(Re)building Vedantu

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Editor's note: Vamsi Krishna sends his investors regular updates on the business. Earlier this month, one of those reports got leaked, and lit a fire under edtech reporters. For good reason. Vedantu, Krishna’s edtech venture, had doubled its scale in the two months to May, clocking a cash collection run rate of nearly $60 million as of last month, and a month-on-month growth of just under 50%. (Cash collection is the money collected through bookings in any particular month plus pending collections from previous months. It is a far better measure of business than bookings simply because it takes into account cancellations.) Customer acquisition costs also came down significantly even as product-led sales, which don’t require assistance from a sales team and were at zero last year, accounted for one-eighth of the business. As if that wasn’t enough, attendance in the live classes conducted by Vedantu touched an all-time high of 82%, and renewal rates hit 92% from an average of 65%. There are a bunch of other numbers, but you get the drift. Even if you account for these being good …