Linking educators and learners, virtually

One qualified as a surgeon from the UK, but ditched the medical field, obtained a management degree and got into management consulting. The other, an engineering graduate from Chennai, went on to obtain a Master’s in the US with his core area being optical networking, worked in telecom and networking companies in the US and in India.

Their paths crossed when the doctor-turned-management consultant was involved in a project on smart connected cities with Cisco, where the latter was handling the project. Meet Vikram Ramakrishnan and Arun Muthukumar.

Their families knew each and Arun’s wife is related to Vikram.

Vikram’s wife, who too was a doctor, on their return to India, did not want to practise clinical medicine. She decided to set up a school in Erode in Tamil Nadu. When Vikram happened to mention this to Arun, he pointed out that Cisco had an education product to virtually connect educators and learners, across distances. Why not try it out in your school, was Arun’s poser to Vikram.

Vikram took up the offer and implemented it as a pilot project. “We did a pilot and simultaneously, extended that connection from our school to a local government school in Kallipatti, near Gobi. We put a computer and an Internet connection. We got teachers from my school to take Maths and English and we did a summer programme for those (government school) kids,” says Vikram.

They were surprised with the result: all the kids turned up for the class; kids from nearby schools also started coming and listening to these classes.

This project was the building block for a venture that Vikram and Arun started, after quitting their jobs. “We thought this is something where technology is delivering an outcome, which otherwise would not have been possible. We thought why not take it and explore,” says Vikram. The duo, now in their early 40s, formed a separate company, Linkstreet Learning Pvt Ltd, in October 2011 to provide end-to-end solutions for customers who want to reach across geographies to collaborate and learn.

Arun says the pilot project was a defining moment. “Standing in that rural classroom, seeing the students sitting on the floor and listening to a good maths teacher, the experience was phenomenal,” recalls Arun. “It was the next best thing to the teacher being there,” he adds.

What does Linkstreet do? It provides a technology platform that enables all models of online learning and collaboration, says Arun. “We provide them a portal with log-ins. Customers can log in from wherever they are, get connected through the Internet and attend live interactive sessions,” he says.

Initially, the duo looked at the school market, but realised that for the venture to be viable, they had to look at the higher education segment, online tutorial programmes and the corporate sector. Linkstreet counts among its clients IIM-Bangalore and Ace Learning. It has signed up quite a few private course providers.

Apart from the live classes that Linkstreet enables, the platform, available on the cloud, allows recording facility. Which means if a class is being conducted, it can be recorded, stored and played back later, explains Vikram.

“We offer this whole thing as a managed service. That is the other benefit. Because they don’t have to worry about buying hardware, maintaining it, managing it, or hiring IT staff. We offer it on a per user or per block of users, on a subscription basis,” says Arun.

The venture got seed funding in 2012. It recently raised an undisclosed amount from Faering Capital.

Vikram says the money will be used to develop the product and in business development.

Linkstreet, according to Arun, has 35 clients now, including a few in the US, Singapore and West Asia. “We are doing Sanskrit classes for the US, about 150 students are learning the language,” says Arun.

Within India, Linkstreet is targeting three types of customers – education, healthcare and individual experts.

In the healthcare space, it has signed up about a dozen hospitals that use its platform to train its staff and conduct live medical classes.

The individual expert can be someone like Sudhir Shivaram, a wildlife and nature photographer, who uses Linkstreet’s platform to conduct photography classes.

“All these solutions, we can take them and apply them to any market and we can easily service them from here,” says Vikram. Linkstreet has a 40-member team, a majority of them on the technology side.

COMMENT NOW