Addictive Learning Technology Limited (ADDICTIVE) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Hello, everyone. Welcome to the earnings conference call of Addictive Learning.

Hi, everyone. This is Ramanuj here.

Welcome, Ramanuj, and welcome, everyone. We already have Ramanuj, who is the Founder and CEO of Addictive Learning, and already participants have joined the call. So over to you, Ramanuj, to brief everyone about the company and the progress.

Thanks, everyone. So, first of all, I'm joining the call from Manila in Philippines. I have been here, very exciting times, meeting a lot of businesses. It's a -- India is a service export superpower, skill arbitrage superpower, but also Philippines is also a country with a very high number of English-speaking people and very interesting here. So anyway, so let's get started about our -- like about our analyst call. Please, you feel free to share your questions in the chat. The chat, I believe, is open for everyone. Anubhav, is it open for everyone, the chat?

Yes, I believe everyone.

Great, great. So if you can share the chat -- your questions and like your thoughts, I'm happy to -- I'll take them up not immediately, but as we progress in the call. So obviously, I need to answer the first question is that we haven't been able to do the INR 50 crores, INR 60 crores revenue that we are hoping to do in the last 6 months. And that will be one of the first questions, I'm guessing, will be on many of your minds at what happened, why we didn't achieve our goals, right? And so my -- like what I would say is that we work towards scaling up our sales teams. And while we -- like every time, it was almost like it was within our grasp but, at the same time, we didn't hit it, like something or the other was amiss. And the good thing is that from every attempt we launched something, it's almost like Robert Bruce type. I feel like Robert Bruce now. You know the story of the spider jumping and Robert Bruce going to war, so I'm like going to war on scaling of our sales. And we have had many failed attempts at scaling. But good thing is that every time we learn some critical lessons. I'm happy to share. If you guys are curious about that, happy to share. But the good news is that I feel like we are on the winning foot now currently. I think in this month, in November, we did something like INR 70,00,000 of additional sales from that, we call it, a new sales organization, which is AI-enabled sales organization. We basically hire freshers or even college students, and we train them with AI-enabled process. And they -- so it has kind of removed the requirement of closers, removed the requirement of experienced salespeople. It's very process-driven sales. What I understood primarily was that our earlier scaling attempts were very training dependent and we had to train people a lot. And we have been able to transition to a very different kind of model where it is scaling based on -- like scaling basically based on a process. I can explain the process if there is curiosity, okay? Okay, I see some people are asking in the chat, right? So I'll just answer this. So what we did is that -- so I had -- I have explained this before also, what is the challenge in scaling up our sales team? So for example, let's say, I'm selling a California bar exam program or I'm selling an enrolled agent of the IRS program to accountants or I'm selling an independent director program, whatever it is, right? These are big categories for us. There are four big categories now for us. One is law, obviously, still big. Then, there is U.S. accounting. Then, there is independent director training program. Then, there is AI orchestration, business transformation, AI orchestration. And finally, it's basically remote work for women. That's a massive category. We have added one more category, research automation, research and academic writing automation coming up in a big way. So these are the 5 big categories right now we have. Now -- so, let's say I'm trying to sell any of these programs. These are complicated programs. These are not things that people are not automatically looking at doing. Nobody -- a lawyer in India is not thinking, I will give California bar exam, solicitor qualification exam, or somebody who's an accountant is not thinking or a CA not thinking that I want to do U.S. accounting, U.S. tax or a corporate finance in the U.S. They are not thinking like this. But we have to educate them. And if we effectively educate them, then they buy. Now, the caller is a very critical -- plays a very critical role. So now imagine that you have to train a caller into this, it takes a lot of effort, like -- so imagine I have to -- like imagine somebody was selling a joint entrance coaching program or like a bank product or a banking or finance product, and I hired that person, good closer. And then, I'm trying to train that person into how they can sell one of my programs, right? And this is what has always been a huge, huge problem for me, and we have always struggled with this. And how do I train this person, okay? So -- 1 second. So that has been -- always been our problem, right? And like every time when we tried to train people, even if we successfully trained them, like the success rate was low. Even if we train them, they will not -- I mean, we faced a lot of different programs -- problems. How we solved it is that, first of all, we started hiring freshers, who have no previous background in sales, and then, we told them, you don't have to do any sales. You have to do only counseling. And these people are basically -- there are 2 calls, like usually, there are 2 calls step by step. So first call is a pain point discovery and goal-setting call, and this is followed by a roadmap call. The first call, the pain point discovery and goal setting, we're able to train people within 2, 3 weeks. And once that happens, then they make that call, it's usually a 30, 40 minutes call, which results into a JSON script, which is basically an AI-generated transcription. That transcription goes into an AI engine, which is a proprietary invention we have created, right? We are even looking at seeing if we can get a patent on it. And this AI agent basically creates a personalized roadmap based on our course for that lead, that person who's looking to explore, right? Now, the caller is going to study this roadmap, which is usually like a 20-page roadmap, right, a beautiful PDF roadmap. And after you study the roadmap, you go and explain to the lead, and it is so specific and it is such great insights for that individual that the person is wowed. And we are even getting 1:4, 1:5 conversion from this process. Now, then we can hand it over to a caller who is a closer, whose only job is to close or we can send the person into a live event. So this is what we are doing. And we have started doing -- getting initial results that are absolutely stunning. But one thing I cannot do is that I cannot append my entire sales process, which is already running and generating certain revenue, and I cannot sideline that. I have to create a new sales organization. And I have to do it slowly, which is what is taking time right now. But I believe that we'll hit incredible accelerated numbers by January. And we are already seeing initial results. But yes, November, December are usually a little slow for us for various reasons because -- one of the reasons is that ad costs remain very high during this period because of Black Friday and Diwali and Dasehra and then Cyber Monday, ad costs are much higher at this time. And that's okay. We are going to keep working on building up the sales organization and really hit pace from January. And I expect incredible results going forward. All the work finally coming together, we can see it coming together and feel very excited. And truly like the -- I mean, I'm very happy about what we are doing right now. So this is one part of it. Second part of it is that while we are very excited about a lot of different markets, we have been really working very hard on creating new courses the last 1 year. We launched in a lot of new categories. But because our distribution wasn't happening as fast and we are not able to scale our distribution as fast, the results of that you will not see immediately. But you will see as we scale up our sales process. Now, this will really come into play, and this will really benefit us going forward like -- again, like very exciting times ahead for us because of this reason. So now, basically, we had to also prioritize, like -- so the prioritization was that we really worked very hard on sales process innovation, making sure it's really efficient. We could not scale an inefficient system, right? So that took a lot of time for us. Then obviously, the community thing is working really, really great. So if you have gone through our annual report, we had talked a lot about the communities that we are building. We are seeing incredible conversion in our communities right now. We are spending more and more on our communities rather than boot camps. And the ROAS has doubled. This month, my community ROAS is 2x of what I was doing with boot camp. So my entire numbers are going to change like as we scale up. Obviously, we cannot stop our boot camps. It is -- gets a lot of our revenues currently. But over time, we are going to replace more of the boot camps with the communities which are doing much better. ROAS-wise, stability-wise, predictability-wise, it's just brilliant. So that's what we are focusing on right now. And in these 6 months, you will see those results materializing in our top line as well as on our bottom line. One more thing that I'm very proud of that we achieved in the last 6 months is that we did fabulous work on automation in our company. On the operational side, on the course delivery side, we have done incredible stuff. I will try to demo it sometimes. So basically, what is happening, for example -- one example I will share with you, right? So for example, let's say that I am actually trying to, let's say, think of like an incoming support email. So somebody sends an email on our support and says that, you know what, I need help with my assignment. Now, earlier, there will be a human being who will call and set up everything, set up a call, go on the call, understand