How Cuemath focuses on its vision to become a global math brand

Cuemath was founded in 2013, as an after-school online Math program for KG to 12th grade students. They tap into every child’s natural math power, amplifying achievement and skyrocketing their confidence. Cuemath is backed by Light rock, Alpha Wave Incubation, Sequoia Capital India, CapitalG (formerly Google Capital), and Manta Ray and is present in over 50+ countries. They are certified by Grant Thornton and the curriculum is also STEM and Google for Education-accredited. Their teaching methodology has a unique approach that combines 1:1 group instruction with engaging puzzles, and interactive visuals to teach math as intuitive logic and has a self-paced curriculum keeping the learning pace of students in mind.

Manan Khurma (Founder at Cuemath) has been a Mathematics educator since his college days. He founded Locus Education upon graduating from IIT Delhi in 2007 and trained over ten thousand students for IIT-JEE within the first few years of his career as an educator. This experience of teaching JEE aspirants helped him gain insight into how the youth of the country perceives and studies Math.

At CIOL, Manan Khurma, Chairman and Founder at Cuemath, has shared his perspective on the future of education and how Cuemath is working towards removing maths anxiety among students to create a generation of problem solvers and creative thinkers.

Tell us about Cuemath and your offerings. Tell us about the team.

Cuemath offers a one-of-a-kind, live online learning platform for maths. An ardent student and maths educator, I founded Cuemath in 2013, with the sole purpose of making a positive and impactful change to how maths was taught to students. Cuemath believes that maths makes you invincible – with the power of maths by their side, students can achieve greatness both inside and outside the classroom. Cuemath’s mission is to be the global maths leader, unlocking the multitude of possibilities a strong maths foundation can provide for students across the globe.

The online maths tutoring space is a $30 billion global market. For generations, students have struggled to overcome their fear of maths while educators have struggled to implement proper methods to define and measure the success of maths education. This means that, effectively, the demand to truly learn and master mathematical fundamentals is at an all-time high. Future jobs are dependent on a sound understanding of mathematics and more and more students and parents alike are turning to Cuemath to help their children engage with this critical subject.

Cuemath’s curriculum covers maths visually and focuses on real-world examples rather than abstract theorems. We demonstrate how a concept works, making it super easy for children to grasp concepts deeply and intuitively. Our program contrasts with existing approaches that emphasize memorisation and rote mechanics to understand underlying maths concepts, and instead gamifies the experience with age-appropriate visuals.

So far, over 200,000 students have experienced stellar learning outcomes with Cuemath, thanks to the growing team of over 10,000 expert tutors.

Cuemath’s strong leadership team is steering the company towards making it the global maths leader with an aim to cross the 100-country milestone in 2022. Vivek Sunder, CEO of Cuemath, supervises the overall business and global expansion of Cuemath. As the founder and chairman, my focus is on defining the pedagogy, and curriculum aspects of the business and outlining the overall growth strategy. Other key leaders include Samir Kulshresth as CFO, Nisha Popli as CHRO, Janardan Singh as Chief of Sales, Anushray Gupta as Chief Product and Technology Officer, Varun Jha as Chief Marketing Officer, Tanaya Kilara as Chief Customer Officer, and Santanu Chari as Chief of the Teacher Community.

What are the drivers/market trends that are shaping the Cuemath platform in 2022?

The disruption caused by the pandemic in the last two years has massively contributed to the expansion of education technology. The edtech market in India was estimated at $2.8 billion by end of 2020 and is forecasted to grow more than 3 times to $10.4 billion by 2025. Our sector has witnessed around Rs 30,000 crore in fresh funding from both domestic and international investors that has helped over 6,500 tech startups.

In 2022, online education is geared up to enter a new stage in which a whole lot of new trends will emerge to help magnify and multiply possibilities. Innovation, consolidation, and expansion are the key areas that will drive online education.

Here are some trends that will not only shape the edtech market but also players like us:

Offering a true omnichannel experience: As we move from the content era to the engagement era, students across the globe will interact with subjects across more interfaces than ever – smartphones, virtual reality headsets, computer screens, and tablets. This variety and accessibility will drive higher levels of engagement by children and likely increase learning performance. Omnichannel strategies amongst EdTechs will build coherent and flexible student experiences across devices, platforms, and channels. With education being an experience and not a physical product, the notion of the classroom as the only venue where learning takes place, will fade further into the past.

The changing role of teachers: The idea of teachers as learning facilitators is changing. Teachers now need the skills to create a great learning experience irrespective of channel and format used – digital or in-person. Teaching quality will be measured by upskilling abilities, the generation of new ideas, and employing new technologies to personalise teaching. During the pandemic, teachers have already demonstrated how they can generate new ideas and transform lives, irrespective of a physical or virtual location. This trend will intensify in 2022.

Technology and personalised education: New concepts such as gamification, machine learning enhanced by data analytics, and the application of AI will intensify as primary technological drivers of the EdTech revolution and the wider trend of personalisation. With data analytics, teachers will now have powerful tools to identify individual student learning behaviors, which will help them to adapt learning programme in order to promote more positive learning outcomes, at scale.AI applications, fed with data collected automatically in the digital learning process, can identify and quantify individual needs, providing educators with precise tools for their students. AI is also likely to better accommodate children with disabilities or other learning difficulties.

