About
About
Using CRM, AI & Local Channels
K12 Tech Insights kicks off with Ayush Kalani, Associate Director - Student Acquisition (Global Head), Global Schools Group, Singapore on how a 64-school, 45K-student network treats CRM as a non-negotiable growth driver—powering a shift from “sales” to student acquisition and a unified parent value journey.
We dig into HubSpot-led adoption at scale, data discipline, and the champions-of-change model (including AMAs and leadership summits). Ayush unpacks trends in international K-12—personalized learning, AI in classrooms, global mobility, and STEAM—plus a practical playbook for integrations across WhatsApp, WeChat, LINE, and Telegram to meet parents where they are.
We also tackle AI’s disruption of search (AIO > SEO), why plans must be rebuilt from first principles, and how to hardwire behavior with KPIs like lead response time directly from CRM. If you’re building modern enrollment engines, this is your blueprint.
Let's get started👇👇
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Transcription
Suma: Welcome to K12 Tech Insights. This is a podcast where we speak to marketing leaders from K12 and we figure out how they are building their enrollment edge. I'm Suma ip, CEO of Niswey.
Adarsh: And I'm Adarsh Noorana, HubSpot India.
Suma: And together we are going to co host K12 Tech Insights.
Suma: Welcome to the very first episode of K12 Tech Insights. And to kick things off we have Ayush Kalani, who is the Associate Director and Global Head of Student Acquisition at Global Schools Group Singapore. Ayush is a dynamic sales and marketing leader with over 15 years of experience at the intersection of tech education and customer experience.
He has a decade of experience in K12 edtech and higher ed segments. Ayush is also the architect of a scalable CRM and customer experience ecosystem at gsg. It has now become the industry benchmark and has been widely covered through case studies and thought leadership publications.
Ayush is a postgraduate from IIT Roorkee and is also a certified Business analytics practitioner.
Hi Ayush, how are you today?
Ayush: I'm doing fine. Thank you so much Suma Adarsh for getting this amazing podcast together. It's always good to see you in person and especially Adarsh. The last time I met him was in Singapore, but it's good to catch up in India as well.
Adarsh: Thank you for making the trip to India and this is the first of the series that we have started for K12 Tech Insights. Thank you to Niswey team, who is probably the architect behind all of this. And we have a lot of expectations from the reach that this podcast will have and the impact it will create to everybody in Ketwell. Learning from leaders like you would be an amazing experience for our audience and hopefully they take out a lot of nuggets at the end of this. Absolutely.
Suma: So shall we start? Absolutely, yeah. So Ayush, tell us about Global Schools Group.
Ayush: So Global Schools Group is an international network of schools. We are headquartered in Singapore and we have 64 schools across 11 countries and 12 branches. We have 45,000 plus students across 70 nationalities studying with us and more than 5,000 educators and professionals who are striving to deliver personalized learning experiences to these students to help them develop and inculcate a love of learning and also to empower them with these skills and values that make them future ready.
The first school that we launched was way back in 2002 in Balestier Road in Singapore. And from there the journey has been quite gratifying and we are glad to see that we are also one of the most awarded networks of schools in the world.
In fact we have more than 600 plus awards in the field of performance excellence, academic excellence, technology, innovation, sustainability and quality. Yeah.
Suma: So can you tell us a few brands so that you know.
Ayush: Oh yes, yes. So the brand, so we have 12 brands and some of these brands are homegrown, whereas some we have also acquired as part of an inorganic growth strategy.And we have GIIs, which is our flagship brand. One of the flagship brands, Global Indian International School, that offers Indian curricula as well as international curricula in many parts of the world. Our presence is right from Japan to the UK and this is the kind of spread that we have geographically as well.We have One World International School which is also one of the fastest growing brands for us globally. When specifically talking about Bangalore, we have two schools, GIS and two schools which are One World international as well. Apart from that, we have schools like cism, Chinese International School, Damascola International School in Manila, Regent and GIS in Malaysia, Harrods in Cambodia, Viti in Mumbai, Kasa in Madurai and you know, Glendale in Hyderabad. We also have Emirates, American School in Sharjah and so on. Our latest foray into Europe is Heath House Preparatory School which is in Blackheath, which is in London.
Adarsh: Wow, that's a massive portfolio of brands that you have. And to imagine 45,000 students at a given point in time is just amazing. Tell us more about your role in the gsg.
Ayush: Yeah, so as the Associate Director for Student Acquisition and Customer Success, my role largely aligns towards empowering and investing in the success of more than 160 admission counselors across all our campuses to help the families find the right fit for their child. And of course we are aligned towards the goals and budgets that we also have, because this is we have business goals to chase and how we are able to deliver a superior experience while we are achieving those goals is something that is very critical to the way we drive the student acquisition engine here. So it's not just about sales and marketing, but it's about the customer value journey. And that is how we approach it and which is why we don't call it sales, but student acquisition.