what is the problem. Now, we can do a lot of this with AI. So AI can actually see the previous conversations, take that context, and then, create a reply and maybe even ask certain questions which get further information. Basically, the human intervention is reducing in a great deal without compromising the experience of the student. Not only that, we realized that there is a lot of scope for innovation in the course delivery itself. So we have been working very hard on the technology side on how we deliver our courses. So, for example, imagine that you log into your learning management system, in your account, in your skill arbitrage account, LawSikho account. And what do you see now? Now you see that, okay, here are all these chapters, here are live classes that have happened, recording of past classes. You can see a future class that is upcoming, all of that, right, which is fine, which is how traditionally an online course will be when you log in. But what it is going to be in the future, when I hope that we can launch something like this by March, we've been working really hard on this, is that first, it is about your goal. So when you join a course, you have a certain goal. So, let's say, you have joined California bar exam course, then your goal is that I want to crack this exam. Or if you have joined with the goal that I want to learn U.S. accounting and land my first U.S. client, this could be your goal. Or it could be that, okay, I want to land a Big 4 job, whatever it is, right? So I want to clear the enrolled agent exam and land a job with the Big 4. So okay. So whatever, it's a goal. You say the goal to the AI, and then, AI asks you questions. So anyway, we have -- when we are calling you in the lead stage, we're also generating a roadmap for you. That roadmap can be pushed into your LMS. But not only that, you can further refine. Now that you have joined our course, AI asks you more questions and help you refine your roadmap, okay, this is going to be my roadmap for the next 6 months. Accordingly, you are given daily tasks by the system. So you are assigning some cards that this is your card. And there are different types of cards. One type of card is your -- like these are your assignments. You need to do these assignments for your course. You need to read these chapters. But also outreach. So for example, here is the outreach that you need to do or here is a task for your personal brand building. Here is a task that you go on your Upwork and fix it. And these processes are also getting automated, right? So, for example, reviewing your LinkedIn, reviewing your Upwork profile and telling you why you are not landing a client. So somebody comes and says, you know what, I have been on Upwork, I have sent 20, 30 applications, but no, I'm not getting any response. So I will have an AI agent, which will actually go through the profile of the -- Upwork profile, will also review their proposals, will review their like -- how late they're applying and so on. There are certain parameters, and we will be able to coach the person. And we are seeing that even experimentally that the cost of producing a human coach with this level of knowledge and skills to help our students is very difficult, very difficult to retain that person. But when you are able to build this with AI, it's just incredible, right? And experimentally, we are able to do it. We are now building a system, which comes together and actually makes this happen. So this is also something we're very proud of. And once we launch this, it will be a game-changer. I am not aware of any company in the up-skilling space who have worked or built something like this or even like -- barely like -- even anywhere close to building technology like this. So that itself will be a phenomenal outcome once we build this out. And of course, we have been spending a lot of effort, money, management bandwidth going towards these technologies that we think that this is our best shot at future scaling up. Obviously, we have to balance our -- we'll be careful with how much cash we have in the bank. We have enough cash in the bank, nothing to worry about. But at the same time, we see that these are the opportunities that AI have created. And we have, I believe, justifiably invested towards those technologies, and they are going to pay us dividends in the coming months and coming years for achieving the exponential growth that we want to achieve, right? So this is one part of it. Then, there is a couple of other technology that we have launched. So you remember that we had this LawSikho opportunity portal. LawSikho opportunity portal has been doing phenomenally well. We are getting about 1.5 lakh users per month, and I think, it will even grow much further. It has gone into that zone where there's a virtual -- like a virtuous cycle of people using it. Because more people are using, more jobs are coming, and more jobs -- and it is free for both sides, right? Even the people who want to post a job and the people who want to apply, for them it's free. Not only that, we have also built an AI system where the jobs and the applicants are matched by the AI. So instead of seeing all the jobs, you will see the jobs which are actually relevant for you based on your CV that you have uploaded or the profile that you've uploaded. The system will start pulling the kind of jobs that would be relevant for you, and you will be a good applicant for them. So these kind of things, we think, will go a long way. We also launched a platform called SkillArbitrage Jobs. So LawSikho opportunities is just LawSikho, right? So we thought that this is great, we can use this technology why only in law, but we can do it across brands, like across domains, right? So we launched skillarbitragejobs.com. You can go and check this out right now, this job platform. Obviously, it's not scaled up yet. It will take time to scale up. But we are very proud of the kind of work we are doing here. These things will not pay money to us immediately, but it's a very long term -- like long term, this will really seal our position in the market because if the job seekers are on our platform, if the employers are on our platform, even we are not charging money right now from this, we are -- it puts us in a really good position because we have data from both sides as a course provider and as a course creator. So this will really be amazing. We launched Hello Paralegal also. Hello Paralegal is what we envisage as our services marketplace in the paralegal. So we'll target the U.K. and U.S. market. But to be very honest, we haven't been able to do a lot of work on this. We launched a platform. We have some business from it, but it's not a lot. And we are not doing much to scale it up yet because our management bandwidth is absolutely choked with what we are currently doing on scaling up the courses sales part, right? But once that happens, it is our plan that I will start spending more time in the U.S. trying to get those businesses and trying to scale up these verticals, especially Hello Paralegal. Okay. There's also Accio Finance, which is Hello Paralegal, but on the finance side, trying to get services export work from the U.S. on the finance side, okay? There are other things that have happened, like this year in platforms like Upwork and Fiverr, our students have absolutely taken over. Like if you go to Upwork, it shows you top 10 in different categories in law, in accounting, and you will see that all of them are our students. You can just see the name, and you can Google. Like, let's say, it's Maggie. So you search Maggie in LawSikho, you will find that person is a LawSikho student. Or it's like, let's say, this person is doing accounting and their name is Ratan, you search Ratan, SkillArbitrage, you will find that Ratan is a SkillArbitrage student. So our students have done phenomenally well. For the first time, 2 students crossed $200,000 income from Upwork. So our students are doing really, really well. Fabulous, absolutely. We are stunned by this, right? But yes, we have to solve our -- we have to make sure that our students are rocking all the global platforms, that's great, but they're also on our platforms rather than somebody else's platform. And that remains to be solved. But I think we want to go after the low-hanging fruit of scaling our core sales first before we go after that. But I fully recognize the opportunity of services export. Many of our advisers, many of our shareholders have told us that, Ramanuj, you are just stuck with core sales, but you really need to focus on the services export part because that is like by a factor of 100 a bigger opportunity, right? So managed service place. We don't have to build an Upwork. It's more like Toptal, right? We need to think how do we build Toptal, but for U.S. accounting, for paralegal work, for corporate finance work. That's what is going to really -- that will be the biggest opportunity for us. But yes, like I will admit that we are not able to do justice to those opportunities right now. I am just very focused on -- I feel that we are so close to cracking the sales problem that I don't want to divide my attention on anything else. So let's hope that in the next earning call, I can tell you differently, but it does look like that, like I believe we are very, very close. So that's one part. Then -- so we have some numbers I have in front of me. So -- yes, so -- I mean, the other great news that I have is on the university front. We applied in Arizona for our university. There are 2 stages, okay? So there's a pre-application where you reach out, submit an application with your business name and all of that, your taxation number and all of that and say that we intend to set up a higher education institution degree-granting in the state of Arizona. So we did that application. And it got approved with some recommendations from the regulator. So what are those? So for example, you are told that, do not call yourself a university, call yourself an institute. So we decided Institute of Arizona for the time being, like this is not -- we can review this in 1 year, 2 years, and we can -- depending on your performance, we can allow yourself to call you an university. But for the time being, we are not very keen. But you can launch your online MBA program and you have