Whitehat Jr: Blitzscaling done right?
The Startup
Whitehat Jr. provides private programming classes to kids. They do this using more than 11 thousand teachers across India and the US. In 18 months, the startup reached 200M USD in ARR on the back of just 11M USD in capital raised. It was acquired in Aug, 2020 by Byju (another India edtech) for 300M USD becoming the fastest exit of that magnitude in India.
Currently, WhiteHat Jr has >4 million subscribers globally, of whom around 700k students are paid subscribers. In terms of revenues, 50% comes from India (with non-urban centers contributing about 65% and 35% from urban areas) – and 50% from international markets: USA, UK, and Australia. WhiteHat Jr also recently expanded to Singapore and New Zealand.
The question I guess is:
How do you go from zero to 300M USD in 18 months?
The Founder and Team
Whitehat Jr was founded by Karan Bajaj. The founder's story is interesting: Karan is a novelist, engineer, and yoga instructor. He has achieved relative success with a number of books he's written. The founding team of WhiteHat Jr. consisted of 3 engineers, 3 curriculum creators, and 1 graphic designer.
It is safe to assume the founder is an engineer who is super comfortable with selling. Selling is essentially story-telling and Karan is good at this. Prior to starting Whitehat Jr., Karan worked in consulting (BCG), TV (he was a Director at Discovery Kids), and P&G. These experiences mean Karan not only had a grasp of words but was also adept at numbers. Storytelling + Analytic Growth Mindset = Explosive growth
The GTM Strategy
From the founder:
Make mistakes of ambition and not mistakes of sloth.
Action is the code of the entrepreneurial life. You make the product, launch it quickly, you get an iteration then launch the product again and keep scaling it up. Once you figure out a good product then be very relentless in scaling very fast.
Whitehat Jr. were super aggressive from the onset. The team didn't hire a CTO until a year after launch, fully leveraging content from code.org and using a bare-bones MVP to teach. The focus was iterating fast on growth experiments. In the first year, Whitehat Jr grew 33% MOM and literally exploded in 2020!
So, what strategies did they use:
1. Fear marketing
Imagine you are a parent reading the above, what are you thinking? If you skip an ad like this, does it mean you are not giving your kid the best chance at a great life? Whitehat Jr used a lot of fear marketing and possibly still does. In fact, they have been sued for this. But, this doesn't mean it doesn't work. Look at some more marketing creatives used by Whitehat Jr. Who doesn't want their kid to code like Bill Gates? They completely owned the messaging to Indian parents who had fear of missing out and definitely considered education in a competitive way.
2. Word of Mouth/Referrals
Whitehat Jr focused a lot on stories to get other parents engaged. This approach followed what they did with fear marketing. Everyone talked about how their kid is going to become the next Steve Jobs. This really sparked off new acquisition. See examples of what people were saying about the company on social media.
3. Celebrity Endorsements
Use whatever you have to get in front of your audience. Whitehat Jr. got on this through a founder who himself is a celebrity of sorts. They went on to get endorsements from opinion leaders with parents including actors, businessmen etc.
Final Thoughts
- Leverage what you have to get your product out. Whitehat Jr scaled to 1M MRR on an MVP. This is super important for a startup. Startup = Growth. Choose your metric wisely and grow it. The growth of that one metric that matters is all the validation you need and investors need to flock to you.
- Storytelling is a must-have skill. If you don't have it, learn it. Like the African proverb says, until the lion learns to write, every story will glorify the hunter. Own your narrative. Think critically on the kind of brand you are and how you portray yourself. One of the early things Whitehat Jr did was to get everyone on their team to update their LinkedIn profiles. The team understood they were selling trust and this comes down to what you can show. Show me you are trustworthy and I will believe you are.
- Know your Audience. Fear marketing works in India, so Whitehat Jr used it and won. To use any marketing tactic effectively, you need to craft a message that really speaks to your audience in a way they see the value of your offering immediately. Once your audience sees you as a painkiller, it is easy to get excited by your solution.