Adarsh: So I think that is the way the world is also moving, right? Yes. Nobody is now saying it is sales because it's not the orthodox way of selling anyone.Not just this industry, any industry, if you take it's more about value consulting to be able to understand each other better. The buyer seller dance has ended and the future is totally different from what we have grown up doing sales.
Ayush: I agree. In fact I remember and Adarsh and Suma, maybe you also know we were taught the traditional funnel of marketing, but it's HubSpot only which created a wonderful model called FlyVee because your decision making journey is not a linear waterfall and the idea is constantly trying to experience and pre experience the service or the product, through word of mouth, through references, through reviews and then of course try and take that decision because there is also access to a lot of information very easily, which was not the case earlier. The other observation, just adding to what you said Adarsh, is that the consumer behavior has also changed and the benchmarks are no longer industry specific because the same family or the parent who is used to grocery deliveries in 10 minutes or even getting a cab in two minutes at click of a button would request or require the same kind of responsiveness from a school. And that is where I think technology plays a key role. And that is another part of my portfolio where I am the custodian of the entire CRM ecosystem at Global Schools Group for all our schools.
Adarsh: First of all, thank you for using HubSpot and I'm very keen to hear how, how has that really helped you in your growth trajectory?
Ayush: Oh, that'll require more podcasts, but I'll try and break this down into the journey where for us the choice of CRM initially was something which we wanted to be intuitively easy to use. I have used some of the more popular brands in the last decade. HubSpot at that time when we had adopted was sort of a new kid on the block. And that is not the case today, and I'm very glad to see HubSpot also growing leaps and bounds, globally. Their presence in Asia is also augmented and very clearly demonstrated by the fact, the support and the kind of strategic customer groups that we have created. And Global Schools Group is the only school or K12 institution which is part of that. Yeah. And that gives us access to the leadership from HubSpot and to very quick support and training initiatives which also makes it more of a partnership rather than a vendor customer relationship. So once we chose that, you know, five years back, and I've spent five years in Global Schools Group, we had only 17 schools. Right. And the total number of active users were probably less than 50 and now we are 64 multiple brands, more than 250 active users. And this kind of scale is I think a testament to the System or the CRM that HubSpot is. And that has really helped. There is, if I have to break it down in terms of how we have done it, we look at it in terms of pillars for growth. And for us we never considered HubSpot as an IT software or a tool which is typically a mistake that a lot of organizations make which I have heard across when I have interacted with other customers as well. For us it was a non-negotiable driver of growth.
In fact there is a very simple thing which I tell any new person or leader who joins my team, it's very clear that if it is not on HubSpot, it does not exist. Excellent. Right. Even today, our board meetings that happen in the organization, the reference points and the reports are direct screenshots from HubSpot.
So the idea is that is the kind of trust support we have also in fact I have received from you know, the chairman, our CEO, our CEO who have ensured that we all are speaking the same language so that it percolates to each and every school team in, in terms of ensuring that we are able to use HubSpot meaningfully to address a superior parent experience and to have a single source of truth which is very critical.
Suma: Exactly. So we were at the K12 Marketing Leadership Forum in Bangalore last month and one of the things that the K12 marketing leaders were saying was I know my system is broken when an Excel sheet pops up in the whole process. So if there's an Excel sheet then I'm not, this is not the single source of truth.
Ayush: See what happens with us? It's even more sensitive because our Excel sheets have information about kids, about students. Right. It's not just some data that gets leaked which is also a very frequent phenomenon nowadays, even from the big tech. So for us data security is sacrosanct.
Nobody has the rights to even download anything from HubSpot. Like we control it very, very effectively. And the right training, the right kind of orientation support is provided to each and every user. And sooner or later I think there is an approach which has worked really well for us, is that we try and identify the champions of change. So there's no point in just asking, let's say a team manager, that you have to use HubSpot and then your team. Sometimes it doesn't work. And that is the kind of flexibility even we have to get in our workspaces. If there is somebody in your team who can be a HubSpot champion, let that person drive the entire adoption journey or even the management, and maintenance journey of data for that matter.
Once that happens, sooner or later everybody catches up in due course of time because it's just a function of interest, motivation and the learning curve. And when they start seeing how it makes their life easy, which is something I always start with. You know I was sharing this in one of the earlier SWAT forums also that when we acquired schools, you know, when you launch a new school it's very easy. These are our systems, these are our SOPs and therefore we will go ahead and get them active and life. But when you're getting established brands and schools into your ecosystem as part of the global schools group family, they already have systems that have been established for more than a decade maybe.
