Alex George, Co-Founder and Managing Director of ITLH, Empowering Students With UI/UX Design Skill-Based Courses

StartupTalky presents Recap'22. This is a series of interviews in which we conduct in-depth discussions with founders & industry leaders to understand their growth in 2022 and their predictions for the future.

There are many resources available for learning UI/UX design and front-end web development, such as websites offering online courses. These self-paced courses can be taken at your own convenience.

If you prefer a more structured learning experience, consider enrolling in a boot camp. These intensive programs provide a comprehensive education in UI/UX design and front-end development, usually completed within a few months. The global EdTech market is projected to grow at a CAGR of 16.5% from 2022 to 2030, reaching USD 429.5 billion by 2030.

For this Interview, we invited Mr. Alex George, Co-founder & Managing Director of ITLH, and we talked about the growth, challenges, insights, and future opportunities in the skill-based ed-tech industry.

StartupTalky: Alex, What service does your company provide? What was the motivation or vision with which you started?

Alex George: ITLH is driven by the motive of #SkillingForEmployability. We are more than an ed-tech company providing UIUX design and Front-End Development courses. It is a learning community that bridges the skill gap with practical learning, the best industrial mentorship, and lifetime career support.

StartupTalky: What new services have been added in the past year? What is/are the USP/s of your service?

Alex George: ITLH provides innovative experiential learning with a disruptive approach.
We provide:
● Specialised Training
● In-depth curriculum
● Real-Time Projects
● Affordable
● Course certification and internship letter
● Dedicated Practice Session
● Freelancing and job assistance

We have launched the Course ReactJS

Global Multi-Member Faculty of Industry Experts with an Avg Experience of 15 Years from Google, Accenture, Tech Mahindra, Salesforce, etc

Guest Faculty with World-Renowned Heads and CEOs. The Clock mentorship ensures your learning experience is holistic. Special Focus to build your own personalized Behance Portfolio.

Collaboration with a Singapore-based Design & IT company to ensure you don't go out in the market as a Fresher.

Lifetime Placement Opportunity so that we have your back when you decide to switch. Access to World's first Gated freelancing community for UIUX Designers.

StartupTalky: How has the ed-tech industry changed in recent years, and how has your company adapted to these changes?

Alex George: The COVID-19 pandemic had a significant impact on educational frameworks. The country's entire digital landscape has seen a significant transformation. Even schools and universities have demonstrated how crucial an efficient online interface is.

ITLH is trying to build an online ecosystem. Our program focuses on enhancing students’ skill sets and preparing them for the workplace. With more than 15 years of combined expertise, our trainers come from Google, TataCliq, Accenture, and Salesforce, and we put a lot of emphasis on equipping our students with the best of the best.

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StartupTalky: How do you stay up-to-date on the latest trends and developments in the ed-tech industry?

Alex George: Monitoring competitor social media pages and their websites.
The fact is that the ITLH is an initiative of an IT corporation 'Centillion'. As a result, we are able to keep an eye on the latest technological developments and market demands because it is co-directed by an IT firm. Our curriculum is continually being improved in accordance with the most recent industry trends as technology continues to advance. so that the students can learn more about current trends and have the necessary understanding of current trends in the UIUX industry.

StartupTalky: What key metrics do you track to check the company's growth and performance?

Alex George: A student enrolled compared to last month and last year's cost per acquisition and ROAS Lead to conversion enrollment from Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities Referral Packages students are getting in job placement % of self-placed students.

StartupTalky: What were the most significant challenges your company faced in the past year and how did you overcome them?

Alex George: Making our audience understand that “Practical learning and Skill development “is a much more important focus area than just certification. Due to our education system’s approach, it is now a default tendency that you give an exam and gain certification, you deserve a good job, but that's far from reality, when it comes to corporate, your work experience & skills matter the most. We solved this issue by slowly displaying our array of case studies!

We have students who were mechanical engineers but never got a job to become a UIUX designer, we have students who have degrees that have no relation to UIUX design but are now currently one of the most successful designers in the Industry.

StartupTalky: Good service is something everyone is talking about in the service industry. How do you ensure that your clients are happy?

