Suma EP: Welcome to the K12 Tech Insights podcast. This is a show where me Suma EP from Niswey and
Adarsh Noronha: Adarsh from HubSpot.
Suma EP: We get together to talk to K-12 leaders in India. And we get to talk about what they're doing in their schools to get the enrollment edge. And today, our special guest is Abhishek Mishra, who's the head of admissions at Vidyashilp Education Group.
Abhishek has spent his career helping schools tell their stories and connect with families in meaningful ways. His journey is deeply rooted in education. Growing up across Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Bihar and Jharkhand, he completed every major academic milestone in a different state. Class 10 in Madhya Pradesh, class 12 in Jharkhand, graduation from Uttar Pradesh and MBA from Maharashtra before beginning his professional journey in Rajasthan. Curious about human behavior and psychology, Abhishek started his career in banking and financial services. But in 2011, he diverted to education, a space that felt natural, coming from an all-teachers family. After working in higher education for a few years, he moved to the K-12 sector where he has spent over a decade contributing extensively to admissions, marketing, operations, expansion and revenue management for major players. His career also spans real estate, having worked with a diversified group with interests in Sri Lanka and Mumbai. Today, as the admissions lead at Vidyashilp Education Group, Abhishek combines his varied experiences to craft strategies that empower families with meaningful educational choices and help schools achieve their fullest potential. Welcome, Abhishek.
Abhishek Mishra: Thank you so much, Suma, for inviting me for the podcast. Thanks so much, Adarsh, for having me here. It's such a pleasure meeting both of you and talking about the journey that I have had in the K12 space and in general, along the 17, 18 years of my career that I spent understanding the human psychology, the sales behavior, the buying behavior, so on and so forth. Very happy to be here.
Adarsh Noronha: Awesome Abhishek. While me and Suma know you well for our audience, could you probably give an intro about what you do at Vidyashilp and what does Vidyashilp do actually?
Abhishek Mishra: Absolutely, Adarsh. I currently head the admissions at Vidyashilp Education Group. Vidyashilp Education Group is a diversified education entity which has Vidyashilp University, Vidyashilp Academy, Vidyashilp schools, Vidyasagar preschools, and Vidyanivas P.U. College. So all these entities have been shaping the lives of students across various entities and various courses that they offer. For the past 40 years, Vidyashilp Education Group has been nurturing students and making them ready for the 21st century. world but at the same point of time what we believed when we started is that it's not that we are making test takers, we are preparing the kids who are curious, who are confident but at the same point of time they are compassionate. So these are the three C's which form the very core of our values at the heart of VSEG.
Adarsh Noronha: That is amazing. How long have you been associated with Vidyashilp now?
Abhishek Mishra: It's been a, I would say, short journey at this point of time. I joined the group in January, but at the same point of time, I would say that it feels that it's been ages that I have been working here because of the values and the ethos that the group brings, it feels so connected and it feels so assured that you are at the...
place with the right set of people giving the correct direction to the entire group.
Adarsh Noronha: And I think even Vidya shilp is really benefiting from the vast experience that you gathered. Tell us more about your background and where you studied. And Suma did introduce us to a brief introduction about how you've navigated your education phases. Just for the audience's awareness, can you take us through that journey? Very curious to hear.
Abhishek Mishra: Absolutely.
Suma EP: I do also want to hear the all teachers part, the teachers bit that has come into your background.
Adarsh Noronha: Awesome.
Abhishek Mishra: On a lighter note, I always said or what I always shared with my friends is that it was a kind of a 14-year Van Vas because I studied in the same school where my parents taught for 14 years right from the KG till grade 12. And so I was always directly under the radar of my parents as well as the teachers who I was, you know.
teaching me in school. But I think it's a fabulous journey. come from an all teachers family. My parents were teachers. Everyone on my maternal side and the paternal side were involved in the education. My elder brother is a teacher. My elder sister is also a teacher. Somehow I was always passionate about teaching, but you know.
I would say fate, destiny had something else written. Eventually I pivoted to the same domain. I started, I would say, my education in Madhya Pradesh where as a small kid growing in a population where everyone knew everyone, it was a small township. And Surroundings gave us so much freedom to explore. You know while we were growing up while we played while we interacted with you know the elders I think that is where learning became very very close to my heart. you know even today I try and See people and try to observe people and learn anything that I could learn from No, irrespective of whether it is education or whether they are making a dish or whether they are doing something extraordinary while they are giving a presentation or just talking. So that's what the journey has been. Because my parents were in a transferable job, I kept moving.