And then the question is that why, why are you better than what we are already doing in terms of managing our inquiries, managing our communication and obviously the entire piece on digital marketing. And this is where internally I had to become a salesperson for HubSpot.
I know more about other CRMs now because I have done the comparative studies and told them these are the strengths and weaknesses of your system. Something that we can and we are always open minded that way. In fact I have learned a few tricks from other CRMs which I have tried and applied within HubSpot also or even taken it back to the team at HubSpot.
And then I'm doing those comparatives and then there is this entire B2B selling within our ecosystem where I'm trying to convince them why it can be used. And the entire transition is extra painful because for them it is also an overall change management where their organization is now part of a different conglomerate.
So in that sense you know there are anxieties, there are gray areas. They are not sure whether this is the right thing to do. If I'm not good at using this system, then whether I will be valued, what future I'll have in the organization.
And so coincidentally the first 100 day plan or the integration plan as we call it, whenever you get new schools as part of our group, the first system that we usually launch is of course the finance system. Right. The second system is HubSpot.
Adarsh: Awesome. Two things will happen at the end of this podcast. The moment this goes live. I'M sure there are millions of HubSpot users, hundreds of HubSpot employees will love what you said a while ago. HubSpot is your non-negotiable driver of growth because that's exactly the passion and the vision of HubSpot. We are only dedicated to helping companies grow better. You have just really validated the blood and sweat these HubSpot employees put in. Trust me, that will happen. The second thing that will happen is everyone who is evaluating a new CRM or a changeover from previous CRM will reach out to you for a consulting service. Because if you have done that so much in depth, they would need your services.
Ayush: So expect some of the orders to come in without taking names. But I can tell you this, just within Singapore, I remember that we were the first adopters of HubSpot CRM. 80% of the schools use HubSpot now.
Suma: Wow, Okay I didn't know that.
Adarsh: Long live up HubSpo, Awesome. Thank you.
Ayush: Because sometimes the way we also operate at Global Schools Group is we are constantly benchmarking best practices for the industry.And that is something that flows even from our chairman, Mr. Atul Timur Mikar, who's super passionate about delivering quality education with solutions that have deep embedded in technology.
Suma: Awesome.
Adarsh: On that note, what are the trends you're seeing in K12 specifically generally, also.
Ayush: So, within K12 also there are multiple kinds of or nature of the way schools operate. So I'll restrict my feedback only to international schools. Sure, yeah. Because that is what I can speak for. Yeah, yeah. When it comes to international schools, I think the way students learn today is very different. Adarsh and Suma, the way we studied in schools, holistic education is becoming one of the key principles of designing any academic pedagogy. Awesome. Right? It is not just about just learning something from the textbooks or a curricula and then giving assessments and exams as an end game. That's not the intent. There is an example that I try and also share with my team sometimes because when you're helping a parent find the right fit for the child, they come from a place where they subconsciously compare a school to their own experience. And that is where our journey starts from. The trends that I see in K12 are personalizing. That entire experience is also taking a center stage and personalizing not just the decision making stage to find the right school, but even the way the learning journey of the child happens. And that is very critical.
That cannot happen without technology. Because, at the end of the day you always have, you know, a number of students in a single classroom and a teacher has limited bandwidth. So how do we use technologies to augment the strength of a teacher so that she or he spends less time in administrative work and more time in, you know, sharing, imparting and imparting the education to the children. I mean I remember when I was in school, half the class the teacher used to write on the board, the other half I used to copy in the notebook. And then we used to go home and study or maybe in higher grades go for tuitions.
Suma: Yeah.
Adarsh : Isn't that the right way?
Ayush: It was the right way at that point in time.
But today things are changing very fast. Ten years ago if somebody would have told you that there would be autonomous cars or I don't have an AI tool that basically generates marketing copies and scripts, everybody would have laughed. People would have said you are undermining human intelligence and so on and so forth. Similarly, while we were in school, if somebody would have said there would be a smart screen that solves everything, you are able to shop. So we get used to these changes so rapidly that we forget that this is not the base we started from. And that is where AI, which is now there's personalized learning. And then now it is the use of AI also in the way the entire learning management systems work in schools. So I see a lot of talk happening on AI which is not just at the level of school or the technology teams, but even governments. We have the government, the Ministry of Education in India, in the Middle East, in Singapore, and many other countries who have mandated introduction of AI as you know, one of the subjects at the relevant grades. So that digital literacy includes AI as part of the journey.
