Crack-ED: Customer Journey of an Educational Technology Start-Up

It was the afternoon of December 17, 2020, and Debojit Sen was concerned about the future of his educational technology (EdTech) start-up, Crack-ED, which was founded in March 2020 in Gurugram, Haryana, India. Crack-ED provided training to recent business school graduates in order to help them secure jobs in the competitive, post-COVID-19 marketplace. Several other EdTech start-ups such as such as Scalar Academy and upGrad Education Pvt. Ltd. had also emerged to address the gaps in the Indian education system. Crack-ED faced two challenges: it needed to differentiate its service from that of its competitors and promote its relatively new brand of EdTech service platform in a highly competitive market with stronger players. Most EdTech companies were aggressively promoting their brand digitally. Search engine optimization, video marketing, and social media promotion were among the options available for Sen to promote Crack-ED, and each option had its own pros and cons. Sen wondered which digital promotion strategy would be the best fit for Crack-ED as the company’s promotional budget did not allow him to choose all options available.

The case is ideal for undergraduate- and post-graduate-level courses in marketing, services marketing, digital marketing, and marketing strategy. Relevant knowledge of basic marketing concepts is a desirable prerequisite. The case will be helpful for students to understand the challenges of brand building and identifying and understanding a target market segment for an EdTech start-up. The case highlights the turning point in the journey of a start-up where clarity in creating an impactful value proposition and conveying this differentiation to the target market segment is a critical strategy decision for the company. It challenges the students to delve deep into the aspects of branding and mapping customer journey touchpoints in a digital world to create the differentiation for a service start-up in an increasingly competitive market landscape. After working through the case and assignment questions, students will be able to<ul><li>understand the service landscape for platform services such as Crack-ED and value creation for its customers;</li><li>appreciate and understand the challenges of building a service brand in a highly competitive market like the EdTech sector;</li><li>understand and explain the digital marketing strategies that can help build brand awareness in an increasingly crowded EdTech market which lacks differentiation; and</li><li>analyze and evaluate the EdTech industry and its differentiators, and critically develop a matrix to understand how to position an EdTech product using the case context.</li></ul>

• Ed-tech
• platform service
• brand positioning
• service marketing
• marketing strategy