Adarsh Noronha: Thank
Abhishek Mishra: one location to the other. That's why my journey till grade 10th was in MP, but then eventually I moved to Bihar. And then in front of me, in front of everyone's eyes basically Jharkhand as a state was formed. While yesterday I was in Bihar, today I was a part of Jharkhand and that's how I basically say that I was in Bihar, but then I passed out my grade 12th from Jharkhand.
Adarsh Noronha: Yeah.
Abhishek Mishra: Banaras Hindu University is something that was in the family, in the genes, and that became a natural choice. I basically moved there. In between, I also wrote my National Defense Academy exams and was not recommended eventually. I came to four SSB, Bangalore, Caban Road, and that's how, you know. Bangalore has close to me and as they say, life takes a full circle. Today I'm in Bangalore recording this podcast my life's journey and how I have grown. Post my graduation, I moved to Pune to complete my MBA and then my first job landed me in. Jaipur and that's where the corporate journey started. Banking financial services was something that taught me about the human psyche, the buying behaviour, why would people trust you, especially with their money, hard earned money and then how do you basically earn somebody's trust as well as respect while making sure that their money grows as per their expectation. So that was something that made me realize that trust is the ultimate factor that would eventually make every career or every milestone in your life is very very important and I have made it a point that even today I make sure that if I commit something I try to live up to the expectations of the people.
Adarsh Noronha: Amazing, you are giving us life lessons Abhishek to be honest. I can pick up a couple of points which will be useful for all of us. The least amount of resistance to change, I think you got to experience that when you mentioned all those sudden changes in your life but you kept on moving. I think that's a great lesson. I think even before that you touched upon being curious and learning from everything. So everybody is a student for life. And that is, I think it's amazing to pick up. Suma your thoughts?
Abhishek Mishra: Absolutely.
Suma EP: Yeah, I think especially when they are, you know, when you are a leader in the K-12 space, I think everybody requires you to be a learner. It is changing rapidly. Students are being faced with all sorts of challenges right now, which we didn't have when we were growing up. They have it tougher. If you and the entire teaching community in your education group doesn't, you know. They have to keep learning and learn at a really fast rate right now. And that's kind of a non-negotiable now. Earlier it used to be you're a learner for life, but now, you know, there is no other choice but to do that. So what are the changes you're seeing in the K-12 space, industry-wise, tech-wise? What are the changes you're seeing?
Abhishek Mishra: I think that's a very obvious question, valid question because we see that a lot has changed over decades and over the last five years post COVID, how transformational education has become in terms of the use of technology, in terms of use of all the gadgets and the gizmos and more importantly it has become personalized the way the expectation of the parents has changed. Now if I talk about from an industry perspective, I would say that the parents today have or rather I would say that the schools today have become sent from a center of academic delivery to a center of experimentation or rather know parents want to experience more and The schools today have become centers of experience. What the parents today are looking for is a place which obviously needs to have academic rigor, but at the same point of time, is it shaping their kids in the right direction, giving them the correct values and the ethos, and also preparing them for the you know VUCA world, the 21st century world where things are basically not very clear. One day the world is here and the next day the world...
completely changes. We saw how COVID basically pushed schools to the limit that within a night they had to basically move from a non-tech background to a complete tech background where classes were online, data was utilized and shared and analyzed and given to the parents so they could understand what is it that the kids are learning. But at the same point of time,
there was connect that was mutual that was you know the parents supported, kids supported and the school fraternity supported all of it happened you know together which also means that the difficult times will while they it will push you it will also make sure that it pushes you in the right direction and people actually take the correct steps. Had it not been for COVID I don't think so much of involvement of tech in the education space would be seen anywhere in the near future. It probably would have taken a decade or so, but I think it moved so rapidly that people were bound to take that step. And education comes as a necessity. It is not something that you can avoid. A parent can avoid. I'm a parent. I'm sure you people are parents. it's not something that can be avoided. It would have happened with you also that during the COVID, probably kids were in front of a laptop or a computer.
Adarsh Noronha: Thank
Abhishek Mishra: So that's how it has changed from a business, from an industry perspective. From a parent's perspective, they have become more selective. They do more research than we probably expect them to do. And they're more prepared than the schools expected them to. They are prepared yesterday actually, they would get prepared tomorrow. But that's not the case. Today's parents are...
Whether they are in their late 20s, early 30s or mid 40s, I think they are doing more of research when they are exploring any educational entity. are checking if there is a value proposition that is correct and the ethos are matching. personal ethos, it could be the other aspects of life that match and that is what I think the parents are currently doing. Earlier it was more of academic rigor, the results is my child participating in some co-curricular activity or not but it is more than that today.
