How ERP platform Pappaya Lite helping schools stand out

Founded in 2006 with the idea of establishing a seamless and advanced features integrated ERP with a bigger scale of users for educational institutions, educational enterprise resource planning platform Pappaya Lite today, serves more than 40K schools across the world.

Dominic Prabhu, Founder & Managing Director of Pappaya Lite, in an exclusive interview with Bizz Buzz says, "Edtech is an evolving process and there is always a scope for invention and growth, we believe that edtech business grow multi-folds than what it is now."

How do you see the future of edtech?

Education, like any other industry, has undergone a digital transition as a result of Covid. The online education market, on the other hand, is expected to rise by 11.6 billion by 2026. This demonstrates that the edtech revolution is a long-term answer rather than a momentary fix.

The Indian government has always been forward-thinking when it comes to education. Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) via the automatic method was approved 100 per cent in 2002. As a result, knowledge, skills, technology, and expertise transfer has become a global phenomenon. According to a KPMG analysis, India is the second-largest market for online education, after the United States. This indicates that, according to the Nation Education Policy (NEP) passed in 2020, the country is on the right track. The internet medium has the potential to achieve all four NEP policy requirements - access, equity, quality, affordability, and accountability - with adequate planning and execution.

This trend of edtech is only going to get stronger. More students will recognize that traditional offline players lack the capacity to provide the support that is required in today's hyper-competitive environment. Traditional players' high brand awareness will no longer be a significant competitive advantage.

Could you take me through some of the processes of Pappaya Lite?

Pappaya Lite is an educational enterprise resource planning platform for educational institutions currently serving more than 40K schools across the world. The company was established in 2006 with the idea of establishing a seamless and advanced feature integrated ERP with a bigger scale of users for educational institutions. With such a progressive vision, the company's software is getting implemented across 50k schools. Papaya Lite has tied up with a prestigious and renowned NISA which promotes quality improvement for over 1 lakh budget private schools across India, having access to around 50 million students, 30 million parents, 15 million staff, and a few 100 thousand principals with each individual spending a maximum of eight hours a day on the Papaya Lite platform.

What inspired you to be an entrepreneur, especially to work in edtech segment?

Founder Dominic's parents are PJ Papiah (Late) and P Michael Ammal Putti from a countryside called Pannur and Molasur in Tamil Nadu. The founders' families are from academic background as teachers and principals in various reputed schools. Dominic had his alma mater in St Patricks Anglo Indian School Adayar and his Engineering was from Hindustan College of Engineering. He began his working career at Microtech in Chennai as a sales specialist and moved to Bangalore. Then he advanced in his career working for reputed companies including Dell, Phoenix, IBM, Accenture and Infosys.

At one juncture, based on the suggestions and advice given by Mark O' Flaherty, BT (British Telecom) friend and mentor of Dominic, the latter decided to take up the opportunity of becoming an entrepreneur. This marked his career as a successful entrepreneur after multiple opportunities in the IT services sector. A very close associate of Dominic, Manoj Ganapathy, Founder and CEO of SalesTrip, UK influenced him to embark his journey in creating a product. This idea from his friend, made Dominic more ambitious. So, he gathered a team with his immediate cousin Anto John, Bala Murugan, Prathap and Michael to start working on the product, by performing a careful analysis and research of the market. Then the team decided for a product creation in Edtech, as a result of which Pappaya ERP was created successfully in 2016.

What are the company's ambitions going forward?

The company's current projection to ease the school management systems is extremely promising with so many schools associated with it. The company expects to onboard more than 100 million users in the next couple of years. The ERP platform is working towards its progressive plan of capturing 75K schools across the world and 150K schools with more than 75 million users on the platform.

There were multiple products initiated such as Papaya Sign – e-sign software serving a few hundred customers, Papaya Cloud – Partnered with a major global colocation provider Equinix across the world to establish the cloud services. At present, with 80 per cent operations in India and 20 per cent in the rest of the world, Pappaya Lite is the largest education ERP implemented ever across the world.

What is the difficulty level you face to reach schools and convey the mechanism?

The most challenging part is to meet the teams as there is no such as IT team for every school, however, there are schools that are super equipped with more systems and process, however, our business strategy and model helped us to reach the right person at the right time which helped our growth.

Please brief about your business model.

We have two versions of Education ERP, paid version – monthly subscription model and free version – free but with ads

What is the current market scenario? Who is your direct competitor in the same business model?

In current market scenario there are very limited competitors, however on our overall business model we are completely unique across the country.

In recent years, edtech has emerged as the sweet spot in the startup ecosystem. However, this space is getting crowded with each passing day. Do you feel the business growth will be similar to past years?

Edtech is an evolving process and always there is a scope for invention and growth, we believe that business will be multiple folds than what it is now.

Are you adequately funded now? Will you look at another round of funding this year?

Pappaya Lite software is funded by the founders of the company. As of now, the founders have been approached by multiple investors in the education sector to make investments and support the idea of streamlining the functioning of budget private schools. Pappaya Lite is close to achieving a record-breaking valuation in its Series A funding round. With VCs and educators from around the world showing interest in Pappaya Lite, it will be showcased to the public soon and is also preparing to be listed on the stock exchange.