Teaching English to MNC Workforces: GlobalEnglish CEO Deepak Desai (Part 5)

SM: As you have been building your business, what are the different geographic dynamics that you have been seeing? A lot of obvious applications are in India with the call centers business, where the accent in spoken English is a challenge. This seems like a perfect application to address that.

DD: We have some customers in India but not for that specific application.

SM: Why have you not gone after that application?

DD: There are solutions that are focused on accent reduction, but that is not our business. We are focused on helping people communicate better. It is not about teaching an American or a British accent. Our service has spoken English. What happens in India is that they have the basics already. They will do a shorter license period of,  say, four to six months. We find in India that even though English levels are better than China, as companies are moving toward smaller towns the English levels are not that great. India is one of our largest markets, but it is not as big as China, Brazil, or Mexico.

SM: Why is the company headquartered in Silicon Valley?

DD: We believe is about marrying the greatest technology with the greatest educational philosophy. Silicon Valley is the place for innovation. The exciting part is that we have just reached the first stage of e-learning. The ultimate phase will be when there is a hologram sitting next to you teaching you English. The promise of customized learning is intense.

SM: What level of customization do you do on a per-user basis?

DD: When a user comes to the site, they take an assessment and a goals survey. We create a study plan based on those two interactions.

SM: What is in the test?

DD: It evaluates the basic reading, writing and listening skills. It then gives you a score.

SM: Does it include speaking?

DD: Our placement product does not include speaking. We have a separate test for speaking. The speaking assessment is graded by human teachers because speech recognition is not there for those types of cases. That technology is evolving and getting better every day. Most of the industry has been focused on U.S. accents. It is an order of magnitude more difficult to get a solution that works for more than 100 accents.

SM: How are you going to do that? Do you have a partnership?

DD: We work on that with SRI International. The challenge is that these voice engines have to be trained. It is frustrating to me because although my accent is not all that heavy, I still have problems when I am calling 1-800 numbers and try to get through the voice navigation system. Our biggest audience is non-native speakers speaking to non-native speakers.

SM: What is the ramp of the company?

DD: In the early days it was challenging because there was a long sales cycle and the money was just not there. The past four years have been very good. We have been cash flow positive for the past four years. We are between $35 million and $40 million. The growth rate has been higher than 10%.

SM: What is the company’s financing strategy?

DD: It is a venture capital-funded company. Mayfield is one of the investor from the beginning. We have raised more than $40 million. The most recent round was in 2005. We have not done anything since then.

SM: Would more financing make you grow faster, or are you growing at the rate you need to grow?

DD: You can get financing and grow but the question is how do you sustain that and do the right thing? I do not believe in growth for growth itself. It must be sustainable. There are subtle things. Customer acceptance and adoption is important.

We might go into different segments. We started a website a couple of years ago as an experiment called EnglishCafe.com. It is a community site for English learners, and that is in beta. That could take us into a consumer area. We would be deliberate about that.

This segment is part 5 in the series : Teaching English to MNC Workforces: GlobalEnglish CEO Deepak Desai
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