Adarsh Noronha: That's amazing. I think those were the days when not just education industry, but literally every industry in India transformed to become a tech first vertical law industry. the new normal was everybody had to adopt and lean onto the tech side. We at hubspot also, we found our customers really going digital fast. And what that did was suddenly addressable markets changed for everybody. It was for some, it was more geo-based, locally prominent, but suddenly the world became a marketplace because now with tech and digital automation, your reach increased and people who you thought first in the before COVID whom you thought they were not your personas or not your potential customers, suddenly they started to discover you and everybody had this
Abhishek Mishra: Okay.
Adarsh Noronha: global outlook to their business and the world became a smaller place, isn't it?
Abhishek Mishra: If you look at the number of, you know, we're doing a podcast and if you look at the number of podcast channels that started post COVID, the YouTube channels that started post COVID and during the COVID, those are, I think the numbers that amaze you and that tell you that technology can...
psyche human behavior and the way we generally operate I would say.
Adarsh Noronha: Yeah, and you really touched upon a nice thing here because content became so much. Somebody told me that in the last two years, we have consumed content as a mankind, which we haven't for the rest of the years before that. So the enormity of content sometimes drives you to be more evaluating it with a finer lens. We bring in lot of tools.
AI is here. The ability to pick up insights from structured and unstructured data is here. There are so much of innovations that are happening. How does that translate to, let's say, admissions in K-12? Like, now we spoke about you having the play across the globe. So many people being engaged, they're consuming your content. You don't know who's reading about you.
as close as you want them to be known. How do you see the trends in admissions in K-12 given these circumstances?
Abhishek Mishra: I would touch base couple of points on this. One obviously would be from a visibility factor, from a marketing angle.
2013-14 is where digital marketing started to have greater acceptance across educational entities so to say and that is where you know the adoption rate was very high but what I believe was that even before COVID hit people still in the educational space believed that we need to do all kinds of outdoor visibility as well all kinds of you know events and all kinds of you know reach out and you know activities were more in use. I have personally observed that post-COVID what has happened is yes technology has taken a giant leap, digital marketing has gone to the next step, use of AI in digital marketing is also getting introduced and being used widely now but I personally believe that marketing from the traditional methodology has moved to a very very unique methodology where I am not actually relying on any kind of outdoor...
Visibility the dependence on those are still there but it has reduced far more compared to all the digital means because like you said I today sitting at Bangalore I don't know if my content is getting consumed in some part of US or in some part of J &K or down south so and that is you know
Adarsh Noronha: Anyway,
Abhishek Mishra: It is actually perplexing to see that all of a sudden you have somebody walking to one of your schools and it is a real story that one of my principals actually shared with me yesterday. Is that one lady from Jharkhand who is herself a principal in an international school there, runs a school. Her husband is a hotelier and filthy rich people. She moved to Bangalore.
just to get her son educated, a five year old son educated at one of her preschools. And when we tried to understand why is it that it happened, she said, I browse the website, I browse all your social media channels and the posts and the kind of activities, the kind of involvement, the kind of parent testimonials, the kind of things people have said about you is something that pushed me that, no, I think for my child, this is the best school. Now as a mother I salute her but at the same time I feel that had it not been for technology, had it not been for the content on the social media, this particular parent would not have taken that kind of step. It would have been far from reality for anybody to even believe that, that a lady would move the entire base from Jharkhand to Bangalore just to get her son educated.
Suma EP: Yeah, now the question really would be how did she first come across Vidyashilp because that's where all the action has shifted and all the, you know, brains are working on, okay, now, because did she find you on chat GPT? Did she find you on perplexity? Did she find you on Google? Where did she find you?
Abhishek Mishra: Interestingly,
Interestingly, we, you know, when we asked the lady as to how she found out about the school, she said, I had given my 11 year old son the job to find out a good school in Bangalore. And he did research using all the chat GPTs and the perplexities and the Googles of the world. And that is how we found the school and that is when he showed it to her mother saying his mother saying mom here is a school which I feel is a potential match and that's how this so 11 year old doing that so I think technology it's not only taken the entire generation by surprise I think it has now even become the life
Adarsh Noronha: you
Suma EP: That's mind-blowing. Eleven-year-olds are doing that now.
Abhishek Mishra: and a normal routine for every single person. So if I have to search for a good school, I think I would also see what my computer schools are doing maybe on a chat GPT or a perplexity because that would probably give me the best of the insights better than a Google or better than any other search engine. So yeah, that is how it is changing very, very rapidly.
Suma EP: So how do you think, what do you think school has to get it right so that their admissions and all are in place? How do you get this right? What are the best practices that you think schools should have?