to apply. And they also advised us that don't apply for many MBA specializations at once, start with finite number and so on. So we also got our -- like how do we -- so we are looking to launch our program, which is very unique. So it will focus on the fourth industrial revolution. It will focus on things like tokenization and the AI economy, how it's going to change and an MBA focused on that with a specialization in AI orchestration and business automation, right? We think there's a big opportunity for that, but it's a very different kind of. So we got feedback on what we can do and to what extent we can innovate and what is not allowed, right? So we are now fixing our syllabus and everything. And we hope that -- we have been given 2 dates, one in January and one in February. There are 2 meetings of the Higher Education Board in Arizona. And I hope that our application, the final application will come up in one of those. Every month, there's a meeting, though. But we will either make the January date or the February date. And once we receive our approval, then we'll have the green light. So we are applying for a bunch of certification programs. And also, we're applying for a certification program with -- sorry, an online MBA program, and maybe not one, maybe more than one disciplines, right, but at least one discipline in AI orchestration and business automation. So this is where we are. And definitely, it's looking -- like we have done a lot of work over the last 1 year for this university. Before you can go, you have to do a lot of paperwork, you have to prepare your courses, you have to course your course syllabus. Once we get the approval, it will be an absolute amazing opportunity, like selling in the U.S. is one thing, but our Indian course ARPU will go up a lot. We'll be able to upsell a lot of these programs. And that will be absolutely fantastic for our topline as well as bottom line. So this is what we're looking at, absolute game-changer. Let's say that result may not hit because -- by March, but definitely, in the next 6 months, we'll start seeing that impact. And also, we will be selling in the U.S. for sure, but forget that we'll be able to sell it in India also, so our existing courses. In the same line, we had a tie-up with IIT Roorkee. I know this is not -- I don't think this was disclosed in the stock exchange. We didn't do any PR around it. But we had a tie-up with iHUB, which is iHUB DivyaSampark set up by the Central Government Department of Science and Technology with IIT Roorkee. And we signed MoUs to launch certifications. So what will happen is that in some of our top-selling programs, we can offer a top-up IIT Roorkee certification with iHUB, right? And the students will get to have an immersion program in IIT Roorkee. They'll get certified by IIT Roorkee iHUB. And they'll be able to even attend the like live classes in IIT Roorkee, and they'll get like alumni status and even ID card from IIT Roorkee during that 6 months program. So we are seeing a great uptick, like so for example, we are selling a program for, let's say, INR 65,000, suddenly we can do a top-up and sell it for INR 1,00,000-plus kind of ticket size. We have to pay IIT Roorkee a part of this revenue, of course, and -- but that's doing great, like that's another thing that I'm very upbeat about that will reflect in the next 6 months. But that also tells me that once we have our degree-granting university in place in the U.S., and given that our focus on the U.S. market, we are basically telling our students that you do -- you target the U.S. market, you go there, sell your services there, whether it's law, whether it's something else. Now, they'll be able to obtain a U.S.-recognized degree and even certification, diploma programs. That will go a very long way in helping our students in establishing credibility in the U.S. market as well as for us in growing the average revenue per user in a big way. So I hope to double our average revenue per user by -- once this university thing is done, right, in India. And obviously, in the U.S., it's a very different ARPU that we'll be looking at. So these are the good news. Did I miss any other good news? Let me just quickly check. So I believe that we will really hit the accelerated kind of revenues that we failed to hit so far from January. So that would impact our results in this current 6 months in the second half. We are looking at like this AI-based sales training, AI-based sales process will be fully rolled out. So our entire team will be way more efficient than it is today. Sales efficiency per head will go up in a big way. AI learning personalization rollout will be a game changer, especially in the -- like in a way, I would say it creates a massive, massive competitive advantage with all our -- especially in our test prep category because nobody else has this. But what I'm really looking at -- this is a short-term thing in the next 6 months, but what I'm really looking at is that I want to -- I mean, I'll just give you an example, okay? I don't know if this will make -- I mean, I'm trying to think of an alibi, okay? I don't want to name the company, but it's a company which works in robotics. And what they have is basically a robotics kit, which is -- which nobody has been able to copy. The Chinese hasn't been able to copy it. The Japanese hasn't been able to copy it. And it's an Indian company, okay? And I have seen this company closely. And they basically were -- so essentially, any school, any college, any coaching center who wants to run their own robotics program has to buy this kit. There's a kit. There's a software suite, everything. There's a reading material, everything. And they sell it for, let's say, INR 50,000. And then, the person who buys can upsell it for any price, right? And it cannot -- they do not allow any white labeling. This is great for me. This is what I want to do. This is -- and this company was able to rapidly scale into 30 countries in 1 year, right? And my weakness today -- so for example, if, let's say, an Indian university comes and says, Ramanuj, I want to bundle your solicitor qualification exam program with my LLM program or I want to bundle with my BCom or BBA program, your enrolled agent IRS program or your CPA program. This is great on theory. But if I give it to them -- I have done this before with one of the top 10 universities in India, okay? So what happened there? Like let's take the name also, I don't mind. So KIIT, KIIT University, many years back, they said that Ramanuj, we want you to improve the placement numbers of our students, right, in the law department. This is the beginning of LawSikho, by the way, very early, 2018-'19. And I said, okay, that's great. They will pay me INR 20,00,000, fantastic. Okay. So I take up the project. And then, I go and improve their placement by 30% in 1 year, right? I put -- I deploy my employees in their campus, we walk with them. We do live online classes. We do them coaching and everything, and there's a 30% improvement in the placement. Very good. They are very happy and everything. Then, what happens? The teachers say that we don't want to renew your program. And I went and spoke to the Vice. What happened? Why are you not renewing? They're saying that our teachers are saying that whatever you are doing, we can also do, why pay you INR 20,00,000? And they could not improve the placement, by the way. Their placement crashed next year. Like it was not as good as when we were working with them. But the teachers are closer to the decision-makers than we are. So I realize that we are replaceable, as if we work with universities, universities don't want to pay us. Even if they pay us 1 time, 2x, it's not sustainable. So I need leverage. So what will be the leverage? So these 3 things are my leverage. One, I control the job platform. That's why I'm so big on job platforms, right? So I control the job platforms in my area of interest. I can give the students work. I can give them practical exposure that the university cannot recreate. Second, I have the course, obviously, and the teachers that is still they can recreate, but I have that. But the AI-driven delivery mechanism, they do not have. So this entire -- if the students really like working on my AI-driven platform where they are getting to learn and they have a much better experience, it's much better than a classroom experience, right? And that's AI-driven. So AI-enabled process. The university wouldn't be able to copy. The third thing is my -- I have a U.S. university certification, which this university cannot copy. So I can go to even a local coaching center or a university and upsell my program. So imagine there's a CA -- there are CA coaching centers in India with thousands of students, okay? I can go and convince them that, look, I am giving you the U.S. university certification. I am giving you the -- this AI-driven thing that you do not have otherwise. I am also giving you basically like the job platform, I can place the students. So this trio together is so powerful that it cannot be copied by my franchises. And if I do that, I can scale at -- like across the world very fast. So I want to hit this trinity, holy trinity for our business, right? Once I hit this, we will be scaling at an incredible pace. I will not be dependent on our own sales bandwidth, right? And this is what I truly want to achieve going forward. And I think right now, we are putting the building blocks together for that future exponential growth is what I will say. Of course, I -- we have invested a lot in this future thinking that we will be able to finally hit that kind of growth. And of course, I know as investors, many of you will worry about our short-term growth, like I'm guilty I haven't been able to deliver that growth, and it is entirely my fault in the last 6 months. Definitely, we've not hit the numbers we would like to see. But going forward, that's the plan, right? So this has been a strategic trade-off, but we tried to invest in both sides, right? So this is the story basically that how things have played out in the last 6 months. But definitely, we hope for much better outcomes going forward. Okay. So that was that, that was my basic presentation and happy to take questions at this time, right? Anubhav, have I covered most of the things?

