How to create a successful EdTech project for small and medium-sized businesses, and then raise a round in Russia during the “venture winter”

Nadya Makova, founder and managing partner of the LXP platform Kampus, explains why imposed corporate training is pointless, why automate it, and what you need to know today to attract investment in an EdTech project.

Listen to the podcast on the topic (1h16min):

EdTech – everywhere

The EdTech market, despite everything, is growing in Russia at a high rate year after year.

To be precise, in 2023 the market for “technology in education” grew by 30%, as stated in the materials of the Smart Ranking agency.

Along with the entire market, such an interesting niche as corporate EdTech is growing. This is when people learn not how to make money by selling clothes from China on marketplaces, but develop their professional skills at the expense of their employer.

As a startup trend, the direction of “on-the-job training” is also stated guest of my podcast Evgeniy Volnov, head of the venture fund hhventures, when he gave his forecasts in HRtech for the coming years.

And this, of course, instills great confidence in both the founders and investors who are building products together in this market.

But not everything is changing as quickly as startups would like, and the Russian market for financing IT businesses is generally experiencing “venture winter.”

Today we will talk with Nadya Makova, founder of the LXP platform Kampus and discuss the topic of corporate training and its development in Russia.

Advantages of the EdTech market for business

• The education market is growing by 30% per year.

• The emergence of a large number of new workflows that need to be automated.

• Increase in the number of training materials and programs within companies.

• Key strategies in personnel management in the next five years for more than 80% of respondents will investments in on-the-job retraining and process automation.

• Most workers will be needed retraining—six out of every ten employees will need reskilling by 2027.

Disadvantages of the EdTech market for business

• Conservatism and fears of customers.

• Many large companies decide to develop Edtech solutions for employee training themselves. They do not fully understand the complexity of such development: in 45% of cases, large in-house IT projects come out beyond budget in 30% of cases – from timing, and their value turns out 56% lower than planned.

• There is no clear connection with business indicators: only 35% of T&D is regular check, to what extent the training programs correspond to the company’s objectives. Only 27% have synchronized corporate training metrics and KPIs with their organization's business leadership.

Podcast Host

Dmitry Begovatov – IT observer. Founded and sold the “MyCity” mobile application. Creator and author of the site Product Radar – the best products and startups in Russia

Issue Guest

Nadya Makova – founder and managing partner of the LXP platform Campus

Kampus is a platform for automating employee adaptation, training and development.

Kampus is a full-cycle LXP platform for adaptation and development of employees throughout the entire life cycle in the company, which was developed by a team of expert methodologists based on the principles of effective corporate training.

How does corporate training differ from individual training?

There is a fundamental difference between individual development and corporate training. A person builds individual development based on personal goals, objectives and interests. And in corporate training, these personal goals must be compared with the company's business goals. When a company invests in employee development, it is important to understand the return on that investment.

If training is assigned from above, there will be no result. Also, if an employee learns only what he wants, this will not have an effect. The solution is in a managed process with an active role of the employee, which is achieved through assessment and diagnostic tools, the right recommendation systems, personalization and other functions of the LXP platform. That is, this technical solution allows you to find a middle ground that will involve everyone and give a good result for the business.

Why automate corporate training

Most companies do not have any tools to automate the routine work of the HR team. This is a serious problem: countless hours of work are wasted on something that can be automated in no time.

“Low unemployment” sounds like great news, but for HR teams it sounds like “there aren’t enough great employees.” We need to even more actively develop those who exist, and this falls on the shoulders of already overloaded HR specialists. Therefore, automation is simply necessary for them. The Kampus team is developing the product as quickly as possible in order to automate as much routine work as possible related to the adaptation, development, training, assessment, and retention of company employees.

The experience of Kampus clients shows: the implementation of the platform means a multiple acceleration of all processes. Conventionally, the company spent two weeks of working time on the budgeting process before implementing the platform, and 15 minutes after implementation. As a result, HR frees up time for truly important strategic, creative, methodological tasks and personal development.

What prevents the automation of corporate training

The headlines of business publications and quotes from company leaders convey that people are the main value, and their development is the main task of business. In reality, everything is different: many companies have the attitude “we pay them for their work, not for what they study.” But if you don’t develop your team, the business will simply stagnate, and your competitors will win the battle for talent.

The Kampus team does a lot of free developmental and educational projects to convey an important idea: corporate training is not something for show.

The main barrier here is the very lack of connection between training results and the company’s business indicators. If you build it and make it transparent, then no one will have any questions about why corporate training is needed for an employee, the HR team and the business as a whole.

Why should a business invest in team training?