Abhishek Mishra: I personally believe that you know in the K12 school what is very, very important is to have three C's one is clarity, the other is consistency and the third is connection. Now if I do not have these three C's it's difficult for me to operate. Why do I see why I say clarity? Clarity in terms of what we want to communicate to the parents has to be clear and that is a very important process where right from the top management to the entire important stakeholders decide what is it that the parents need to hear from us and what is it that they want to hear from us and that is possible when there is a very important two-way communication between the school as an entity and parents as a very strong important stakeholder. If that is not there, you will not have clarity.
of thought. So clarity of thought in terms of what has to be communicated and how it has to be communicated is very important that comes through this mutual interaction and a close connection. The second is basically the clarity part of it, the consistency part of it. The consistency means at each of the touch points
The way I communicate has to be the same. So which means the way my website looks should be more or less the same. Give the same kind of experience how my people in the school are picking up the phone and the phone is getting answered. How a parent is being responded to with a ball. How is an email attended to. So all of these touch points at various stages whether the child is yet to join the school and the parent is still exploring or the child is still studying.
or they have spent let's say five years in the school. Irrespective of all these stages, it's very very important that the messaging, the communication has the right kind of consistency. And then the connection part of it is very important. Connection in all ways, which means today's parent, you know, if I talk from an admissions perspective, if you're not responding and if you're not fast enough, by the time you reach out to them, they probably would have landed up.
school. They have already done the school visit and they are on their way to take the first step towards admission in any other school. So the speed is very very important but at the same point of time when I say connection it is also to do with tech, it's also to do with how we basically respond to the parent and how there is a heart-to-heart connection. While all these technology and gadgets and gizmos will always be in place, it will always be important to have that heart-to-heart connection with our parents and that's
is why it is very important that these three C's are taken care of. A very very important part of it.
Adarsh Noronha: That's an amazing framework you've given. I don't think anybody in K12 has put together a simple structure like how you have done because if you pick up any of these three Cs, the amount of work you need to do under each one of it is enormous. But to have that clarity of thought the way you've given is awesome. I think Abhishek is the highlight of this podcast. If somebody had to take home anything, it is the framework you've just given.
Abhishek Mishra: enormous.
Adarsh Noronha: Now, to build on this, and we, Suma also mentioned how adoption of good tech will help you in the three Cs that you mentioned. One of them is obviously a platform to reach out to the parents or communicate the content so that you know who's reading, you know who's talking about you, you know who comes. And when they come on board to talk to you, how you gather data and store data and...
Typically a CRM tool is something that is at the center of all of this and it's the heart, the beating heart of your tech ecosystem. Now, what would be your advice? Because you've been through this journey, so I want to know more about your personal journey with the CRM tools, how you select, but also your advice to others on some might be using a tool. If they have to switch over, what should they do? If they have to find more value in what they're getting.
what should they do? If you could elaborate more on that, it would be amazing for the audience.
Abhishek Mishra: Sure Adarsh, I think what has happened over the years is that we moved from the Excel age, spreadsheet age to CRMs that were basically very very simple to use. But over the years when the complexities of how we basically do marketing and sales together We required a more sophisticated platform because we wanted data to be analyzed. We wanted how many leads are coming, what is the cost per lead and how is it that a particular campaign is running and which campaigns, for example, out of the two are giving more number of leads, but which one is with a better ROI. When all of these came into picture, it became really important that better CRMs actually came into the marketplace.
My experience with CRM started way back in, you know, at the entry of my career when I started using Finical, which was basically a banking software. But those were banking softwares and it did not give me any particular insight in terms of, you know, how am I actually doing as an individual contributor or resource. But The age of CRM actually got introduced to around 12 years back when I entered actually in the CRM, in the education space where it actually felt that, you know, I was all along the way humming a song, but it was not coming to my mind as to what song I wanted to actually play because...
Coming from a spreadsheet age, getting introduced to a CRM which was easy to use, which was easy to navigate. It was helping me solve my basic problems, giving me insights, but at the same point of time also making me, you know.
work more efficiently, schedule calls, schedule meetings, all of it basically made life better. I started realizing that I was probably using a butter knife and all of sudden somebody gave me a swiss knife. I could navigate and do it much better. And that's how I would give an analogy actually.
So a correct CRM for any admissions team, whether it is in a pre K-12 or a K-12 space or even in the higher education domain would be the one which is basically solving their problem.
on a daily basis rather than creating more problems. I have seen CRMs which basically get introduced to educational entities and the resources that are using it either they are not trained properly or they don't know the features which are there available and worst of it basically it still allows them to work on the excel. So my red flag
Adarsh Noronha: Correct.
Abhishek Mishra: to any educational entity is that if your current team has switched to Excel sheets again, it's the time that you have to basically change the CRM. You better evaluate because then it is not helping you win leads, it is not helping you service your clients properly.
Adarsh Noronha: Yeah.