Yes. Pretty much. So what we can do is, I can read out the question that shareholders have written there on the chat window. You can probably comment on that.

So Praneeth wanted to know about the split of revenue between LawSikho and SkillArbitrage.

LawSikho is doing about 30%. So basically, what has happened is that we have moved a lot of our boot camps towards SkillArbitrage because we were able to do bigger boot camps with SkillArbitrage and not so much with LawSikho. But the community thing is really working very well with LawSikho. So this will keep fluctuating over the next, I would say, 6 months. We really don't know. This -- don't read too much into how much is in LawSikho and SkillArbitrage. For us, it's the same business in just 2 different brands, right? What really matters to us here is -- so when you are -- so if boot camp is the only way. So for example -- I'll give you an example, right? If I do a boot camp on, let's say, IP law, okay? I can do a sale of INR 30,00,000. But if I do a boot camp -- the same boot camp slot I use for academic research and writing automation, then I'm doing an INR 70,00,000. So although this is, otherwise, a profitable category, I cannot do that boot camp, right? So I need to find other sales channels. Either it has to be a community for me, preferably community, right? So I'll give you an example. Criminal litigation is a category we never succeeded with boot camp because the size of the audience or the kind of audience that we get, it -- we could not sell through a boot camp. But we are doing fabulously well when we are selling to them through a community. But yes, we don't have as many communities yet as we have boot camps. So we have to build out those teams over the next 3 to 6 months. And then, we'll have a lot more communities than we have today. And also, we have to build up those sales teams to support those communities. So that is all going on right now, and we will keep getting a lot of results. So we look at like where is the ROAS the best, where is the conversion the best, also where we have very good community managers and experts and teachers. So based on that, it is a fluctuating and fluid decision. I hope that explains this, the revenue split conversation.

Yes. Another query from Praneeth. He wanted to understand the change in unit economics of sales, and he also wanted to understand how the integration of AI was happening with the new sales organization.

So because it is very fluctuating -- I'll give you a few -- so I don't know how it will look at a fully scaled-up thing. But okay, I will tell you some of the small experiments we have run and the results we have seen, okay? So we deployed 5 trainee callers over 48 hours to make calls, AI-enabled calls on our leads to send them into a boot camp, okay, in independent director boot camp. We were able to send 48 or 50, I don't exactly remember the number, 51, maybe, I'm just -- people into the boot camp and 18 of them bought in the boot camp. Now, this is an incredible number. So if I extrapolate this number, so what if I had made 6,000 calls instead of, let's say, 51 calls, right, then would I be able to send, let's say -- would I be able to send at least 3,000 extra people into my boot camp where I was getting only 1,000 currently? And then, will my revenue from that boot camp, which -- where I did, let's say, INR 90,00,000 revenue from that one boot camp, could I have done an INR 2 crore or INR 3 crore number? Seems possible, but we have to figure it out. So I don't know yet. And will this number -- for example, the experiment I told you. So first, we do a small experiment. Now, we are trying to scale it up, that we're going to call 6,000 people this month and that AI-enabled call, and I will see if I am able to drive 2,000 or 3,000 people into this month's independent director boot camp and what happens when we do. So this is one thing that we are learning. And then another number I'll tell you, which is in this month, we did -- we hit a number of 300 counseling per day in the independent director team. And the new sales organization we are building, we are initially building an independent director training program. And next, we're going to build it in our U.S. accounting program because these are our highest converting programs, okay, U.S. accounting and enroll agent exam. Now, what we are doing is that we hit 300 counseling per day 5 days per week, right? So calculate what is, like it's like we are going to do enormous number of counselings this month, right? And we did in November, in fact. And we are able to close around 100 sales last month in November, right, from this process. And we realized that our bottleneck is that we don't have enough closer. But if we send them into the boot camp, that solves the problem. So we are still in the process of discovering this. But the fact that we were able to do around INR 60,00,000 of -- INR 60,00,000 to INR 70,00,000 of new sales from this process last month, right? I haven't got the final numbers yet, just closed the month yesterday, right? But it's very promising. And I'm very confident that given how early the process has been, next month, I can do much better. Maybe I can grow this by at least 50%, 60%, if not 100%. We'll try to grow at 100%. And this is only the new sales part, right? The old sales organization remains as it is. I don't want to touch it. Last time, I tried to touch it with a new process, everything crashes, right? So now this time, we are doing it very carefully. We are trying to keep the previous processes, previous sales organization untouched, building a separate new sales organization. And therefore, it is rather slow. So that's where we are. I see a question from Pratik, there are any plans for the promoter and promoter group to buy shares from the open market to inspire more confidence among shareholders? The buying so far has been miniscule. I know. So last time Abhyudaya -- I think I have bought 12 lakhs of shares from the open market in the last 6 months, Abhyudaya bought 10 lakhs. And our families also bought a few lakhs. So this time, I mean, we expect to do similar kind of buying in these 6 months as well. So I cannot promise that we are going to do more, but we are looking to do somewhere in the same range. Basically, I'll explain. See, we are not HNIs. We are -- essentially, we have jobs. I draw a salary of INR 3,00,000 something every month, okay? And I save that money and I buy shares into my own company from the open market, and we'll continue to do that. Maybe I have some shares in other companies, I'll sell them and buy some. But I plan to buy about 10 lakhs and Abhyudaya will buy 10 lakhs. This we know for sure. Our families are also going to buy some more.

So Nirman has a query on the intangible asset. He says the intangible asset on the balance sheet of the company has increased by INR 47 crores in the last 2 days. What are we investing such large amounts in? And his query is mainly because he believes that such a large amount for a company of this size, especially one with a low capital business model.

Sure. So see, we have been investing very heavily in AI technology. And we have 50 people -- more than 60 people technology team. And these are AI engineers, which we have to pay them high salaries. And we have been working very hard on that. Not only that, when you are building AI technology, it's not just the engineers. You have to give them subject matter experts. So if you are building a sales team, right, sales AI, it is not only the engineer, you need to give them actual people who are sales experts to also build that. So we have been spending a lot of our time, energy and money into that place. So naturally, all of that gets classified as intellectual property and goes into intangible assets. Same thing for courses. We have created enormous amount of resources, enormous amount of all of that. So communities also, they are also some kind of assets, right, because they create recurring revenue. So that is where -- I mean, we have a full list, which is there. I believe we have shared a lot about this in our annual report. If you want, we can give a further list of intangible assets that we have created. But this is the nature of the intangible assets. I believe you can even understand it from our -- maybe not, like exactly what is the nature of that asset we can share, like all the software we have created, all the courses we have created, how many chapters we have created, how many quizzes we have created. It's enormous. And all of these we'll be using over the upcoming years. And this is what puts our -- like puts us at the position that we are in, that we are absolutely peerless in terms of content, in terms of research, in terms of technology, in all the areas where we're operating. And that is -- I hope that is going to really pay dividends in the years to come. One choice was to keep sailing the same courses without all this technology, without all this innovation, without all these new courses, that would be a shortsighted action in our view. So we have taken a longer-term view, and we had -- we raised money from the IPO for that, right, that we'll be investing in that. So that is what we have done. And we have still enough money in the bank. There's nothing to worry about.

Tejash Thakkar has a query. Please explain the business of your company in business terms, not much in technical. For example, who uses the LawSikho? Example, can only a person clearing LLB uses it or anyone can use it? You already mentioned some of your students have become judges. Explain what role does the company play in it and if he wants the same for SkillArbitrage...

