Head of Central Strategy, Customer Success and Growth

About Us

Sumeet Mehta and Smita Deorah co-founded LEAD School in Mumbai in 2012. We partner with Affordable Private Schools across the country and visibly improve their learning outcomes, their operations, and their enrolments. Our mission is to empower India by making an excellent education affordable and accessible to every child. We do this through an integrated education system that brings together world-class curriculum and pedagogy, developed after years of research and analysis of successful school systems across the globe, with a multi-modal framework, delivered seamlessly through tech.

LEAD is the market leader and the fastest-growing school Ed-Tech company in India.

Our mission is to provide excellent education to every child. LEAD has seen rapid adoption - growing 13X over the last two years - with its School Integrated System already implemented in over 9,000+ schools across the country. It is still early days, with the company at only 1% penetration and aiming to get to 50,000 schools as clients by FY26. LEAD is a value-driven organization with Integrity, Growth Mindset,

Being the Cause, Courage, Empathy, Excellence with velocity, Live the mission & customer centricity & we are a tribe as its core values.

Vision

Our vision is to propel learning for over 25 million students across 50k schools, in the affordable private school segment (with annual fees lower than INR 50,000).

We will do this through a school ed-tech solution that transforms in-school learning through a world-class curriculum delivered through tech

School Ed-Tech

LEAD is the leading school ed-tech company in the country. While most consumer ed-tech has been focused on supplemental education, outside the formal school system, LEAD is transforming in-school learning. There are approximately 270 million school going students in the country, each spending 6+ hours everyday at school. The opportunity to impact core education and student learning outcomes here is much larger and deeper. Within this, LEAD is focused on the affordable private school segment, where quality of teachers and curriculum is severely lacking.

LEAD is doing this at scale through an integrated tech-backed solution. We empower schools with the tools and resources that transform them into centers of excellence.

Our enhanced performance monitoring tools, dedicated lesson plans and tech-based solutions enable educators to provide students with the best of education.

LEAD has a proven track record of outcomes across all stakeholders - students, teachers, parents and schools. For students, our multi-modal way of teaching and personalized learning by understanding their areas of improvement has reduced learning gaps and improved scores significantly. For teachers, we simplify their lives through tech based solutions that enable better monitoring of student performance and tracking of classes while upskilling them through workshops with education experts and continuous feedback. For parents, we enable higher visibility into their children's performance and content that they are exposed to through a dedicated module on the student app. For schools, along with the execution of our education framework, we also provide marketing, admission and administrative services to simplify their operations and improve their commercial School has raised a total of US$166 Million in funding through five rounds. Key investors include Elevar Equity, Westbridge Capital, and GSV Ventures.
• Acquired the world's leading learning company, Pearson India K12 business (Mar 2024)
• $100 M in Series E led by Westbridge Capital and GSV Ventures (Jan 2024)
• $30 M in Series D led by GSV Ventures and Westbridge Capital (April 2021)
• $28 M in Series C led by Westbridge Capital and Elevar Equity (August 2020)
• $7 M in Series B led by Elevar Equity and RFE Investment Partners (Sep 2024)
• $1.4 M in Series A led by Elevar Equity and RFE Investment Partners (July 2017)

Key Metrics
• ARR between US$80-100 M - 9000+ schools
• 50K teachers and 5 Mn students across 20 states/ 400+ cities

LEAD School LEADERS

Sumeet Mehta , Co-Founder & CEO

Born in a family of teachers, Sumeet carries a legacy of quality education that is passed on to every child in schools powered by LEAD. He has always been aware of the disparity in the quality of school education in India. Students in big cities receive great exposure and benefits, whereas students in smaller towns are deprived of affordable, good quality English medium education. The philosophy behind LEAD mirrors Sumeet's personal commitment to bridge the evident gaps in the education system.

Sumeet has an engineering degree from Punjab Engineering College and a PGDM from Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad. He worked with Procter & Gamble for eight years, leading the company's business in the Asia Pacific region, mostly based in Singapore. In 2007, Sumeet returned to India to work in education and assumed the position of Chief Executive Officer at Zee Learn for five years. He transformed the institution from a pre-school franchise company to a full-fledged education company with multifold growth in revenue.

In 2012, Sumeet Mehta co-founded LEAD School and has been revolutionizing education in the country ever since. Strongly focused on research and development, he is incorporating some of the best educational practices worldwide to make education accessible and affordable to students in small-town India.

Smita Deorah, Co-Founder & COO

Smita holds the principles of continuous and comprehensive learning in very high regard. At LEAD, Smita plays a significant role in education research, product development, and capability building. As the Co-founder, she has been pivotal in conceptualizing and developing the LEAD Integrated System. Her extensive understanding of the needs of affordable schools in India and comprehensive research of the best education systems of the world have paved the way for the strong benchmarking of LEAD's quality standards.

