Educomp Funded LearnHub Redesigns; To Focus On India

Well this one slipped us by, Educomp has a ‘large investment’ in Toronto based social learning network LearnHub. LH has gone in for a re-design focusing on a news media layout featuring content powered by its userbase. They have also partnered with funding partner Educomp (a large investor, no word on size of investment) on the Mathguru property, the first product being Mathguru.learnhub.com. While LearnHub focuses on allowing users to create and charge for their own courses, Educomp is more top-down in its approach, charging users for access to ‘professional’ content, with LearnHub being a Ning of sorts for users interested in particular categories. Do remember Shantanu Prakash of Educomp is a co-promoter along with Raghav Bahl in the Capital18 funded cross media education property, Topper. While the Indian market serves as a great tutorial base for international students, the domestic sector is still ruled by the traditional print industry where players like Navneet hold supreme.

QnA with John Green, Co-founder and CTO, LearnHub, after the jump

CS: What are your plans for the Indian market?
JG: We are aiming to be a top social network and education resource for the country. We are starting humbly by concentrating on SAT, GMAT, and studying abroad, which are all top interests in India. You’ll see that our sat-pre.learnhub.com community has over 600 indian students in it already, and its only been only a month. Thousands more visit the site but don’t join the community.

CS: How do you plan to differentiate from other services, namely Infoedge’s Shiksha.com?
JG: We were interested to see the launch of Shiksha.com. There may be ways we can work together. One big difference is that LearnHub focuses on teaching and learning, which is a different emphasis.

CS: What is the size of the India origin audience currently on the site?
LearnHub went live in March, about 3 months ago. We have done very little by way of marketing in India or elsewhere, but we have roughly 1000 site members from India so far. Note that you don’t have to sign up to use most of resources, so we get a lot of people that just come and read.

CS: What are your India specific plans going forward?
We have big aspirations for LearnHub in India. Abhishekh Singla will lead all our marketing, and will be trying a bunch of things online and off. We have a hiring plan that should see 12-15 people join us full time in 2008. We are especially excited to make more partnerships through the Educomp family, such as our first with Mathguru.com (See mathguru.learnhub.com. Much more will happen there in the next week.)

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