How is your company tapping these market trends for growth?

The issue of children reaching adulthood without basic maths skills has been an ongoing battle in the country. The World Bank reports that over 50% of 10-year-old children in middle-income countries do not have foundational maths skills  – a figure rising to 90% in low-income nations. Additionally, according to the World Economic Forum’s ‘Future of Jobs’ Report, the top 10 jobs of tomorrow require a deep affinity with algorithms and maths logic. All these data not only highlight how numerical competency has never been more important but also reflect the importance of maths skills as a gateway to unlocking human capabilities.

In order to deal with this current learning crisis, there is a need to maximise innovation and investment in learning. Our focus is to create newer models in learning, propelled by technological drivers such as gamification, machine learning enhanced by data analytics, and AI, which will help in making the experience of online learning more efficient and fun. In addition, improving personalisation for an outcome-oriented approach will help mitigate the learning loss.

We believe that adopting the pace, objectives, and content according to the students’ multiple intelligences, abilities, and motivations is important. It is also imperative to have regular diagnostic assessments to identify learning gaps in students. This can be used to assess the understanding of students, identify gaps in learning, individual learning behaviors, and styles, and personalising the learning programs to promote positive learning outcomes.

Edtech companies should remain focused on education quality and empowering individual learners to achieve success through uniting education with technology, data, and connectivity. Companies that successfully grasp the balance between technology and delivering a quality education will be rewarded in the long run.

How does Cuemath prove advantageous to students and educational institutions? Any changes for Cuemath?

Studies show that maths anxiety is a widespread, worldwide problem affecting students of all age groups. Our goal is to tackle this concern on a global level by providing conceptual clarity on the subject. We follow these principles as per the Cuemath Method for more effective teaching and better learning outcomes:

• Instead of abstract, repetitive drills, kids learn faster through exciting real-world examples that we use as a way of our teaching.
• Cuemath concepts are cumulative, and instructors ensure kids don’t move from one level to the other until they’re achieved mastery in the previous one.
• Instead of passive observation, kids actively learn by doing, supported by positive reinforcement and confidence building.
• Instead of rote memorisation of dry facts and formulas, Cuemath shows kids visually why concepts work and by shifting the emphasis from what to why, even the most struggling students make unbelievable progress.
• Most times teachers tell students the answer, which can result in ineffective learning outcomes. At Cuemath, we make maths a dialogue, using engaging questions and hints to keep pushing kids forward until they discover it on their own.
• We are also incorporating advanced technology tools to intuitively structure and modify our learning platform. This is still a work in progress and will continue to evolve with the ever-changing artificial intelligence and machine learning.

How has your revenue grown with the brand evolving during the pandemic?

As the demand for EdTech platforms and learning outcomes surged in the last two years, Cuemath’s revenue shot up by 3.7 times in FY2021 to around Rs 91 crore from Rs 24.4 crore in the preceding fiscal year.

Teaching was the main source of income for Cuemath during the financial year ending March 2021, contributing over 70% of its total revenue. This income has jumped to Rs 64.41 crore in FY21 from Rs 1.4 crore in FY20.

With over a 3X increase in operating revenues, Cuemath has shown noticeable growth in scale during FY21.

What has 2021 changed for you? How are things now?

Besides doubling growth and raising multiple rounds of funding in the last fiscal, the year 2021 saw us streamlining operations in India, expanding to more than 50 countries, setting up an office in Abu Dhabi, and building cross-country teams in the US, the UK, and other international territories to drive global expansion.

Cuemath announced important steps to advance the company into its next phase of growth, including expanding its leadership team and reorganizing the current leadership structure. Focusing on reinventing the traditional way of teaching math, these key leadership appointments are critical to helping drive the company’s international expansion, along with our aim to double the number of students on our platform in 2022.

Besides additions to the senior management, Cuemath also witnessed good traction in the last 15 months of the pandemic as millions of K-12 students started learning online. In 2021 alone, we have delivered four million hours of live maths classes — that is, four million out of a total of 10 million hours since Cuemath pivoted to online learning in 2017 (from a primarily offline home-based tutoring model earlier).

Our plan for 2022 is to continue the journey of expansion- expecting to cross the 100-country milestone in 2022. Our area of focus going forward will be to provide conceptual clarity on the subject as well as help students with preparing for international competitions, test preparations, etc.

What are your growth priorities for 2022?

One of the top priorities of the company in 2022 is continuing the journey of our global expansion. We also want to continue our focus on making the product more consolidated, personalised, engaging, and useful. We should continue our global expansion and hit 100 countries by the end of this year.

Considering the vast market potential, Cuemath aspires to become a global maths leader in the multi-billion dollar global maths market.

Funding

To date, Cuemath has raised a total of $64.5 million in funding over five rounds from investors like Light rock, Alpha Wave Incubation, Sequoia CapitalIndia, CapitalG (formerly Google Capital), and Manta Ray among others. The company’s latest Series C round was raised at a valuation of $200 million in December 2020 and the company expects to touch a $1 billion (Unicorn) valuation soon.

The last Series C funding, which was $40 million has not only helped the company with product development but also ensured that they captured more markets. Cuemath officially launched in the United States, the United Kingdom, the UAE, Oman, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar (to name a few) in 2021, and reached more than 50 countries by the end of last year.