Suma: Wow. Yeah.
Ayush: Another trend that I'm also seeing is consolidation from a business perspective. Like we also have grown rapidly, effectively. We now see a few large scale international school chains who are having presence across time zones, which was also not the case earlier because you had schools who were focusing on specific markets or parts of the world. So for example, if it's Southeast Asia, Far East, Indian subcontinent, Middle east, the Americas or the Europes, very rarely you find a chain, or a network of educational institutions that are spread across, which is also happening now because simply the connectivity, access to technology, high speed Internet and more importantly access to global resources is possible. Right.
Adarsh: So what would be an advantage for somebody to be part of your group, and to learn under various brands of yours who is truly a global company, in effective to let's say is there a difference for them studying in a very siloed jio based institutions.
Ayush: So that's another change. I'm glad you brought it up. Which is global mindedness. And I think the global citizenry is increasing by leaps and bounds. And families are mobile. And they obviously, as the work takes them or their passion takes them, are also exploring different parts of the world.
And the children obviously are getting exposed to different cultures and diversity. And successful, I think the definition of success or a successful probable resource in the future would be somebody who may not be the best, I think at solving complex mathematical problems, but one who can collaborate well.
Suma: Nice.
Ayush: The one who can connect well, the one who can work in a team. Right. And the one who can communicate well. And therefore in my time or probably a few years ago we used to talk about STEM that has become steam.
Suma: Oh, okay.
Ayush: So art is not something which is totally separate.
Suma: Yeah,
Ayush: Right. And the ability to have that kind of an engagement is very important. I'll. Can I share a story of how we do it in a classroom?
Adarsh: Keen to hear.
Ayush: Okay, so imagine you are learning about civilizations. You know how we studied civilization. We had a chapter on Egyptian civilization. Right. And the teacher came, spoke about the timeline, this and this AD the civilization was there. These were the key figures. These are the monuments. These are the kind of battles or whatever happened at that time. And what kind of food they used to eat, what kind of houses they used to stay, blah, blah, blah. Over. These are a set of five questions.
Suma: Truth.
Ayush: Right. So you practice that. Three of them will come in the exam. If you're able to mimic the exact phrasing of the textbook, you get more marks.
Adarsh: Correct.
Ayush: And you're sitting in a theatrical arrangement in a classroom listening to all of it. So for example, in our classroom, first of all you can move around the tables and chairs as you want. The technology is not just digital, it's also the way you are able to apply an innovation where we have mobile tables and chairs.
Adarsh: Oh, amazing.
Ayush Kalani: Okay. The teacher comes and says, explains to the students what is civilization?
A civilization is basically a point in time, congregation of a group of humans who share common rituals, practices, food, clothing habits, so on and so forth in between a set time period and demonstrated through physical infrastructure that still stays such as you know, the monuments and the kind of artifacts that we get as part of the archaeological Ventures, This is civilization. So once you understand civilization, the students are, you know what? I want to research the Mayan civilization. The other says Chinese, one child says Egyptian, the other says Harappan, one says Byzantines, so on and so forth. Then the other child say, you know what I even want to do on my end? Okay, let's collaborate. And now this is an entire inquiry in research based learning where the students are applying the framework of civilization to now understand the civilization which they want to learn about. Because if their intent is to learn about that civilization, they'll learn faster and retain better.
Suma: Correct.
Ayush: Okay. Because that's a function of learning. If you are motivated, you'll learn faster and retain better. So this is self and intrinsic motivation. At the end of the day, after five or six days, there are 10 civilizations whose presentations are presented to the entire class. And everybody is asking questions and doing the comparatives and even trying to understand how it works. Because there is a child who also said, I want to study the current modern human civilization. That thought itself does not come true, that we are a civilization also right now.
Adarsh: And that child just unlocked it.
Ayush: So simply because he or she understood the concept of civilization and now is comparing then what is modern civilization, what has happened in history and what are we learning from that?
Suma: Very nice.
Ayush: The best teachers you would remember are not the ones who had super structured curricular disposition. They are the ones who had that. Who taught you how to learn, who taught you how to think.
Suma: Correct.
Ayush: And I think that is where it is different. And what do they do with the tables and chairs which I alluded to earlier. Okay, you are doing that civilization. I'll move my table to you. Yeah. And now you have group discussions happening in the classroom.
Adarsh: I'm just correlating this to what will happen to them when they come into the corporate world. Because when we are brainstorming, when we are building a strategy, let's say for HubSpot India next three years, what's my strategy going to be? I look inward first with my team and there are so many young kids who have come in with varied backgrounds, cultural backgrounds, experiences of different companies. And they've all brought best practices and different perspectives. Yes. And suddenly I can group them together. People will volunteer to pick up a piece of the entire strategy plan. Somebody's picking up the entire draft of the new, three year plan. So I see what you're saying. You're literally building citizens of the future.