And that's great feedback. I think it's not just a feedback to K12, but also a lot of CRM vendors out there in the market. We at Hubspot also have been very consciously aware of the pulse of the market and the future. So what we do is we are leaping ahead with smart CRM. Basically now with AI coming in and content being so fragmented and unstructured also, you need a tool which becomes your best friend.
be it for revenue generation, cost optimization, operation efficiencies. This is a tool that will work in all directions for you positively. And you've got to keep it simpler. Like you said, what's the point of having a sophisticated tool if you don't use it? So you've got to keep the UI easy, make the users feel it's their strength rather than a cumbersome activity. And then the insights that it drives should lead into magnifying your abilities to reach people, convince people to come on board, join your family. So amazing. We are living in very exciting times when it comes to innovation and tech adoption, isn't it?
Abhishek Mishra: Absolutely,
Suma EP: Abhishek, I wanted to ask if you were a standalone school and if you were a network of schools, would you look at CRM adoption differently? Are there some things to think about when you do that?
Abhishek Mishra: I think it's a very very valid question because if I am a standalone school I will have a different set of requirements whereas if I have expanded and I have grown into an entity which has let's say 30, 40, 100 schools I will have a completely different requirement. The requirements obviously would be from how I design my processes for admission and marketing and the kind basically use on a daily basis and also the financial aspect of it. So I personally believe that a standalone school which has limited requirements and has a very very standard set process which is not dynamic, which is a plain vanilla simple process for the parents to come and fill an online inquiry form and the lead gets generated.
For such schools, I think what is important is that they choose or introduce a CRM if the team is currently not on the CRM, which can basically understand how the process is designed, what kind of data is actually utilized by the team, and the data consumption that is done on a daily basis. And then how is it that it can basically marry the marketing side of it so that the leads can flow into it and the,
I would say the sales team, the admissions team, and the counseling team are able to utilize it on a daily basis. Some kind of basic reports that could come out of it is something that would be appreciated because right from the management's perspective to, you know, person using at the very start of it, very front of it, you know, would be able to understand what is it that they are doing right, what is it that they could do better. And at the end of the year when they are evaluating, they know the ROI, they know how much of it.
has actually gone down the drain and how much of it can be saved next year. So that's a critical decision to be made. So budget optimization is something that can be done for the next year. I personally believe that CRMs play a vital role in terms of planning for the future as well, because after my admission season is over, what do I do? I basically sit at the data and see where is it that I could have done better? Where is it that I could have saved a few pennies and maybe utilized it in some other
Adarsh Noronha: right.
Abhishek Mishra: channel as well which could have potentially generated more leads for me. So I think that is what would be critical for a standalone or a school which has let's say three or four schools. But as and when you grow the processes become more complex, the requirements become more complex. If you're a chain of schools you will have a completely different process. While you would want to make it easy for the parents and for your team, you would also want to introduce a lot more steps that are more important.
for you as an educational entity as a stakeholder in the business where you can get the real-time data.
Abhishek Mishra: And
That's where I think you were mentioning that you have introduced smart CRMs. I think a smart CRM is what would be needed for a large group of schools, which can help people make decisions on the go and not basically post-mortem after the admission season has gotten over. So by that time, you would have also lost not only the revenue, but the precious parents who could probably have been a part of the fraternity.
Adarsh Noronha: Thanks
Abhishek Mishra: So that's what I would say is important from a size perspective.
Adarsh Noronha: Representing a tech group within an education institution as big as yours, I am sure while its the driving force and its at the tip of the spear for the growth perspective, like you rightly said, budget optimization and planning for the future are key elements. The ownership of that falls on somebody like you who is literally heading that division. What are the things that you feel as red flags when you take all of these learnings in the middle of those non-peak periods when you are looking at postmortems or planning or correcting your mistakes and looking for future opportunities. So from looking back to looking at the future the entire life cycle of that. When you make a proposal what are the things that you face as red flags when you try to convince somebody who is making the decisions for you.
Abhishek Mishra: making a decision in terms of
Adarsh Noronha: giving you a go ahead with budgets, giving you a go ahead with market reach, giving you a go ahead to having innovative products, doing big changes.
Abhishek Mishra: I think the red flags at times are very very obvious, but we kind of try to ignore them. When we are looking at a CRM, you know, or any technology tool that is going to support, what is critical is that We don't only look at what benefits it is giving me, but at the same point of time, what it is that it is actually trying to solve is very important. Because what it is trying to solve today might not be my problem tomorrow. And what is very, very, important is that at my level, I try to evaluate if this tool is going to solve my problem five years down the line.
can it solve and because the problems might not come and tell me that I am coming, it's important that the CRM is actually scalable and CRM also has the inbuilt system to adapt to the new changes and that there are enough and more customizations that could be done with the changing requirements of the business. When I see that a system is not able to do that,
is a very important red flag for me and I potentially would not be able to take that ahead. So my entire decision in terms of going ahead with any of the CRM platforms or any of the technology tools is that yes it is going to solve a certain set of problems today but how can it basically solve my problems in the future and is it basically scalable? Very very important.
