Unacademy-owned PrepLadder is eyeing global expansion in 2024 to eventually become a global medical education platform, said Deepanshu Goyal, CEO and co-founder, Prepladder.

He told BusinessLine the expansion plans would commence in markets such as the US, Canada and the Philippines.

The post-graduate (PG) test-prep company said it has turned profitable after two years of its acquisition by edtech unicorn Unacademy.

“Year 2021 was actually crazy. There was a lot of money flowing in and so we started a lot of new categories. Eventually, we understood that we did not have the strength for all those categories, so we had to exit a few. Now I believe we have learned a lot of things and are at a good place in our growth journey,” said. Goyal.

In June 2022, PrepLadder fired 150 employees, who it said were on the performance improvement programme (PIP).

Owing to skyrocketing customer acquisition costs (CAC) and a funding slowdown, many edtech companies, including Vedantu, Unacademy and Byju's, have laid off employees this year.

However, Goyal argues that the company’s CAC has been low since the beginning. “To give you an idea, by industry standards, a business development executive (sales executive) usually generates an average of Rs. 4-5 lakh in revenue per month. However, in the case of PrepLadder, this number is around Rs 15 to 20 lakh a month. So that’s the kind of product and brand we have built,” he added.

It currently has 1.7 lakh paying students, of which 1.5 lakh are enrolled in the medical PG category.

The remaining customers are in two new categories - the UPSC and CAT (management exam). Prepladder operates on a freemium model, wherestudents get access to 10 per cent of the course content for free and have to upgrade to premium for the rest.

Its medical PG preparation courses are priced between Rs. 35,000-40,000, as compared to around Rs 1.25 lakh offered by offline players.

Unlike its parent company, PrepLadder does not have an offline presence. However, Goyal said the offline market in the medical PG preparation segment has bounced back well and PrepLadder might consider opening offline centres next year. 

“Offline has bounced really well. Eventually, if we want to take a bigger share of the market, we might have to be present everywhere,” Goyal added.

The courses include pre-recorded lectures, notes and question banks, among others. Goyal argues that recorded lectures work best for the PG preparation course. 

In PG courses, the intent is high and often students are actually working somewhere, so they might not be able to follow the live classes schedule.

“We record a very high quality content library using animation, real patients — everything that is possible. This allows students to study asynchronously,” he added.

Goyal said student drop-offs do happen for all educational platforms. On PrepLadder, almost 66 per cent of users engage with the app every week (as of July 2022) and 90 per cent engage every month. Further, the average time of these users is 7-8 hours every week in the company's core categories.

Goyal is looking to add super-speciality content for medical professionals next year . “We will launch super-speciality courses for students who have cleared their medical PG and are preparing for super-speciality. We are picking up 11 categories of super-speciality that we will start next year,” he added.

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