To begin with, you can calculate how much the company saves with effective team development. The indicators are very clear: for example, staff turnover and the associated cost of filling vacancies through external and internal candidates, the effectiveness of onboarding. For each indicator, losses can be calculated. For example, a company of 700 people loses, say, 20 million rubles a year due to the imperfections of these processes. What can you do to lose not 20, but 5?

The tools are also very clear. For example, automate everything that is possible, assign mentors to newcomers, invite experienced employees to share their expertise, motivate them with recognition – and so on.

In addition, you can at least reduce the losses that occur due to imperfect employee development processes throughout his entire career in the company. Understand how proper development support will help the company not lose so much money due to layoffs.

All this is relevant for both startups and large companies. But for startups, perhaps to a greater extent: in a situation where the staff is small and one person, for example, is responsible for several key areas at once, the departure of such an employee can be a disaster. In addition, startups often do not have HR managers, so in such companies it is even more important to have a technological solution that will help build and automate corporate training. And therefore, the focus of Kampus is precisely small and medium-sized businesses.

How does the Kampus product work?

Kampus is a tool for comprehensive training and development according to the 70:20:10 model. That is, 70% is on-the-job learning through solving practical problems, 20% is social learning, and only 10% is formal: courses, trainings, and so on. The platform has built-in functionality that helps develop internal experts and build knowledge sharing within the company. There is a pre-installed knowledge base with training materials on hard skills, soft skills, and digital skills.

In addition, Kampus is a learning platform of a new format. If in an LMS an employee studies courses and materials assigned from above, then in an LXP he can perform many different actions and make independent decisions related to the learning process. That is, in an LMS, the user is an object of learning and must be forced to learn, and in an LXP, the user is a subject who is involved in learning. For example, in Kampus, an employee can upload his own materials, study in the format in which he wants, share training content with colleagues, and so on.

Why is an active role in learning important? The fact is that the goal of corporate training is to change something in human activity. If an employee was forced to take a course, then it is unlikely that after this course he will do anything differently. This approach only causes negativity or indifference, but not positive changes. That’s why the LXP approach is so important, when the employee becomes an active participant in the process.

How did Kampus come about?

Kampus became a continuation of T&P Business, a corporate training direction from the Theories and Practices media. The team manually built training for clients, and as a result developed its own methodology that could be scaled. This is what the platform is based on.

Kampus was launched in 2020 – as Nadya notes, “in conditions of strict secrecy”: the task was to finalize the product as much as possible, not to promote a raw product and not to mislead customers by assigning non-existent functionality or impossible promises. Active sales began in 2022 – as a result, there was an increase of more than double compared to 2021. Now Kampus has more than 40 clients, 200,000 users of such companies as X5 Group, Samolet Group, Gazprom Media, Tochka, Mitsubishi, OTC Pharm, Skolkovo Moscow School of Management, and other companies from various fields.

How Kampus works with research

Every year the team conducts two studies: the first is a competitive analysis, the second is a study of the behavioral characteristics of the target audience. Nadya believes that without such research it is impossible to build either a marketing or product strategy: without knowing what the audience wants, you will not be able to create a product that is in demand. Moreover, even a startup that has just begun to develop can pay for research.

In addition, Kampus is conducting additional research. For example, on March 1, a presentation of a study on employee engagement in training took place; more than 300 companies participated in it. The results of the study can be downloaded link.

How to attract investment in an EdTech project

The first investor of Kampus was entrepreneur Sergei Solonin, and then the project made money on corporate programs. All the money went towards product development. In March 2023, we decided to conduct the first investment round. As a result, investments were attracted from the Beeline Ventures fund and Anton Buzdalin, the founder of Eapteka.

It was not easy, since 2023 is venture winter. In addition, an investment round is a full-time job that appears in addition to the project itself. The experience is exhausting, but necessary for an entrepreneur.

Nadya talks about the important lessons she learned for herself:

• You need to have a solid and clear answer to the question “why” – why are you doing this project and what change for the better will it initiate.

• Speak simply, clearly and to the point. Investors are not required to understand the specifics of your industry. Convey the meaning and don’t go into highly specialized nuances; they don’t bother anyone, they only distract attention.

• They invest in people, not projects. Illustrate your pitch with stories of people, yours as a founder, team, clients. How your decision changed their routine, work, life. What expertise of the team gives confidence in success.

It is also important to understand that failures are not personal to you or the product. Most often it’s just a refusal because the time is not right, there are other tasks, things to do, circumstances. This thought helps you accept “no” more calmly.

If you're thinking about raising investment, here are 3 tips before starting a round:

• Think about whether you really need investment now.

• Answer yourself honestly what they will change in the project. Money is a tool; in itself it is meaningless. Before the round starts, it is important to understand exactly how they will help and where you will direct them.

• Formulate why an investor should invest in your product. What will this give him personally?

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