How an Indian small-town boy built a 15 Million $ EdTech Start-up
KnowledgeHut under the leadership of Subramanyam Reddy has trained over 250,000 professionals across 70 countries
One is always intrigued by stories of successful entrepreneurs and their high-flying Start-ups. Their journey to success is not as smooth as it sounds. Here is a story of how a small-town boy from India with 10k $ built a 15 Million $ business to impact more than 250,000 professionals.
About the Man himself & his incredible journey
Subramanyam Reddy, affectionately known as Subbu, was born in 1983 in a small town called Kadapa in Andhra Pradesh. In 2007, he completed his MBA in HR & Marketing with the dream of becoming an entrepreneur.
He kick-started his career in marketing with a start-up in Bengaluru. In 2009 he joined a training firm in a marketing role. Within the first 6 months, he performed really well & grew the business eight times. He was promised a 5% incentive by the Founder, which was not given to him, instead he was fired for no reason.
After suffering from this major set-back, he decided to pursue the vision to make up-skilling engaging, long term & accessible for professionals & students. He set up KnowledgeHut(KH) in 2011 with two of his friends. They found a rundown office & on-boarded 12 employees, to start their journey with KH. Even after a lot of efforts in the initial two months, they could not generate any revenue. Subbu had no more savings left to run the company. The employees wanted to leave, but Subbu convinced them to stay. By the end of third month, leads started to fly-in & they generated a revenue of approx. 28K $. They defied all the odds & generated business of 280k $ by the end of that year. In the next 4 years, the inspiring team at KH grew 10 times in revenue & expanded globally.
All was going well until 2015, the business suddenly went down and they had no money to pay salaries. Subbu took a personal loan to pay salaries and kept the company afloat. They analysed & quickly revamped their products/services to generate a revenue of 5.7 Million $ in 2016, 15 Million $ by 2018. They even got funded in the same year thanks to their phenomenal growth.