Ayush: Exactly. So making them future ready is a mission statement.
Suma: Oh, there you go. Perfect.
Ayush: In fact, just to add to it, one of our schools which is also a corporate headquarters in Singapore, we call it GI Smart Campus, is also being covered by National Geographic as school of the future.
Suma: Wow,
Adarsh: Congratulations.
Suma: That's amazing.
Adarsh: Speaking about collaboration and having multiple brains to put together, I want to pull you back into the tech side of our discussion because I know Niswey has worked with you for years now and has probably been an impactful partner of HubSpot for your growth story. One of the things is we always see integrations that are needed with CRM tools and I know GSG has done various integrations if I'm not wrong. Vira, I think is there the
Suma: WhatsApp one. Yeah, the telegram one.
Adarsh: I'm very keen to hear how complementing has all this been in your stack. And what else?
Suma: How do you extend like you will need certain functionalities for your business which HubSpot may not give you right away, you know, so how do you kind of. So,
Ayush: Before I get into the specifics, I think there's a larger perspective in terms of what I've observed more than a decade in the education sector is that as an industry, usually the sector is not a leader when it comes to adoption of new tech. But having said that, this is changing in today's world thanks to the flexible ecosystems that are available like HubSpot and more importantly the expansive impact of AI. There was a cycle where everybody wanted to make their own software. I have been through that also. Right.
Suma: Build or buy.
Ayush: So the build or buy generation was there. So first it was to identify a software from the market. Then you realize it is too rigid. The resource skills as well as the available capex does not allow you to expand beyond what you're spending there because it is looked as an expense. Yeah. In terms of, you know, there's no direct ROI linked to those kinds of expenses meaningfully. And then the journey is, you know, what if we are spending so much because that's a natural way which I hope doesn't happen with HubSpot, but costs are increasing linearly and then the question is if you're anyway spending so much, why not build?
And then you start building stuff and then you realize that now there's a second generation thanks to smartphones, the app ecosystems and of course AI where you are again shortchanged when it comes to focus and talent. We are a school, we are not a technology developer. Right. So then the journey starts in finding the right ecosystems. And I think there is the point where we realize there are these large scale ecosystems who would offer solutions and if they don't have, they acquire the companies that offer the solutions. Right. That's also a way to deal with it. But my experience was, and this is very personal, feedback is that at the end of the day the way the larger cohort works in the end influences even the companies that become part of them and the culture that made them successful changes.
Suma: Okay.
Ayush: Yeah. And this is where the integration has to be, between bits and bytes and not between corporate entities. And that is the point. Now I'll come to terms with HubSpot, as a very specific use case for a global schools group.
Adarsh: Sure.
Ayush: So we have users in Japan who use Line in Korea who use Naver in Cambodia. I don't know if you know this. Nobody uses HubSpot. They all use Telegram. Right. In China nobody even checks mails frequently. They use WeChat.
Suma: Yeah
Ayush: Right. WhatsApp is the key currency of communication when it comes to India and the Middle East as well as Singapore. The SMS ecosystem is no longer working as effectively RT used to be earlier. Right. The only SMS you get are either notifications or spams and therefore there is the larger control on a communication tool where the customers also want to be spoken with where they are present instead of them coming to a place or a communication platform where the product or the service is available.
Adarsh: Absolutely.
Ayush: And this is where the first intent obviously is to find any native solutions that HubSpot may have present. And I think this is where a HubSpot app marketplace ecosystem encourages a lot of users and a lot of companies to create bespoke integration models for HubSpot users. In some of the CRMs which I've used in the past, what happens is your largest customers dictate what you develop. As no matter. So in the education sector we always then suffer because of it. Yeah. We cannot be like the large banks are, the Googles and Teslas of the world education.
At the end of the day the largest organization in the world also would be smaller than probably the median of big tech.
Suma: Yeah.
Ayush: Right. So where do we have the agency? Where can I have a personalized solution like we are talking about our customers to come to us also. And this is where I think the flexible ecosystem of HubSpot really helps. And the way I deal with the partners of HubSpot as compared to the partners of other CRMs I've worked with before, I can also sense that they work in a very different culture where there is autonomy given also to the partners, but at the same time they look at each other in a symbiotic manner and not as a transactional relationship.
So, as I said, if we need those kinds of tools, and it's not just about getting one tool or one chat platform, the integrations go beyond that. Because the communication today is in person, voice, short text, long text, and very soon through AI.