An achiever, Smita is a graduate from Narsee Monjee College, has completed her Chartered Accountancy with flying colors, and has Executive Programs at Harvard Graduate School of Education and Stanford Graduate School of Business in her education portfolio. Smita was a leader in Finance, Treasury and Strategy during her

9-year tenure with P&G (Singapore and India).

Smita has also founded a non-profit organization called Sparsh that works in collaboration with the Govt. of Maharashtra to make quality education accessible to low-income communities in the Anganwadis in Mumbai. With a pre-school in a box solution, implemented in 16 Anganwadis around Mumbai, Smita has been able to get students school ready and thereby reduce dropouts and low attainment.

Anupam Gurani, Chief Business & Marketing Officer, LEAD

Anupam Gurani is the Chief Business & Marketing Officer (CBMO) at LEAD, India's largest School EdTech company and the first unicorn in the segment.

He has more than 16 years of experience, working in various roles across Marketing,Digital Marketing, P&L management, Brand building, Sales, Key Account Management and Channel marketing. At LEAD, he oversees the company's overall marketing strategy, and plays a significant role in accelerating business growth in existing as well as new markets.

Before joining LEAD, Anupam was SVP & Head Sales at Disney Hotstar, where he built the Digital Ad Sales Business and played a key role in strategic business decisions for the company. Anupam has also worked with Vodafone India where he led the Sales & Marketing team.

Prior to that, Anupam spent over a decade working in India & South East Asia with Reckitt Benckiser & Google. At Google, he was responsible for driving adoption of digital platforms for top FMCG clients, whereas at Reckitt Benckiser (Dettol), Anupam was involved in various roles across Sales & Marketing functions.

Anupam, who brings his vast experience and extensive knowledge to bear on his diverse roles, believes that a marketing professional must constantly innovate instead of merely depending on external developments.

He is an alumnus of IIM Bangalore and Delhi College of Engineering. He grew up in Gurgaon, and currently lives in Mumbai with his family. Anupam is a voracious reader, a fitness enthusiast and loves cooking.

Gaurav Sharma, Chief Academic Excellence Officer, LEAD

Gaurav Sharma is Chief Academic Excellence Officer at LEAD, India's largest School Edtech company and the first unicorn in the segment.

Gaurav is responsible for the execution of LEAD's integrated system and methodology across its partner schools, pan-India. His team is passionate about bringing academic excellence to our schools, teachers and students.

Before LEAD, Gaurav was the Chief Strategy Officer and Chief Customer Officer at Furlenco. He was a part of the Furlenco growth story and scaled up operations and built best in class customer experience over 4 years. Prior to Furlenco, Gaurav was a Business Consultant with Accenture and also worked at HP in the global CXO's office.

Gaurav is a gold medalist from IIM Kozhikode and an alumnus of IIT Bombay. He was an integral part of a National Award winning film on RD Burman and has written two coffee table books on the maestro. He takes leadership sessions around RD, his music and management and is a speaker at many forums.

Purpose of the Job

The Head of Central Strategy plays a critical role in helping us achieve this mission.

He/she will directly work with business leaders and teams to ensure a high standard of Customer Success at LEAD School.

Must
• Head the Central Strategy team responsible for driving Programs designed to impact Implementation, Retention, Revenue Realization, Growth, and Student Outcomes.
• Build Annual Operating Plan for next Academic year with Revenue Build up, New Levers to drive growth, Implementation strategy, Productivity Initiatives & Retention Levers
• Build Upsell & Cross Sell Charter by identifying, on boarding & deploying New Co & Extra Curricular Products.
• Build an action plan for achieving high customer NPS.
• Plan Monthly reviews with Leadership, Excellence & Customer Success Field teams.
• Develop structured approach for new products and product improvements based on market/competition/learning objectives.
• Create and manage a consistent and clear communication between internal and external parties.
• Analyze and present financial trends, account strategy, competitor behavior, shareholder issues, and anything else that could impact the business.
• Incumbents' direct stakeholders will be Finance, Accounts, Planning, Supply Chain, Curriculum and Product.

Should
• MBA from Tier 1 B School with 10+ years of post-MBA experience in sales & distribution, key account management, Trade marketing & field operations from the B2B industry preferably from FMCG, and EduTech.
• Strong in P&L Management, Team management, operational excellence, key account management, distribution management, sales planning, process management, coaching & building capability in a large team environment.
• Exceptional interpersonal skills.
• Problem-solving skills and the ability to thrive in ambiguous situations.

Nice
• A Grasp of Economics and Market Dynamics
• Contributions to the Education industry are desirable.
• Understanding Cost-to-serve
• The Skill of Flexibility
• Ownership mindset
• Project Management Skills
• The Ability to Get the Best from People
• Department: Customer Success and Growth

Location: Mumbai

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