Adarsh Noronha: Cool.
Suma EP: And how does the organization get ready for this? What do they need to do to get ready for this adoption?
Abhishek Mishra: I think tech adoption has never been easy, it has always been challenging because the resistance to change is always there and I think it is more than the change itself, the resistance is a bigger problem. People do not realize that change is always for good, you know.
of the times the change happens it actually brings out the best from the organizations, from the people, from the nations but what's critical is that the resistance is a bigger factor. So first things first I think whenever such decisions are made it's also important that the key stakeholders which are basically the end users who are going to use it are also taken into account in terms of the decision-making process. Unless the buy-in has happened it just feels like somebody is putting something down your throat and you're not ready for it absolutely. So one important aspect is that there has to be a buy-in from the important stakeholders which are the end users. The second important aspect is that yes it will there is a process called exchange management and that also obviously starts from the top but at the same part of time it has to be driven both ways it has to start from the top but at the same part of time somebody has to be there who initiates that change right from the bottom as well and I think people like us you know basically do that because we are the intermediaries between the people who are right in the front of the technology using it first hand and also the people who are giving a go ahead in terms of change management. So it becomes very very important that the message and the communication seeps through properly. That is another critical aspect and I think it's also important that
Adarsh Noronha: Yeah.
Abhishek Mishra: people are given that confidence and the confidence comes with one, not from one time training. The training has to be an ongoing process. That's very, very important because you cannot train somebody once and expect that they would know all the features of a particular tool completely and it's and in its entirety.
Adarsh Noronha: Okay.
Correct.
Yeah.
Abhishek Mishra: So
while the change management would be driven from the top, there has to be somebody leading it from the bottom. Change has to be accepted. And the third is obviously there has to be greater amount of training that is very, very critical.
Adarsh Noronha: goes back to what you started the podcast with, being a student at all times of our lives. How crucial is your team for you at Vidyashilp at this moment? I don't know how many people are in your team, but how does that help you, that team and the dynamics of the team help you in your quest to be at the forefront of tech and digital adoption?
Abhishek Mishra: Adarsh, I think team is everything. That's very very important because end of the day it's not one person can you know that can drive the change. If it is tech adoption or if it is larger goals that we want to achieve it is all because of the people that work with you and the people who work around you. So it's not only the people that I lead but the people who lead me you know because the vision has to be trickled down and then we take it down to the people at the front and make them realize that this is a part of the larger goal that we want to achieve and their contribution is very very important. So I feel that
The team currently that I drive is somebody which was earlier not ready to accept change, eventually understood that they would be left out because the technology is changing faster than the adoption rate. By the time a technology comes in and it is 100 % adopted, it becomes kind of outdated. A newer version of a better product has already come in the market and more people and enough people are actually going and
Adarsh Noronha: Mm.
Abhishek Mishra: vouching for that particular technology. So I think what the team has realized is that this change is actually good for them and that acceptance has actually given me a lot of confidence that
Adarsh Noronha: right
Abhishek Mishra: within the organization, we can actually try and become an AI first organization as well. That is what my dream for the group is that we become an AI first organization where technology can take care of the repetitive tasks, the technology can take care of all the monotonous things and it becomes an assistant which does not get tired, which doesn't ask for any kind of breaks, but still does all the hard you know work that is actually loaded you know that is required and very very important is that I would want my team to actually adopt technology but at the same point of time do what they are supposed to do which is basically have a heart-to-heart you know connection the conversation the connect part of it is what I mentioned the connection part of it while technology does the hard hard work people do what they're supposed to do which is talking to the people and connecting with people
Adarsh Noronha: That is awesome.
Be sure That is awesome and what a beautiful segue you given us to probe more into the AI adoption, isn't it Suma? No podcast these days go without we dwelling deeper into AI. But to be honest, four, five months ago, people were asking will AI take away our jobs? Now people are aware that AI will take away the boring part of your jobs. It will take away jobs. If you doing 100 % of your job is boring, it will take away your job.
Suma EP: Yes.
Abhishek Mishra: Absolutely.
Adarsh Noronha: the redundants, there are some times in your career you sitting and doing something and the bigger philosophical question of what am I doing, who am I comes in because you tired of doing the same thing again and again. I think AI has come to solve that philosophical question in our lives and it will take away those things, I feel so. What are your thoughts?
Suma EP: Yeah.