Suma: Correct
Ayush: Right. So the idea is we integrate as and when we find there is value, we are delivering to the experience itself. And if there's a company that is doing a better input than HubSpot, so be it. Because there are other priorities also that HubSpot has to manage.
Suma: Right.
Ayush: Or any base has to.
Adarsh: Agree. Suma, a question for you.
Suma: Yes.
Adarsh: You deal with multiple schools and colleges across the globe. GSG is one of your flagship success stories. There are many that you are involved with. What are your, high level takeaways if you were to think about what's the framework that helps these institutions to successfully adopt tech.
Suma: Successfully adopt tech so
Adarsh: from a point of view of HubSpot.
Suma: Yeah. So I think one of the key things that Ayush has already mentioned, the champions of change. If you don't have a champion inside who's actually in love with the product and he's using it or she's using it and you know, and her energy is going to go into the rest of the team, you need a champion. Definitely.
And of course there's got to be a top down. They have to be. There's a buy in from the top that yes, we're going to do this. As he said, they all speak the same language. How does that happen? It cannot happen. Right. Because if you have 64 campuses, how are you even talking the same language?
Inorganically grown. So it is definitely coming from the top that it has been mandated that we have to speak a certain language. And it is mandated and it is institutionalized. I think those are the two things that I'm seeing, that there's got to be a custodian inside who's really championing Habit Spot.
And as partners, we can come in and we can do a lot of things, but without champions, we are also failing.
Adarsh: Makes sense. Yeah, it makes sense. And a, if I can flip this question to you to probably create a playbook for our audience, I'm sure everybody who's listened till now would want to take away a decision making framework for themselves if they were to embark on this journey and you had a great deal of experience.
You've seen the holistic view, the bigger picture. You managed the change management process internally. You managed inorganic growth, organic growth. You've seen it all. You've seen tech adoption, You've seen collaboration integrations, within tech to, serve the purpose. And I love the way you're leading the growth story.
You're the tip of the spear for the GSG group. Acquire more members into your family. Given all this experience, what would be your giveaway framework for the audience today if they were to embark on a journey like gsg?
Ayush: See, just, you know, what Suma was mentioning is that we are able to speak the same language.
Adarsh: True.
Ayush: Right. You ask the definition of what a hot MQL is to my counselor in Osaka or in Riyadh, they will give you the same answer. I think, to some extent we have to keep it a little less complicated and many times we over complicate the journey. You start with a base that is easier and simpler to execute and understand. And these kinds of definitions have to be converted into repetitive rituals. So we have to demonstrate as leaders by speaking that language so that it also comes across effectively to the team. And the third, and I think the most important bit is celebrating success, which I think gets missed. So, you know, we have something called AMA sessions for HubSpot. I don't know within an organization if anybody would do AMA just for HubSpot.
Adarsh: So this is something that I've heard for the first time,
Ayush: And I'll tell you why. And this is, I'm giving you a story to basically identify. It's not about the framework, it's about the approach.
Adarsh: Nice.
Ayush: Okay. And that approach is that when you ask people to come and attend a training session, you have taken them away from their work.
Suma: Yeah
Ayush: Yeah. You are taking them away from what is their first priority into a session where they are expected to be attended for a long period of time. We turned it around, we tried all that. It's not like we have not done it. We have also learned over the period of time. And we said we want to be available to them when they need it. And we said we'll change the approach and sort of create a knowledge base which is obviously for people who are motivated and inspired enough to try and, you know, learn from it. And we will do AMA sessions where they are free to attend as and when they want, where certain identified HubSpot experts within the organizations are the one who conducted.
Adarsh: Awesome.
Ayush: And it is their passion in terms of why they want to do it, which also reflects in the way they are able to teach them. And it becomes more personalized because now you don't have 10 people discussing problems or use cases that are not relevant for everybody. We also have a very interesting program, a summit that we do every year. It is known as the Global Annual Leadership Summit. As part of that summit, there are shorter functional summits which are specifically for sales and marketing, finance, HR and so on. We get all these leaders from different 11 countries to come together in one place for two days. In fact, we have a team from HubSpot who comes to the summit every year.
Adarsh: Awesome.
Ayush: And they are the ones who tell us what the vision is. So this year the theme was how to use AI in HubSpot.
Suma: Wow.
Ayush: Right. And this is where now they are learning from the best. We are unlocking access to resources, which is not a manager or a boss, but an industry expert. And last, because why I'm sharing all this adarsh is at the end of the day, it's the individual or a person who makes HubSpot successful. It's not our SOPs. Right. And this mindset changes that it is not a tool but a skill. Is where they realize that this value add is making them more valuable as a professional as well. Yeah. So, and then of course you celebrate successes. You identify the ones who are doing well, give them agency and opportunities to share best practices, recognize their efforts and the group from HubSpot also helps.
