has since participated in Y combinator, an interesting entrepreneur class – and seed funder. They have since got angel investors coming in. The company is still only 30 strong, with 25 at the Viman Nagar office and 5 in Menlo Park, California. The company participates in MacWorld expos in the US, where Roby mentioned that even Steve Job’s wife Pauline acknowledged that their app is being used by her kids.
11. One of Roby’s first partners was a sardar, who was very fond of this joke:
There’s a group of intelligent(!) sardars who plan to give an IQ test to their sardar fellowmates. Henceforth a meeting is arranged & all the sardars in the community are invited.  So first, they call Banta Singh and ask him what is 10+35? He thinks for quite sometime, and finally answers 55. All his friends shout ,”Give him one more chance !!”. So next, he’s asked what is 11+12? He says 25 & again his friends shout ,”Give him one more chance!!”. This time he’s asked what is 2+2? This time he answers 4 & all his sardar friends shout,”Give him one more chance!!”.

The culture at tap2learn is a very open one. The philosophy is to give everyone one more chance. The woods would be very silent if no birds sang there except those that sang best. You never work in a great co, you work with great people.12. One question – which I wanted to ask, but could not given the competition to ask questions: Most game companies have very steep, but short trajectories. Very few like Nintendo maybe, have managed to sustain interest for a relatively long time.

Maybe it is a problem of the attention span again. Is there a vision to look at extending the franchise into other areas?