Great Learning: Bridging India's Upskilling Gap with Immersive, High-Impact Professional Education
India is often described as a "knowledge economy," yet millions of its working professionals face a silent crisis: the widening gap between the skills they have and the skills the global market demands. Hari Krishna Nair, the Co-founder of Great Learning, recognized this disparity a decade ago. While most corporate training focused on short-term "tool-based" learning, Nair and his co-founder Mohan Lakhamraju set out to build a platform that focused on deep, conceptual skill-building. Today, Great Learning is a global leader in professional education, serving learners from age 18 to 55 and proving that high-quality, immersive learning is the ultimate differentiator in an ever-evolving job market.
Nair's path to entrepreneurship was fueled by a "blind faith" and a willingness to opt out of the standard corporate track. An alumnus of MDI Gurgaon, he walked away from placements in 2006 to launch his first venture, ilabs. Though that business eventually shuttered, the lessons learned about value creation and business acumen paved the way for the launch of Great Learning in 2013. By prioritizing profitability from day one and focusing on the long-term "Why" of education, Nair has built an organization that maintains some of the lowest churn rates in the EdTech industry.
Tools vs. Skills: The Great Learning Differentiator
Many learners confuse knowing a tool with mastering a skill. As Nair explains: "You can learn Python in a few weeks, but you can't learn Data Science in a month." Tools and programming languages come and go, but conceptual skills stay forever. Great Learning focuses on the latter, requiring a significant commitment of time and effort from its learners to ensure true competency.
Identifying the "Knowledge Gap" in Bharat
In 2012, the Indian EdTech scene was in its infancy. While MOOCs like Coursera were beginning to offer free content, Nair saw a major gap in the professional market. Corporate training was often "here and now," catering only to immediate project needs without providing a conceptual foundation. At the other end of the spectrum, elite institutions like IIMs and ISB reached only a few hundred professionals.
"There was no one place where professionals could go and upskill themselves at scale with high quality," Nair recalls. Great Learning was built to fill this void by offering immersive, mentor-led programs that combined the flexibility of recorded content with the rigor of peer-based cohorts. They started with a single course in Business Analytics, pricing it at a premium to ensure solid unit economics and a path to profitability without relying on external capital.
"Entrepreneurship teaches you discipline. You have to discipline yourself not just at work, but in your personal life. You need space and time for yourself—nobody can work 24/7. Finding that balance is the key to longevity."
The Evolution: From Blended to Purely Online
Great Learning's growth can be divided into distinct phases of scalability. For the first three years, the company operated on a Blended Model, utilizing learning centers in major cities where professionals met every two weeks for weekend classroom sessions. While successful in proving the hypothesis, this model faced a natural ceiling for scale.
The Scalability Roadmap
- 2013-2015 (Blended Era): Established credibility through offline centers and high-touch mentorship.
- 2016 (The Online Pivot): Launched purely online delivery. The first few attempts failed, forcing the team to re-evaluate how to maintain immersion in a digital format.
- 2017-Present (Global Scale): Successfully cracked the online engagement model, leading to global expansion and a diverse learner base across multiple continents.
Building a "Zero-Churn" Team Culture
In a sector known for high employee turnover, Great Learning stands out for its stability. Nair is particularly proud of the team they've built, noting that many staff members have been with the company for nearly a decade. This culture is rooted in transparency and honest co-founder dynamics.
Unlike his first venture, which he started with a lifelong friend, Nair met his Great Learning co-founder, Mohan, through a mutual connection. "Trust is built over the years by being completely honest, transparent, and fair," he explains. This foundation allowed them to navigate the "storming phase" of growth and focus on identifying new avenues for expansion, whether in new consumer segments or emerging technical skill sets.
Great Learning: Impact at a Glance
- Learner Age Range: 18 to 55 years old.
- Global Footprint: Serving professionals in India and across the globe.
- Team Stability: Recognized for having the least employee churn in the EdTech sector.
- Business Model: Profit-focused and bootstrapped from inception.
Lessons in Time and Resilience
Reflecting on 11 years of building Great Learning, Nair offers profound advice for aspiring entrepreneurs. He believes the most critical asset an entrepreneur has is Time. He cautions against starting a venture with a specific "exit goal" in mind, as exit events are often outside of a founder's control.
Founder's Wisdom: The Time Vineyard
Most startups don't fail because of a lack of capital; they fail because the team runs out of time. "If you remove the vineyard of time and give a team more of it, more often than not, you will see them succeed," Nair says. Avoid artificial timeframes that put unnecessary pressure on an already stressful journey.
The Clarity of 'Why'
Internal motivation must go beyond money or fame. You must be driven by the desire to create value—whether that's employment, a loved product, or societal impact. This "Why" is what pulls you through the days when you doubt your choice while your friends advance in traditional careers.
The Future of Professional Development
For Hari Krishna Nair, the journey of Great Learning is a marathon, not a sprint. As they continue to tap into newer markets and skill sets, the focus remains on the cumulative impact of their wins over their failures. By staying disciplined and true to their core mission, Nair and his team are ensuring that India's knowledge economy remains competitive on the world stage.
"There will be more failures than successes," he concludes. "But if you stay disciplined and know why you're doing something, the impact of your wins will be far more than the cumulative impact of your failures." In the high-stakes world of EdTech, Great Learning has proven that the most sustainable path to growth is built on the bedrock of quality and student success.
About the Guest
Hari Krishna Nair is the Co-founder of Great Learning. An engineer from Trivandrum and an MBA from MDI Gurgaon, Hari chose the entrepreneurial path early in his career, opting out of placements to launch his first startup, ilabs. Since 2013, he has been instrumental in building Great Learning into one of the world's most respected professional education platforms. He is a passionate advocate for lifelong learning and has dedicated over a decade to helping working professionals transform their careers through deep, mentor-led skill development. He is known for his focus on business discipline and building long-term sustainable organizational cultures.
Great Learning is a leading global EdTech company for professional and higher education. It offers comprehensive, industry-relevant programs in collaboration with world-class universities like Stanford, MIT, and IIT Madras. With a focus on fields like Data Science, AI, Cloud Computing, and Management, Great Learning provides high-impact learning experiences through its innovative blended and online delivery models, helping professionals across the globe achieve their career goals.