Himanshu Dulani is a Mumbai-based dancer with ~800K subscribers on YouTube and ~500K followers on Instagram. While this social media following comes from across the country, Himanshu has majorly taught only in Mumbai and Delhi, as dancing as a form has had locational constraints.

With hour long workshops costing around INR 500 and a hall capacity of 50 people, the GMV of most classes gets capped at around INR 25K for one session.

Enter Graphy by Unacademy.

On Graphy, Himanshu was able to create a three-day live cohort based course (with sessions of two hours each day) teaching the fundamentals…

Between August 16, 2021 and August 31, 2021, we saw five companies in the Indian EdTech space getting funded or acquired. Companies that got funded came from diverse segments such as Upskilling/Reskilling, Game Streaming, Extra-Curricular, and Coding.

Who Got a Slice?

• Kalam Labs (Pre-Seed, Undisclosed): Kalam Labs is a live game streaming startup that focuses on K-12 Learning with a multiplayer ecosystem. The company raised a pre-seed round from Y Combinator, Lightspeed, and FirstCheque
• Expertrons (Pre Series A, $2.3 Million): Expertrons is a library of career videobots of experts who have shared their experience of landing a dream career like a job, internship or…

Institutionalized learning represents an effective platform for governments to control the long-term future of a nation, as it plays a monumental role in defining an individual’s, a group’s, and ultimately, a nation’s probabilities of success. Although measuring success is a constant debate in itself, one could argue that it can be defined as fundamentally actualizing one’s objectives. To that effect, education, especially K12 education, remains a priority sector for governments across the globe.

A couple of large nations have recently announced and implemented disruptive educational policies — like India and China — countries that collectively represent more than a third…

We love new things.

Our brains are actually hardwired to love novelty. There is a reason why moving to a new city or a new town is exciting, and why you can not wait to get your hands on that new iPhone 25s+.

When you first think about Cohort Based Courses, you might think “Eh, traditional learning has always been in cohorts. What is the big deal?”

But if you step into how these courses work and the results they deliver, you would understand that the hype around these courses is not limited to the novelty effect.

Factors in Choosing Your Next Course

As you read…

There has been tremendous momentum driving the D2C (Direct-to-Consumer) industry in India with both entrepreneurs and investors backing the new-age brands having a strong digital presence. In the last 5 years, more than 600 D2C brands have been launched in India with more than $2.5 billion already being pumped in.

Such strong sentiment is reflective of the global D2C wave which started in early 2010s when several iconic brands like Glossier, Allbirds, Casper, Everlane, etc. started cropping up and revolutionized traditional retail. …

Between August 01, 2021 and August 15, 2021, we saw ten companies in the Indian EdTech space getting funded or acquired. Companies that got funded came from diverse segments such as Upskilling/Reskilling, Higher Education, Early Education, Language Learning Platform, and Test-Prep.

Who Got a Slice?

• BlueLearn (Pre-Seed, $450K): Founded in 2021, BlueLearn is a peer-to-peer upskilling platform, along with webinars by industry experts. The company’s pre-seed round was led by Lightspeed with participation from 100X.VC , Titan Capital 2am VC and other angel investors.
• Eruditus (Series E, $650 Million): Eruditus is an online executive education platform with 250 professional learning programmes developed in partnership…

Between July 14, 2021 and July 31, 2021, we saw fourteen companies in the Indian EdTech space getting funded or acquired. Companies that got funded came from diverse segments such as Test Prep, Upskilling/Reskilling, Tutor Marketplace, Digital Learning Infrastructure, K-12, Language Learning, New-Age Skills, and Game Streaming.

Who Got a Slice?

• Pedagogy (M&A, Undisclosed): Pedagogy offers online courses and interactive digital books for students preparing for competitive exams. It converts physical books into interactive content, including chapters, practice questions, mock tests, etc. Vedantu is set to acquire a majority stake in the Ahmedabad-based e-learning platform.
• Simplilearn (M&A, $250 Million): Simplilearn company provides online training…

TL;DR: No. At least in India, it won’t.

With that out of the way, let us dive into what an alternative MBA program looks like today, how it is different from a traditional MBA, and the value it brings to you.

What is an Alternative MBA?

Alternative MBA is an idea that revolves around delivering the primary principles of a traditional MBA, along with some of the core non-academic experiences (read: networking), in a shorter span of time (generally 4–24 weeks), for a fee which is 3–5% of that of a traditional MBA.

Disclaimer: We are not talking about “new age” programs such as MBA…