Okay. So there are -- like I said, in LawSikho, it is law students and lawyers. Our main target are lawyers with at least 4, 5 years of experience. They are our biggest buyers, okay? They find the course, price and everything more suitable for them. They are more interested. That is in LawSikho category. In SkillArbitrage also, the professionals who have 4, 5 years of experience, in some cases, 20 years of experience, they buy our program, right? And like -- so let's take the biggest categories. Like so -- obviously, test prep in law, what you're talking about becoming a judge, so that will be a final year law student or a law graduate with 1 or 2 years of experience, now 3 years of experience, those are the people. So it is mandatory now in judges that you have to have 3 years of experience as a lawyer before you can apply to be a judge. So those are the people. But then there are other courses. For example, Supreme Court AOR exam. So there, average people with 7, 8 years of experience will try to become a Supreme Court AOR. So we are leaders in those spaces also. But, let's say, somebody who wants to do U.S. accounting, who does U.S. accounting, a chartered accountant or somebody who knows tallying an account and earning INR 30,000, INR 40,000 per month, INR 50,000 per month, but not able to cross INR 50,000. Now, if they start crossing the -- like if they clear the Enrolled Agent exam, if they become a CPA, then they can earn enormously more. They can earn INR 1,00,000 plus every month, very easily if you cleared the Enrolled Agent exam today. There are 42,000, I last checked. There were Enrolled Agents in the world. So if you become an Enrolled Agent or a -- if you become an Enrolled Agent, you will instantly get an INR 1,00,000 plus per month Big 4 job in India or you can get a GCC job, right, global capacity center job for a big large MNC. There you will get paid INR 1,50,000 per month. You can get -- because you are a U.S. licensed federal tax agent. There are very few of them in the world. So -- and it's an exam you can crack in 3 to 6 months. So we help you to crack that exam. So that is another place where we are doing very well. Then, Independent Director exam, all -- like, in India, all senior professionals after a level, they want to become an independent director or they want to sit in the boardroom. So they want to -- even if not as an independent director, then as an executive director or nonexecutive director or whatever it is, right? Now, there were training programs by IIMs, by KPMG for this INR 5,00,000, INR 4,00,000. Now, we are able to replace them. So we are winning the battle with them in a big way, right? So we have become the top player in that market. We are taking more market share by the day. And now, we have tied up with IIT Roorkee to offer a certification, that iHUB DivyaSampark IIT Roorkee program, where we are able to offer a certification. One is our course, but they can top up that course with that high -- like if you have IIT certification, it sounds great, right? In -- like it will be a certification in ESG and corporate governance, right? So it's fabulous. So they are getting that same IIM level certification also. So this will do even better. We'll do even better in this category going forward. This was the only missing piece that we are offering a very good course, very good success rate, very good even support in placement, but we did not have that IIM or IIT tag. Now, we have added that. And that is coming at a very low cost. So IIM is charging INR 500,000, INR 4,00,000, we are charging. Our program is INR 66,000 plus, say, INR 40,000 more for the IIT Roorkee if they want to upgrade it to the IIT Roorkee certification. So it's very affordable also. So we are dominating in terms of course, in terms of quality, in terms of results and in terms of price. So -- yes, so absolutely upending that market. So that's another market. Then, we discovered a very good market, which is research automation. So imagine that you're a PhD or an MSc or a school teacher with MSc, college professor, your career depends on publishing more, right? You have to publish in good journals, in science, in social science, in humanities, any academic career. So we started helping those people offering them a course where they can do AI-driven automated research, data collection, data analysis and publish in top journals across the world. Not only that, they can get freelance work with U.S. professors, U.S. think tanks, U.S. research and development labs, right? So one of our students, for example, who's an IIT Chennai Research Associate, she landed a job, like a remote job with German professors, where she's getting paid $2,000 per month to do research, right? And we have been able to do that. So that's doing really good. In your last call, you gave a demo for an AI tool that you are using to monitor the quality of calls and also to predict success rate. Why don't you plan to monetize it? I do plan to monetize it, but it's a new line of business. It's a B2B business. So I want to first crack my own sales. It will be a shame if I first don't crack my own sales and get distracted to sell it somewhere else. We will. This is a unique software. We are going to apply for patent for it, and we are going to start selling it also, like maybe not even one, multiple patents are in order for this. By the way, we are also emerging as one of the top patent training organization, right? We are doing good numbers in patent also. This will be a very big category, again, depending on our sales bandwidth, but we are doing very well. Like a lot of the people who are becoming patent agents from India, patent analysts from India, they are our students. Just like we have dominated law and independent director, we are going to dominate patent as well. Do you think you have enough cash in bank to be able to execute on all the various growth drivers that you have enlisted? Yes. So that's the thing, like till now, we had enough money, but I'm going to be more conservative going forward and -- but a lot of the work I'm talking about, we have already done. So -- I mean, I don't see a lot of cash burn going forward for us. And if we make money, then we will speed up on all those things. So for example, we launched Hello Paralegal, but we are not going all gun blazing on it yet because we want to first have enough cash flow to support that. So we will be prudent and conservative going forward on spending on new initiatives.

There is a question from Praneeth. We have been continuously investing in new AI products. Till when will these new investments continue? Another query from him. Our cash balance has been declining drastically over the last 1.5 years. How will this affect operations and investment in courses of the company?

So we have -- till now, we had the room to play with, like so we have done it. But going forward, we'll be more cautious. So I think the AI stuff that we have been trying to build will be done by March. Like the last -- so the last piece of the puzzle is the AI delivery mechanism. So I believe by March, we'll do a lot of it already. And once it is done, so -- once that platform is done, we will make it a part of our application in the U.S. university. And also, we have invested in the U.S. university, right? We spent almost around INR 7,00,000, INR 80,00,000 towards building up that university and creating that course material, and we spent on the consultant who's helping us set up that, all of that. So I think a lot of that is also already done. So going forward -- I think we have already seen most of that cash burn that we are planning. And going forward, I will very cautiously look at the cash flow we are having from our courses and then only invest in these things.

So what is the management plan to solve the bottleneck of management bandwidth?

What can I say? Like this is probably one of the hardest things that we face. So there are a few things that I am -- I mean, it's an everyday battle to create new managers, hire the right people. I don't have any easy answer for this, but we have been working very hard at nurturing talent, and we are -- I mean, we are seeing -- one idea that we have, and we want to experiment with it maybe a few months down the line is like recruiting a batch of management cadre, like really smart, versatile people and like hire them and deploy them in different parts of the company. And maybe like every 6 months hiring 20 such people and training them for -- in a management cadre over there. We have -- this is an idea we have toyed with, haven't implemented yet. Let's see how that plays out. But yes, that definitely has been a challenge for us.

Pratik has a query. Do you think you have enough cash in the bank to be able to execute...

I answered this question. I see a follow-up question. In the prudent cash burn scenario, which streams are nonnegotiable? Will you go slow on your U.S. university pursuit in case you are unable to scale up your new sales org as per plan? Not -- so the university spend is done in terms of -- we don't have much more spend left to launch the university and get our approvals. Now, where I will go slow is selling -- like building up the funnels and selling in the U.S., I will go very slow on that. But I will not go slow on selling the same certification in India because this is how it works. Say, for example, I sold somebody a program in -- let's say, it's an Enrolled Agent program, right, and they are already doing -- or let's say, data privacy, they are doing, right? So now, I can sell them an MBA program in data privacy or cybersecurity or like AI orchestration. So there are people who have -- who are doing their virtual assistant program or a founder's office program with us in our AI orchestration business automation program, they're paying INR 60,000 to us and doing the program. Now, what happens is that I tell them, you know what, you can now get an U.S. MBA program and you have to pay me, let's say, INR 2,00,000 extra for that. And that is a very easy sale for me, the very easy upsell for a person who's already having U.S. clients, looking at U.S. jobs, U.S. remote jobs, global capacity center jobs. They will upgrade to that MBA very easily. And I will increase my average revenue per user without, so that business, I'm not going to slow down on, right? So I know that I anyway have in my hands, whether I start selling in the U.S. or not. And by that time, my U.S. balance sheet will look better if I do this from India. So that's something that I'm counting on. And then, I will -- as and when, I'll keep my small experiments running for U.S. funnels. And if I find a BNPL partner in the U.S., we can do it very fast, very rapidly. How many boot camps are we able to conduct now? 8 boot camps per month, that is like every weekend 2 boot camps. But I am looking to reduce it to 4 to 6 as the number of communities go up because communities have much better ROAS, right, like return on ad spend. But I cannot reduce it until the community starts scaling up, right? That's what it is.

Pratik wanted, any comment on the resignation of key core team members and co-founders? That did seem not so unlikely...