Abhishek Mishra: Thank
I think it's a very valid point you raised, Adarsh, that we are in that age where technology adoption is happening at a very fast rate. And now that AI has come, it has changed lives of the people and how we basically operate it. But what's critical is to understand that while in the business that we are, we are in the K-12 space,
We are here to nurture the students, bring the best out of them, prepare them for the next century, make sure that they are compassionate, they are confident, and they have all the creativity of the world. While technology will help them learn better.
give it more personalized touch as far as the learnings are concerned and give them more data driven results and assessments which the parents could actually use it at their place. The human side of it will never cease to exist. More people basically feel that it is important to get the technology. But at the same point of time, there's a fear that the human touch would be lost. I personally feel that getting introduced to AI in 2011 when I got introduced to an organization which was working in the computer adaptive tests and machine learning. I have seen it in the 15 years as to how AI has actually got.
Adarsh Noronha: Mm.
Abhishek Mishra: to the current space that it is at this point of time. And just to share with you that the organization that I was working with used AI and the machine learning to design a computer adaptive test, the IRT theory that we call, all of it was in place, but the organization was not using any CRM. We were still working on Excel to maintain our databases as to what different institutions and the corporates were actually telling us and sharing us. So from that place to a place where I think each and every organization is utilizing
Adarsh Noronha: Mm-hmm
Abhishek Mishra: AI and the adoption rate is increasing. I believe that that will continue to happen but at the same point of time the human touch, the human connect that is there, that is not something that's going to change. Especially in the space that we operate, that's the place which will continue to be there and the human side of it will not change. The teachers are going to teach, no technology would replace the teachers because while it can aid it cannot replace the teachers there would be assessments that would happen it can be AI driven assessments the report cards you know would be seamless the feedbacks would be you know I would say right in the right at that moment is when it would be be given but at the same point of time the connect the constant touch that is there in the education space would not go, would not go basically.
Suma EP: I have a comment on this. Yesterday, I was reading some report by, alongside mental health. What they do is they have AI chats, which talk to, which allow school students to actually have conversations, you know, bring up issues that they normally would not bring up with their therapists or maybe their parents or teachers. And the top two topics that came up in that list was, one was that they felt that they were unable to balance. Their school with all the other extracurricular activities that they were doing so they were feeling overwhelmed because of that which is quite similar to all of us okay how we are balancing our lives is
They are facing it much earlier. And the second one was that sleeplessness. And I think, again, something that adults are facing. They are only surviving on four or five hours of sleep. And poor teenagers are also facing that. So AI being able to bring out that information to us is so valuable to schools and to parents to realize that we need to change something here. So that was a very interesting report that I found and found it very, very interesting.
Abhishek Mishra: Absolutely.
Suma EP: I have a question for you, Adarsh. So he's talking about AI and how the CRMs are working. in recent times, HubSpot has launched integrations with ChatGPT and Claude also recently. How is that working out? What's that like?
Adarsh Noronha: Yeah. It's an amazing opportunity for all of HubSpot's ecosystem and users, right? Suddenly, you don't have to really be overwhelmed with what should I do with all this AI being thrown at me and where and how's that has been solved. So what we are trying to do is keep it very simple for our users. So there in HubSpot. They can do everything that's allowed within the AI world through HubSpot itself. So your ability to or probably the limitation sometimes you feel and the over whelmness right that's taken away. Now you can drive a deep research in HubSpot you can, can help you to come out with the best of the proposals you would have probably written all staying within HubSpot place.
Suma EP: Hmm.
Adarsh Noronha: an instance. So I think it's early days though but we are so thrilled with what is happening and I think in inbound in the next month we will see a lot of announcements which will propel our smart CRM to something at another level altogether. I'm so excited for our customers, our potential customers, our partners, we as employees.
We're thrilled by the leap that we are doing in AI. And I think it was a choice. It was a choice for us to either be left behind as a big elephant, or continue to be agile and that startup culture that Hubspot has, and leap ahead on the innovation and the rapidness of innovation that's coming our way. It's a revolution.
Suma EP: Thank
Adarsh Noronha: Nobody is now denying its probably the biggest revolution in our lifetimes. We felt, I think three of us have lived through these big revolutions starting from internet. We have lived non internet days also. Of course, we enjoyed it. yeah, and then we lived through, yeah, exactly the mobile revolution, right? And now,
Suma EP: correct
Abhishek Mishra: agree.
Suma EP: We saw it. The phone, the smartphone.
Abhishek Mishra: We saw it
Adarsh Noronha: This one, I think this is the biggest of all and it will change the way we live our lives. The efficiency levels are different. It's democratized. So everybody has an access to it. Smallest of the small companies can now build products that can probably make them billionaires in no time. So it's an amazing world that we are going to.
