Former Gojek COO attempts to crack Indonesia’s education problem

Rohan Monga, the new CEO of Zenius, is aggressively pursuing growth after the Jakarta-based education technology startup secured US$20 million in fresh capital from investors including Northstar Group earlier this year.

For starters, Zenius is making its educational videos available to Indonesian students for free, as the 15-year old company tries to slug it out with the dominant player, Ruangguru.

The rivals are competing in a market of 45 million students, 3 million teachers, and 220,000 public and private schools. Zenius claims it has 11.8 million registered users compared with Ruangguru’s 15 million and London-based Quipper’s 6 million. The companies, however, didn’t reveal their monthly active users.

Rohan Monga, CEO of Zenius / Photo credit: Tech in Asia

The most recent results from the Programme for International Student Assessment, which measures reading, math, and science skills – shows that Indonesian students are among the lowest scorers globally.

“When we saw the report, we realized that there’s a lot of work to be done,” says Monga, who was previously chief operating officer at Gojek. “However, with the focus of the current administration on human capital development, we want to support that and make sure Indonesian education undergoes a major change.”

A report from impact investor Omidyar Network found that internet infrastructure and smartphone penetration in Indonesia have given edtech startups access to more users than ever before, including remote populations. The country’s consumer spending on mobile learning applications is forecast to reach US$7.7 billion in 2019, the third highest in the world behind China and India.

In December 2019, Zenius started to offer 80,000 videos on its platform for free to attract more students, explains company founder and ex-CEO Sabda PS.

Addicted to learning

More users also mean that Zenius will get more user engagement data that can be analyzed – the most important metric for Monga. For example, if a student skips the video, it means that the material is boring. If a student rewinds the video, it means the content is hard to understand.

Monga wants to optimize these elements. “We have to be self-critical; we have to keep improving,” says Monga.

Zenius CEO Rohan Monga (left) and chief education officer Sabda PS / Photo credit: Zenius

Ruangguru, which has more than 4,000 employees in its payroll, invested a lot in marketing campaigns and offline salespeople. It was fueled by a US$150 million series C round that it raised from General Atlantic and GGV Capital late last year.

With less funding, Zenius prefers a more measured approach to offline sales while continuing to do online marketing. “With a free platform, do we need [a lot of] salespeople?” Monga says.

Digital piracy

Gojek influence