How a woman entrepreneur Pranshu Patni created an educational app that became the most downloaded app

Launched in the year 2014, the Hello English application currently has 50 million users and 10 million downloads. It was described as the Best Performing Educational Application by Google Rating within 8 months. Along with this, the Most Innovative Application of 2014 was also declared by the Internet and Mobile Association of India.

Hello English already has a customer base of 1.2 Crore and has received an overwhelmingly positive response with over 1.6 Lakh reviews with an average rating of 4.5/5.

Hello English has over 40 million learners of English from 22 local languages.

Now India is becoming a country of technology, but still, we are far behind compared to other countries. Development and technology are related to each other in many ways.

The Corona period has taught us the use of technology very well. More trends in online education also happened during this period. Now the online tutorial platform is spoken all over the world.

But even before the Corona period, Pranshu Patni is looking for a solution to a problem that she had to face herself. That problem is effective communication.

How to identify communication problems?

In early 2012, her husband (then fiancé) Nishant Patni had to relocate to Shanghai, China for an exchange program. He was soon trying to learn Mandarin.

Nishant Patni is an alumnus of IIT Bombay and Kellogg School of Management, USA. He was a vegetarian and was worried whether he would be able to convey his dietary needs to the local people.

He tried to learn Mandarin through tutorial books, online courses, and attending language learning classes. But nothing was fitting into his busy schedule.

Why is it important to have effective communication?

Effective communication is like the lifeblood of any business because there is only one communication process through which a businessman can do their business easily, this is when a message flows from the sender to the receiver. Part of the behavior of the communicator also flows in its flow. Which confirms how effective your communication is.

Most importantly, if we are unable to explain our point to anyone, then we cannot explain our point of business to far away friends and family members only.

Communication is considered effective when it can leave a good impression on the other person and achieve all the objectives for which the process of communication is done.

Effective communication, either verbally or in writing, is a very important skill. For a communication to be effective, it is necessary that it should be clear, concise, and full of meaning, that is, no impurity should be found in it and its response or feedback should be complete and favorable.

Launch of Culture Alley

Pranshu, an MBA pass out from Narsee Monjee Institute, realized that while most people aspire to learn an international language, there are very few tools that can help working professionals hone their skills continuously over a flexible period of time.

Nishant Patni went to China at the beginning of 2012 and returned to India at the end of the same year. Returning home, Nishant Patni and Pranshu Patni together launched Intap Labs.

Culture Ally Startup is a popular language-learning platform. Here, people can learn multiple languages including Mandarin, English, Hindi, and Spanish through different training models. Here you can also take sessions with tutors through Skype and know the solution to your problem from them.

Most Popular Educational App

One billion people around the world try to learn a foreign language every year, with about 60 percent learning English.

In the year of 2014, Culture Alley entered the global batch of 500 start-ups. This was an opportunity for Pranshu Patni to further engage with the model, so with the help of her expertise, she transformed the model from a website into a mobile-learning app called 'Hello English' by Culture Alley.

In October 2014, Culture Alley launched Hello English mobile learning application, an English app that helps customers learn the language through interactive modules. Since its launch, the app has become one of the most popular educational apps on Google Play's Indian Android Store. Which has more than 4,50,000 downloads in more than 220 countries within 8 months.

Traditional methods of learning other languages such as flashcards and CDs are unable to motivate and engage a learner.

What sets Culture Alley language courses apart from many of its competitors is thus their focus on making the subject a part of the student's daily routine. For example, the software inserts foreign words into a user's Facebook newsfeed to make them more comfortable with the language.

This simple vocabulary-building tool prompts users to subscribe to game-based learning tools. The app can be downloaded for free, but users will have to pay or use tokens won in previous games if they want to access higher difficulty levels.

Before Hello English

Prior to Hello English, Pranshu Patni held leadership positions in strategy, program management, and financial planning with Pitney Bowes. She has also worked with Sun Microsystems.

She is a double gold medalist from NMIMS, Mumbai with a degree in Engineering and MBA.

Achievements

Hello English App has been awarded by - 

• IAMAI Best App Award 2017 and Google's Editors Choice Award 2017.
• The app was also selected by Google as one of the 'Best of 2016 Apps', based on its popularity and ability to engage users through its content.
• Pranshu Patni won Facebook's She Lead Tech Award in 2017.
• In 2015, she was part of the Forbes India 30 Under 30 list.
• She won CNBC's Young Business Woman Award in 2018.
• She was also honored with the 2018 United Nations and NITI Aayog's WTI Award.

We appreciate your thinking and strategy. May you set new milestones in the future.