Suma EP: Yeah.
Adarsh Noronha: see in the front and I think it will help everybody across industries, societies, especially the needy ones. I think it will bring in people closer, it will bring in philanthropies and the people who need certain things and didn't have access will now have the access to what will solve their core issues and problems they facing. So I am excited for the society.
Suma EP: Okay.
Abhishek Mishra: AGREED
Adarsh Noronha: It comes with its like good old days we could sleep eight hours as students. What Suma just said its now becoming a norm that our kids are pressurized. They are seeing adult life right now in their childhood but it is what it is.
Suma EP: Thank But yeah, schools have the actual, now the differentiators will be built on these challenges, right, more than anything else. So yeah.
Abhishek Mishra: I completely I agree. I think schools, the faster they adopt the changes and especially the AI adoption part of it. I believe it would revolutionize the way the entire education industry across the globe is operating currently. When COVID hit, the pandemic hit, people realized that you know probably they would do away with the teachers because technology it's all online and you know all digital resources you know no copy pen assessments it is all online assessments probably teachers would go but did it happen it did not because
Adarsh Noronha: Yeah.
Abhishek Mishra: It happened for good, it happened for a purpose and I still believe the goodness of the technology rather than focusing on what bad it can bring. I'm sure there are enough and more people trying to find out what bad it can do and I think for people like us who are end of the day consumers of technology, we just focus on the goodness of it and adapt and adopt the best side of the product that comes.
Adarsh Noronha: Thanks.
Suma EP: Excellent. That's a lovely thought. So what are you looking forward to now? Abhishek, what are you most excited about and what keeps you awake at night? What keeps you anxious?
Abhishek Mishra: I think Suma, I'm very excited about the way Education as an industry has changed. You know, that was obviously the question that we started with, but I feel the way education has changed over the years and also the way technology is supporting, you know, in getting it elevated to the next level. That's very, very important. I believe technology adoption in the education space will propel it to the next level altogether. It would now become more accessible to people.
while we understood and we have seen that with the advent of EdTech companies it became more accessible both from you know if I live in a remote place and also if I cannot afford so much of a pricey product, it worked out well for them. But I feel that there was still a larger piece of the audience that was left out. And I think this revolution, which is the AI revolution, is something that would basically make it even more accessible for people. So that's very, very critical. I think the other day I was reading that Perplexity's annual plan has basically become more or less free for everyone who is using a certain plan. If that can happen, I was just imagining if people could actually use it for a better purpose. If people in the educational space can actually make use of, I would say, platforms like Perplexity for a better purpose. That's something that is the real adoption. And I think what makes me nervous is the rate at which technology is coming is getting adopted but at the pace at which new technologies are getting introduced and I would specifically talk from an educational entity perspective because anyway the adoption rate in the educational space was not very high always most of the people had already taken or were already using digital marketing right from 2000 10, 11 onwards but educational space started using it much later. Same was the case with the platforms that were used for digital and flipped classroom learning. The same is the case with AI as well but I am thinking about what else would come in terms of AI. We never knew AI would be something that would come and revolutionize the world in such a big way. would basically topple everything and make sure that human race was left thinking about how we could compete with the technology to start becoming better. My worry is that the technology should not out pace the human race and it should not so happen that people start losing out the very basics of the human foundation which is basically the care, the...
Adarsh Noronha: Mm-hmm.
Abhishek Mishra: the love part of it, the tenderness part of it, and the empathy part of it because that is the core foundation. So technology should be adopted and people should be ready for it but at the same part of time these are the things which are non-negotiable.
Suma EP: empathy.
Adarsh Noronha: What a beautiful final thought there Abhishek and I think the audience would love this podcast by a couple of things that you've left us to ponder. One was a brilliant framework you gave for the K-12 fellow colleagues and peers of you. The second part is the philosophical side of life that you're leaving, Azbith. I think adoption of technology is no longer an option.
Suma EP: Totally.
Adarsh Noronha: going forward and to do so in order to improve ourselves, our organizations, to drive revenue, to drive success, all that we shouldn't forget what we are at the core of ourselves, right, as a human race. So what a beautiful final thought. Thank you Abhishek. Thanks for taking us through your experience, your current goals, your current engagements, your future aspirations and the amount of brilliant work you and your team are doing at Vidya shilp Got to know about so much today in this podcast. So thank you so much for spending time with us.
Abhishek Mishra: Thank you Adarsh Thank you Suma I really feel excited that I was a part of this podcast and I got to speak to you people and I was able to share my journey as well as the experiences that I had in this, you know, education space. Thank you so much for having me.
Suma EP: It does.
Thank you Abhishek, it was so lovely to have you here with us.