I have one co-founder who has resigned. And -- so there are 2 things, like he was retiring -- he was approaching his age of retirement. And also, he had concerns. So basically, he achieved one of his key goals, like which was his daughter's marriage. And he was very keen on like kind of retiring and not continuing to work. And given that scenario, like we were requesting him to hold on for some time, 1 or 2 years and so on. He was a tech co-founder. But the thing is that he left, and our tech team is still going very well. It's a very strong team. We haven't suffered any major losses. But you have to understand, like, see, there are co-founders who started as employees and were elevated to the co-founder position. They have done a great job over time. But even some of the -- like in this case, somebody wants to retire, I think it is their right. We cannot -- although we wish that he didn't, but it happened. So I can only say that it is a loss to us, like we started together at -- from the beginning of the company. Even he was not at the co-founder at that time, but we recognized his contribution and given him the status later. But also, I think he has reached that age of retirement, close to 60, and really didn't want to continue, found it very stressful. And after achieving his financial goals kind of, he wanted to take a backseat. And that's what it is.

There is a query from [indiscernible] on migrating to main Board. So he wants your thoughts on that since we are eligible in 16, 17 months.

I will look forward to your advice on that. I am -- I believe that our share price has also not done justice, like it is almost 2x of our -- 2x, 2.3x of our revenue, which is, I think, very low. And so I think that's also because we are on the SME Board, which has a lot of -- not -- the depth of investors is not the same. And we definitely hope to migrate to the main board. All things permitting, we do want to do that. I mean -- I think that will be a good thing for us. And also, we are expecting very good results. We are hoping for very good results in the next 6 months. So it will kind of like will be a good time also for us, I think so. Yes. Yes, Anubhav.

Yes. He has a few suggestions also. Please provide a note on business.

Please provide a note on the business. What did you say, Anubhav? I didn't catch that.

So he wanted a presentation on the half yearly result. And also, he has mentioned that he would prefer that the management is basically giving a quarterly update at least since we are not bound to give quarterly results.

That's fair enough. So okay, I mean, I will try to do that. So -- I mean, I am not basically against it. We'll hope things work out, and I'll try to do. But take your suggestion on board.

Sure, sure. So what we can do right now is that the queries are coming, people can raise hand and can ask. I guess that would be a much better way.

Revenue and margin guidance, internal target. So I think our base case for me is to hit INR 50 crores for the 6 months. That will give us solid ground. And that's -- but that's the base case. I hope that we can do much, much better than that, but I don't want to comment on that. I feel ashamed every time I give a bullish -- this thing now. So let's give a very base case conservative here, definitely hit INR 50 crores. And margin-wise, I think, let's say, our INR 8 crores, INR 10 crores for the 6 months is -- would be -- I consider a good result at an EBITDA level, right? PAT would be less.

So Praneeth wants to ask a question, let me unmute him.

So I was wondering regarding a short-term course, short duration courses. I think we launched Brihaspati.ai with that intention, but I don't think we've been launching many courses. I think we only have 2 at this point of time. So...

Yes. So we are -- same thing, like it's about the management bandwidth because I realized like -- I mean, there is a big, big market for the small-sized courses, right? But it's about where I can give my bandwidth currently. That is the thing. And like I am seeing good traction currently from the large courses. So I want to first crack this and then go to the short courses. And also, on short courses, like a key part of the technology that we are building for short courses is our flash learning app, which is a micro learning app. Now, one version of it is launched on the App Store. Now that it is launched, we can also go gung ho on it, but we have to just wait a little bit, like I'm just too caught up with what we are currently doing to pay a lot of attention to that part of the business. But yes, like -- and even if we do, we want to probably start with, I would say, U.S. maybe where skills after AI may have an even better market. But there are some of the functionalities on the micro learning app that I'm waiting for. It's a working app already. You guys can go and download it, [indiscernible]. And -- but at the same time, I'm looking for like a little more gamification on the platform and certain virality functions before we start really pushing it. Yes, Tejash.

There is one question...

Pratik is asking, are we expecting margin compression? No, we are not expecting a margin compression. This is me being extremely conservative. We are not expecting. Our margins should improve.

Am I audible?

Yes, Tejash, please.

Yes. So you had mentioned that for the first 6 months or maybe a year, we cannot be called as U.S. registered university, we'll be calling an institute. So when you sell your courses...

Institute of technology and management, but it will be a fully accredited MBA program. We can -- we will be authorized to offer degrees, and we can get as many degrees. And we have to keep applying for new -- every time we want to launch a new degree or a certificate program, we'll apply to the Arizona Board. And their usual turnaround time is 1 month to 2 months. So we can launch as many as they will allow. But for the first year -- so they have told us very clearly that, look, we want to be careful. You are a start-up, you're outside the country, we don't want you to enroll a lot of U.S. students and then disappear. So that's a discretion that they can exercise.

No, I get that. So my question was actually, so when you're selling your courses, now instead of selling courses to say that -- first, I'm a student, instead of you telling me that I get a U.S. university degree, you will obviously say I'll get a U.S. institute registration or what, accreditation only.

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. It's not a university, but it gives you degree. So the U.S. doesn't work like that. In U.S., institutes and colleges can give you degrees. In India, only university can give a degree, right? Your certificate can only be -- so I am also university-level higher education degree-granting institute. Only I cannot say I'm a university. There are solutions to that. So for example, we have been speaking to Florida Board also, and they said that you can apply here, we'll give you. But then, it will cost me a little more money. I may do that in 6 months. But those are...

My question -- so Ramanuj, if you allow me just finish my question. So my question really is when you're selling it to people in India, from your experience, does it impact a person saying that, okay, I'm not getting a degree from a university, but from an institute? So I'm just trying to gauge your input on it.

Yes. So it might, it might. I mean, I don't think it will be an insurmountable kind of a challenge. It might -- I mean, it might, but I think we would be able to explain it to our users that it is a fully -- we can show them our recognition from the Arizona Board and everything that we are a fully degree grant. You are getting a valid U.S. degree. Imagine today, if you want to get a U.S. degree, it costs you enormous amounts of money. But anyway, we don't have a better option right now. We have to go with this. But I believe we'll be able to convince our users in India.

So I just hope that we have some plan to mitigate that. That's my only submission.