Adarsh: Thank you for sharing. Seriously. I've been in the CRM industry itself, selling various CRM tools for more than two and a half decades now. Every conversation with the prospect CEO, I have only begged them for these practices because they all want to know, what will you guarantee, at the end of my purchase?
How will you guarantee the success of my team? And I've always asked them. You lead from the front, you create internal champions. You create a skill set, but drive it with passion. Because the tool is just a tool when you don't use it. But the tool becomes your best friend. Truly best friend at work when you really adopt it. And I think you have summarized a dream come true for any CRM vendor in the market. Because a tool is a tool at the end of the day. The way you adopt it, the way you internalize it, personalize it, and the passion with which I am seeing GSG is running, it's not a tool anymore for you. The impact it is creating is multifold. Amazing to hear this.
Ayush: Actually the good part is we don't know what is not possible. We keep pushing it because you will be surprised. Our official KPI for appraisal for admissions counselors includes a variable which is sourced directly from HubSpot, which is lead response time.
Adarsh: Brilliant.
Ayush: Which is part of sales analytics. So the point is we are going up to that extent where we are trying to make that not only a single source of truth but, but effectively a demonstrated entity of everything and all efforts that the team has put in. So now they are invested in it because they know if it is showing there, it'll definitely help them get the right rewards and recognition.
Adarsh: You touched upon HubSpot coming in and they kind of did an AI topic of discussion in your summit. And that's something that we are seeing globally as well. How to adopt the innovation that's been brought up by HubSpot in AI and Suma. I think it'll be not fair to have a podcast episode without bringing in what we're doing in AI.
Suma: Yeah. And also I think about the concerns around it, like I was speaking to a K12 marketing leader the other day and he was concerned about his digital media plan. Like I've got this whole plan laid out but the whole search has moved to ChatGPT. My parents are looking for me there. So what am I doing with all this? How do I show roi? He's kind of worrying and anxious. So what would you do?
What would you advise people like this? How do they approach? How do they come out of this funk?
Ayush: You know, the last time in marketing where I saw a distinct quantum shift in the way you capture top of the funnel happened with the launch of smartphones.
Right? Right. And that is what unlocked app optimizations, or ASO as we like to call it. Right. AIO is what will work now. And already there are a lot of people working on it, trying to figure out how to do it.
But at the end of the day, you know, if you're looking at standard plan formats and then trying to figure out where AI comes in, it's not going to work like this. We have to trash it totally and build it from scratch. And that is where your thinking process changes. Just to give you a small example that a lot of information that is currently sourced, as a response to ChatGPT and referenced, has suddenly started coming from Quora, which had become sort of a sleeping giant a few years ago, which is now suddenly finding value. Similarly, when you're looking at SEO and you are looking at how Google is chasing information, again it is coming from affiliates and other sources, effectively transcribed into an AI generated response that does not even have the need for the user to scroll.
The point I'm making is it's not even like they have gone to ChatGPT. Even the consumption on Google has changed. You're not scrolling, which means you won't see the ads. Yeah, yeah, right. So it comes down to the basics. Put yourself in the shoes of the customer, which I think sometimes a lot of marketers miss. And that's the first miss. And the second is the myopia that every customer is like me. And this is something I'm very sensitive to. We have to avoid these biases because they creep up very slowly, unknowingly and start affecting our decision making.
And if you have the right team, they will also make sure that they give you the inputs when they see you losing the ball. So the answers are all there. I never look at it as a threat, frankly. It's an opportunity because if I'm able to crack it, I first move advantage and which means ROIs that are 10x of what we have right now.
Wow, brilliant. Because that is what the FMA gives, right? If you're able to crack it first, then your roas are better. That is what happened when Snapchat India entered India. I remember one of the first ones who ended up utilizing that platform well. And as compared to meta, the ROI was 5x.
Adarsh: You look so confident for the future. GSG looks to be in such good hands with the way you are approaching the future and adopting the new innovations that are coming your way. But there must be something that is creating anxiety also.
Parallelly, I'm very keen to hear what's keeping you thinking up at night. Is there anything that you're thinking about? This is out of my hands or I need to fix anything like that.
Ayush Kalani: See. It does. But the way I think of it is the scope of influence concept. Right. I cannot change the way consumers will behave or the way the world will change. What worries me is how we internally are keeping ourselves aligned and not start working in silos and forget that we all are contributing to that single customer value journey and not as just one department contributing to a transaction with that prospective, inquiry and the loss of collaboration, the loss of single minded focus almost to a level of mania to ensure that we are delivering Superior customer experience.