Fair enough. Fair enough. Yes. Do you think you might need to go for a fundraise to execute on your plans being conservative now just due to the low cash position after doing all the groundwork seems suboptimal? Have you tried approaching any relevant marquee investors with the story and the opportunity? No, really, we haven't gone to any investors. We haven't even considered raising funds at this point. One reason is that our stock price is very low. So we kind of feel bad about raising funds at this time. I hope things will change going forward, and then, we'll reconsider. But I'm not fundamentally against it, but I believe that we have -- we are in a position to improve our cash position with our own cash flow. If I fail to do that, I will go to investors. But I don't think we'll fail on that. So right now, I'm reasonably convinced that we will be able to crack this in the next couple of months. Do we need BNPL partner even if our U.S. university is approved? That's a good question. I do not know for sure. That's a very good question. That is to be found out. So there are -- so I spoke to other such universities. So one good university is -- there's a university in Washington, you guys can check this out. This is a private company out of India called Suraasa. They basically export teachers from India to U.S., and we went with the same consultants, and basically, I met the founder in Dubai and really understood how to set up a university in U.S. as an Indian business, as an Indian EdTech business, right? So he tells me that he's not needing a BNPL partner, and he's able to -- basically, once you're a university, there is enough trust in the U.S. They're selling a $6,000 course, $7,000 -- $6,000 or $7,000 crores. And the U.S. guy will swipe their card directly on the -- like on the $6,000, right? And the conversion into EMI happens on the card itself, and they don't have a BNPL partner, and they did not require a BNPL partner till date. So if that -- I hope that we can recreate that success. But a BNPL partner will always help. Let's say, we double our revenue from here, can you please explain by how this much will -- our expenses will increase? Can you provide our unit economics in more detail? So our delivery cost is about 22%, 23%. And with AI, even that is subject to change. But let's assume that we'll still do, let's say, 23%, 25% even, our -- let's say, our -- so that will remain anyway. Overhead will not increase much. The cost of sales, cost of sales is basically -- right now, the cost of sales is high because 33%, 35% is my -- like the cost of sales. The CAC is 35%, sometimes 37%. That will drastically reduce once I crack this because I will be able to generate more revenue from the same leads. The lead that I was generating for boot camp or community, I will just -- I'm just getting that additional sales from the same number of leads without increasing my ad budget. So -- but the sales caller number will grow. So it will change a little. But let's say, I think a 70% kind of in the additional -- the new sales organization revenue is very profitable, very, very profitable. So that will have a big impact on my bottom line. I don't want to commit to any numbers, but that's sort of what we are working towards. Is Indian revenue reaching a saturation point? Not at all. The only thing reaching a saturation point is how much we can sell with our boot camps. But if we can create new sales channels, which one thing is the sales caller and the other thing is our communities, that is having a much better result, right? So then we will grow. So with 8 boot camps, 2 boot camps every weekend, how much we can sell? We have reached a saturation point on that sadly. So we have to invent the new sales channels. Over how many years do you depreciate the intangible assets, especially software and courses? The obsolescence risk is very high, especially after the advent of GenAI, would you need to go for asset write-offs in future? I don't know the answer to this question, but till now, we are doing like, I think, a 6-year amortization. But will there be write-offs? I hope not, but we haven't seen anything like this happening. How is auto funnel doing? Very bad. We are not -- we haven't been able to crack auto funnel -- I mean, still now. That is the Brihaspati and the skills after AI. We haven't been able to give it time, and we haven't been able to crack it. [ Sadiq Imamji ], very good questions. I really appreciate these questions.

Praneeth seems to ask another question...

Yes. Go ahead, Praneeth.

I just wanted to get your like opinion on like do you want to sell to students beyond India itself? Because like a year ago before the university plan started up, we had those plans of scaling to the U.S. We actually just started doing revenues also. But with U.S. starting, I think we took a backseat. But with the U.S. call, can we just also do other courses also beyond the MBA program itself? So what is your idea on that?

Yes, yes. So we are launching all the -- in all my major categories, I'm launching certificate programs. One I'm launching with IIT Roorkee, one I'm launching with the U.S. university. So what will happen is that my student, apart from buying my course, will get a choice to upgrade it to IIT Roorkee's iHUB certification, DivyaSampark iHUB certification or they can upgrade it to the U.S. university into a certificate program or an MBA program. Both options will be there.

So how are we planning on scaling that particular channel? Because I think university channel, we are figuring it out right now, but this would be a different channel, right, compared...

No, no. It's the same. So what I realized, my hardest sell -- like problem in selling in the U.S., there are 2 things. One is that you don't want to sell unregulated boot camp. It's a gray area. Every state has a different regulation, blah, blah. It's very difficult. Once you have university recognition, it's totally a game-changer how you can sell.

But that's only in the U.S., right? I'm talking about different countries. Is there an opportunity beyond U.S. also, let's say, U.K., Australia, those geographies?

Yes, there are opportunities. But again, then every country has different regulations. And I want to focus on India. There are 2 countries I'm seriously considering. One is Philippines, which is why I'm in Philippines right now. And there is also Malaysia. Why? Because Philippines and Malaysia have a very high English-speaking lawyers to whom I can sell my SQE and NCA and -- which is Canada lawyer and the California Bar Exam program. So that is one reason. Then, also my other SkillArbitrage programs also have a market because these are 2 South Asian markets with very good English-speaking and service export potential. But what I'm increasingly realizing is that there are a lot of challenges in like local markets in terms of not so much -- even if it is not a language problem, I spent 14 days in Thailand. I was trying to see how that works. Thailand is a language problem. I need a local partner. In Philippines, I can possibly experiment without a local partner. But then, for example, I am in talks with a very top management institute who can be my local partner. If they are my local partner, I will absolutely -- it will be just so much easier, right? Plus there are problems in -- I have to set up a local entity, then that entity has to hold the money locally, have to pay taxes, have to hire people to do compliance. It's just too crazy complicated. Nigeria also, right? We are looking at Nigerian market, but they have such currency problems that I cannot get money out of Nigeria even if I run -- so these are complicated things. And what I realized that I need to work with local partners if I want to rapidly scale, which is why I spent some time today explaining why I need -- see, if I just sell my online courses, they'll copy. They'll copy the message, they'll copy the content, and what, I'll fight them in their local court, I will not win. But I need to have those protections. So for example, I need those AI-driven delivery mechanisms, the job platform, the gig platform, the university in the U.S. Once I bundle all of those 3 things, and then, I come to Philippines and tie up with the local partner, then it will be a game-changer. Then, they will just take my thing and run with it instead of trying to copy me. So that's what -- that will happen. I have invested a lot in that. I'm working very hard on that. I'm very serious about that. But it may be 6 months to maybe 12 months away from materializing. Does that answer your question, Praneeth? For example, Philippines people are crazy about a U.S. degree, right? So if I can give them an affordable U.S. degree with a local partner, that's it. Imagine like -- so we combine, let's say, Asian Institute of Management, so Asian Institute of Management is going through some financial problems. They had -- they are, by the way, one of the top management institutes in the -- in Asia, but they have stopped their full-time MBA programs since the COVID. Why? I don't know. But -- so we are trying to see if we can work with them. Then, Arizona Institute of Management Technology, and these 2 combined, imagine the appeal of that in the Philippines market.

So I understand that part of the strategy. So just one more thing. So referring earlier, you told you'll go slow in terms of expanding into the market of, let's say, the U.S. So what do you exactly mean by slow? Because I want to like understand the overall courses in pipeline and like what is the sales strategy...

So for example, how do I build a U.S. process for calling and sales, how many people I hire, how much money I commit month-on-month on the ads? So if I had more money, I would have gone more aggressively. But if I have less money, I will do smaller experiments before scaling, and I'll scale slowly.

So we'll not have a sales team that's going to be -- so who are we selling to it will be the existing sales team itself?

No. So if I want to sell in the U.S., I have sold before, so I know how it works, so you have to hire a U.S. process team in India, okay? So these people speak in U.S. accent. They have -- they are already selling things in the U.S., and they are very different. Their salaries are different, right? So you have to hire that team in India, and then, you have to sell from India. But a better option is to hire a team in Midwest in the U.S., but that will cost more money, right? Then, you can hire people on commission basis also. All of that, then I have to go live in the U.S. to make that process work. So all of that probably we'll do it, but we'll do it rather slowly depending on what cash flow you're making in India. Does that answer your question?

Yes, that does.

There is another question in the chat window from Anay. At what price point are we expecting to launch U.S. MBA program? And how do we expect it to scale up? Like what are our internal guidance regarding it?

$6,000, $7,000, probably $6,000.

Right. So there is another question from [indiscernible]. For sales, have you thought of trying to go for an ad-based model for a few courses while YouTube or something?

Yes, that is the auto funnel model, right? So I -- so you cannot sell only with ads beyond like INR 3,000, INR 4,000, INR 5,000, INR 7,000 max kind of ticket size. So that's your Brihaspati and SkillsAfterAI. Those are the brands, SkillsAfterAI in U.S.A. and Brihaspati in India. But we haven't been able to give it a lot of attention and budget. We have been running small experiments there, which haven't scaled -- which we haven't been able to scale profitably, right? Even if it starts making a profit, we try to scale it, it doesn't work out. So we are still figuring that out.

So what we can do right now is -- I mean, we are already short of time. So if there is any query, we can take 1 or 2 more questions now.

Yes. I can give more time also, I don't mind actually. So Praneeth's question is that how do you double your -- this thing? So once I have the U.S. university, I am confident of doubling my ARPU in India. Like basically, the India money will go into the India company. University will also get an additional revenue by upselling from the Indian guy. There's no other strategy, IIT plus this. These are the 2 strategies. Also, in IIT, in case, we have to pay IIT also. So it's not free. Can you speak about the judiciary test prep team? So judiciary test prep team, so the entire judiciary business for entire India has gone for a toss because of a Supreme Court order that you have to have 3 years of legal experience before you can become a judge. So we have really slowed down on it because what has happened is that the people -- the pool of people who want to prepare for the judiciary exam is suddenly very low, okay? Because earlier you had final year law students and even earlier we used to sell to students who are even earlier, second year, third year, fourth year law students. Now, we can't sell. So we have focused on other exams. So there is, for example, a Supreme Court clerkship exam. So we are focusing a lot on that. We are focusing a lot on UGC NET law. Judiciary, we haven't shut down, but it's -- we are going slow on it. We will crack that with communities eventually. But right now, we are going for a couple of other programs in a bigger way. What is the progress of our initiatives, like service export and manpower export segment, especially when you are facing backlash in U.S. against migration? Have we put it on a back burner for now? So, no, we haven't put it on back burner. It is still going on, and I'm very keen on working on it once I have cracked this -- doubling our sales in India of our courses or at least a very good cash flow from here, then I want to focus on it. I think that's like the greatest opportunity we have. Nothing has changed. In fact, if you make it harder for H-1B people to go to U.S., then that means businesses have more reason to export because it's getting more expensive for them. So I can give you some numbers. For example, there are 300,000 accountants shortage, 3,00,000, there -- like U.S. is short of 3,00,000 accountants. They cannot replace those accountants. 70% of CPAs are going to retire in the next 3, 4, 5 years, right, unless they decide to work beyond 65, 64, which they are unlikely to. They are looking to sell their businesses to somebody who will buy and so on. So it's like you can buy a CPA form for 1x of revenue right now in the U.S., even less, even 0.88x, 0.7x. So those are the situations, right? And what are they going to do? Like how can they stop? If they stop migration, make H-1B expensive, then all that work will just come to India because those guys will have to set up in India, right? Because they don't have the accountants. It's not about the cost. It's about they don't have that person, right? Same thing. Do you know that U.K. banned foreign auditors? They tried to ban foreign auditors and then had to quietly remove that ban because cost went through the -- your economy will stop working if you can't have auditors, if you can't have accountants and you don't have. Kids in the U.S.A. don't want to be an accountant, don't want to be a bookkeeper. So either you import them from Mexico or you import them from somewhere at least, right, from South America or you say -- and they don't have that many talented accountants, bookkeepers. They have to send it to India. So that's the situation. It's just that I feel like there's a gold rush happening and I'm not able to participate because we are -- we have to fix our sales situation with our courses. But that's -- truly, that's what it is. And I hope that changes in the next 6 months.

Just last question. You mentioned that the CAC is around 35%, 40% range right now. And you expect it to fall substantially with the introduction of AI products and as your average sale product goes up. Like what do you think will be the good bracket you can get it under or get it to with the existing assets and strategies?

In the next 3 months, I can cut it by 30%, at least.

So expect to come down to 30% on overall from 40% CAC?

Maybe 25% also, maybe less. These are speculations right now. We have to really see how those experiments go. Will your growth offtake of courses be affected if you stop your investment into courses development as planned? In that case, how do you foresee the balance? So I think we have built too many courses. We -- I really need to figure out the sales distribution part of it. We are not even selling all the courses anymore. And in all the courses we have created, our content is still miles ahead of anything in our categories. So right now, that is not a problem. And once we crack sales, we will start reinvesting in our courses. But right now, it is not a necessity. It is not even a requirement of any sorts. So good question, Tejash, right? We are charging now INR 100 for our community and making some money from that. Okay. I don't see any new questions. Have I missed any important question? Please share in the chat.

I guess, there is another question from, Pratik. Will your growth or offtake of courses be affected if you stop your investment in courses?

Yes, I just answered this. The last question.

Yes. There is a question from [ Aryan ]. How long do you think we will take to do sales of INR 150 crores conservatively?

INR 150 crores means basically around INR 12 crores, INR 13 crores per month run rate. So I don't know, like ask me again in 3 months. I don't want to give overly optimistic promises. Ask me in 3 months. But it's eminently achievable from where I'm sitting.

And just one last question, like a little more detail on -- you mentioned that new sales organization, right? Whatever strategies you're implementing, you'll be doing in that and you'll let the old organization be as it is. Could you tell how exactly you bifurcated both of them? So you mentioned that 50 people organization of sales team that you have. Did you divide them? Or what is the -- like how did you overall change the combination?

I am creating -- so the old team is they just function the way they used to function. But I realize that trying to scale this and -- see, either I'm trying to change this, then I have to do radical changes. And if I do radical changes, then it is doing even worse. And it's like everybody is getting nervous, I am getting nervous. So what we are doing is that we are creating a new team entirely, which we keep it in different silos, right? And we are hiring new people and training them. New people, new leaders from scratch, we are building this new sales organization.

So how many do we have in the other team, the new team?

Currently, I think about 70 people are there, including trainees.

Any other question? I mean, one can raise the hand, and we can unmute him, and he can ask a question.

I'm very glad that so many of you are still here after so like what -- how long has it been?

Around 140 minutes, 100 minutes in total that we have spent so far.

Really appreciate. Yes. Any other question? Last year also, we talked about having products from Southeast Asia into India on a revenue sharing model, why it did not succeed? I did not even pursue because I have been preoccupied with our larger problems of sales. So I don't want to divide my attention into so many different things. Any opinion on dividend buyback policy? Nothing right now. It's not the time to think about those things. If we can give dividend, we'll give it because the biggest beneficiary will be me and Abhyudaya, much more than you guys. And you are all HNIs, we are not. We need the money more than you. So if we can give dividends, immediately we will. Thank you, Pratik. We love Pareto principle. We stay focused on that. Okay. I don't see -- what is that difference in average salary of the old sales team and new? That's actually a good question. So the people we are -- I will tell you what we are doing. We are hiring trainees at INR 10,000 per month, and then, we train them in counseling. And then, once they succeed, then we shift them to INR 30,000 or INR 40,000 depending on how they perform during the training period. The training period is usually at least 2 months, sometimes 3 months. And that's what it is. And when you are hiring people in the old sales team, you will often hire people at least INR 50,000, INR 60,000. So there's a big difference.

One more question, if I can come in here.

Yes, Tejash.

So Ramanuj, you mentioned previously that your amortization of your software, et cetera, is happening, new courses that you're bringing in, et cetera, et cetera. But as I understand, that should -- that will be a part of a CapEx and not amortization. Amortization would only be happening...

Okay. Sorry. I used the wrong term. Yes, it is like CapEx, yes.

Yes. So the question was amortization was a very high number that was showing in your balance sheet. So is it -- can you shed some light why was that the case? I think that was one of the questions...

That is the thing. Is it not? I mean, I'm not sure. I think that is what, CapEx gets amortized over time, no, like...

So once you have your software, which is -- which you have a patent upon, right, that patent cost then gets amortized over a period of time. But your new software that you are -- currently deployed already, and that also gets amortized, but that usually happens once you have some kind of IPO over it, or otherwise, basically, all the new thing gets into CapEx. That's...

Yes. I think -- so this is a decision made by our auditor, right, so that you have to start doing whatever they advise to have done.

So that number should go down as we go forward because you're not launching any new softwares right now, as you mentioned right now.

Yes. Courses will get amortized anyway, I miss. Okay. Any other question I can answer? No. I think I don't see any questions. So let's all say bye-bye, and thank you so much. Let's wish us all good luck for the next 6 months. Hope I can come back with better numbers. And thank you for staying with us in our lean days. So thank you very much. I really appreciate that.

Thank you, everyone, for joining the call.

Bye-bye.