That I think is my biggest worry. Because as long as that is there, it can be AI, it can be augmented reality. It might be something beyond our imagination. It doesn't matter. Because the core need that defines demand consumption is going to drive the market behaviors for all humanity. It has how it has been forever. We are just working on systems that are probably less than 100 years old, even in terms of concepts. Correct. You know, I mean, sales as a profession is just 150 years old in the sense that to articulate it as a form, otherwise it was just people having the livelihood.
Suma: True, Right.
Ayush: And, that is a very beautiful documentary also on it, the history of sales, which, if you get time to watch it, in India itself, even while the Britishers were there, the traditional ecosystems did not have maths as a mandatory subject till the early 19th century. So, you know, the thing that we know everything and we can crack everything is my biggest worry. And that anxiety keeps me up at night, that fomo that am I missing out something? Something that, you know, I have become blind to and for the team also in terms of their collaboration and attitude, towards customers.
Suma: So while we are still looking outside and worrying, not worrying, your worry is really internal, that internally are we collaborating, internally, have we got a growth mindset, or internally, are we looking at it the right way?
Ayush: Absolutely. Because if, if that is sorted, it doesn't matter what happens outside, you will always have a team of Spartans with you who are ready to take.
Suma: Very well answered.
Adarsh: I think I wanted to ask one last question. And generally every podcast that I've been part of, it's an inherent need from me to ask, based on your experience, how do you see the industry, especially K12 in the next five years?
If you were to be a fortune teller and take that magic wand, what would you advise us to be ready with? As a fellow colleague of K12 industry,
Ayush: One of the key areas of focus for all of us in K12 right now is how we utilize AI in our learning management systems. See, it has to start in the classroom.
Suma: Correct
Ayush: Right. And that has unlocked a lot of insights in terms of how we can create super agents who are sort of a teacher's assistant. Right. If I have to extrapolate that to the work that I'm doing, specifically to my function, how can I create those agentic assistants for my sales team.
Right. And if we are able to offer something like that, which is seamless and also feels like custom built for that individual, will give an edge which I think nobody else can offer because it will happen with or without you truly.
So the idea is to be part of that journey.
Adarsh: Well said. Ayush. I think our CEO recently commented that we are in the middle of a human revolution and I think we need to gear up and be prepared. We had something like this when the Internet came about and then I think like you said when the smartphones came about and I think India is also said to grow as one of the strongest economies because there is a younger population. We already have the Internet and smartphones penetrated. The finance sector is probably years ahead of everybody else in the globe with all these good things and tech adoption like this. I am so it's goosebumps to me as an Indian citizen to think of what the future likes.
Ayush: No, no, I'm saying in fact we should learn from history also. I don't know if you have read that amazing news. When calculators were invented and launched the teachers went on strike.
Suma: Really?
Ayush: Yeah, because it'll take away their jobs. But if calculators were not invented, if processing and processing speed of these smart computers were not there we would not have the technology to even develop what Adarsh has just mentioned that is helping us have those financial ecosystems in the first place.
How would you do that? So it's not like then that the idea is for the human endeavor to focus more on the far out sponsors of knowledge rather than just repeat rinse whatever code can probably manage.
Suma: Excellent. I think we can conclude from that that we are looking at the expanse, we are looking at the horizon and we are going to be growing better.
Ayush : Absolutely. Thank you so much.
Adarsh: Ayush I want to really thank you for bringing in so much clarity of thought when it comes to adoption of tech in K12. Your experience was articulated extremely well for our audience. I think anybody who's listened through this podcast or the videos will really take home a lot of best practices that GSG and you and your leadership has brought in.
You did address some of the key challenges especially the change management, the need to be top down approach in this and a single source of truth and an ability to have complementing things to work holistically, to manage end to end.
And you also brought in a lot of necessity to adopt into AI. That will bring in a lot of speed to what you're doing currently and also transform the way things are being done today. And that is a recipe to be ready for the future, and you articulated it amazingly well for us.
You've given us a framework, a playbook to go back to our respective institutions and think about where we are and what we can do. I'm sure you'll get a lot of queries in social media and you'll have a lot of fan following. Post this.
I wish you all the best for your as long as
Ayush: I've been able to position what we do effectively, I think that's a win. And I hope we get to connect with more like minded people through this podcast as well. Thank you for the opportunity. It was a wonderful discussion. Pleasure.
Adarsh: And Team Niswey and Team HubSpot India. We are together thankful for this opportunity and the learnings we have got. Thank you. Thank you so much.