Alex George: We offer a course that is more in-depth than the certification. We provide lifelong placement support, boot camps, and webinars for our students so, that they can keep themselves updated with the current trends and knowledge. With the aid of our practical/application-based training style, our goal is to empower our students to become independent. Students shouldn't rely on others or look for assurances from them; instead, make sure that our students are confident enough in their own abilities to apply to and be hired by any ideal employer.

StartupTalky: What are the different strategies you use for marketing? Tell us about any growth hack which you pulled off.

Alex George:  We follow many strategies for marketing. These include:

• Using email for branding, lead nurturing
• Doing webinar sessions to solve UIUX-related queries of Users
• Leverage Referral Marketing
• Cash the Trends to get engagement on the Social Media page
• Using Facebook and google ads for lead generation and remarketing
• Industry-based articles/news where we are garnering our product knowledge.

StartupTalky: Foreign clients- this is what most service-based companies are looking for. What has been your experience?

Alex George: There aren't any restrictions on the number of international students we accept. we make sure that we offer our services to overseas clients wherever they need to upgrade their skills.
Currently, we are providing our services to the UAE market. What we have understood is a skill gap in Traditional Education is a common issue that needs to be resolved across the globe.

StartupTalky: What are the important tools and software you use to run your business smoothly?

Alex George: For lead generation, we use Facebook Ads and Google Ads; for lead nurturing, we use LeadSquared (mail) and Verloop (WhatsApp message, chatbot).
We also use Google Analytics and Search console for tracking traffic and monitoring website performance.

StartupTalky: What opportunities do you see for future growth in the ed-tech industry in India and the world? What kind of difference in market behavior have you seen between India and the world?

Alex George: In the coming years, our surroundings will only consist of digital experiences because our world is already a digital ecosystem. A practical understanding of UI and UX principles will determine one's employability in crucial technical roles. The user base of the application and software will mostly be influenced by customer satisfaction and loyalty.

Demand for UI and UX design courses has grown in India as more professionals looking to advance their careers by entering the field that is prepared for the future. Both in India and the World, users are becoming more selective and over-pampered with the unlimited amount of technological resources that are available, business need to value the customer experience at the highest level if they want to stay in Business.

Another valuable gold mine that is already in process is user data, consumers understand the value of sharing data and we will see market behavior change towards making this the center of attention for applications. With Customer Experience and Data becoming the next big thing, we see a huge potential for employment in the field of UIUX as the very purpose of UIUX as an industry is to deal with these two important areas.

StartupTalky: What lessons did your team learn in the past year and how will these inform your future plans and strategies?

Alex George: There are many things we have learned as a team together, few of the highlights of the learning we did would be that time has finally become a valuable resource. Our students prefer lesser interaction with the highest quality as they are working professionals and students aspiring to get job-ready, time is the most important determinant of success for them, our focus area this year would be to make sure we are able to build a robust technology intelligence that ensures the utmost learning experiences for our students within the shortest and the most accessible amount of time.

Students look for a job that satisfies them rather than a big name or big pay package: we are already able to deliver one of the top companies and highest pay packages that are available in our country to our students, what we have come to realize is what our top students look forward for is much more than that. Our focus area for this year would be to scan for companies that provide additional value than these benefits.

StartupTalky: How do you plan to expand the Customers, service offering, and team base in the future?

Alex George: Our company's ultimate mission has always been to redefine learning. The three industry pillars of proficiency, professionalism, and pragmatism determine a candidate's employability in the tech tier. Our innovative approach to experiential learning has produced a revolutionary approach that is essentially a simulation of the skills and competencies needed in the workplace.

Many students in India and the Middle East have confidence in ITLH to help them advance their careers. We have been able to set some expansion plans as a team and as a business thanks to this trust.

We want to expand the number of courses offered, create additional opportunities for college students to receive in-depth corporate training, and expand the number of placements available.
Our product basket will now include:

• Corporate training
• Campus Training
• Bootcamps
• Master courses and
• A Freelancing Ecosystem.

StartupTalky: So finally Alex, One tip that you would like to share with another Service company founder?

Alex George: We say that customers are always right, which I agree with. But we must always remember we belong to the education industry, where students come to us knowing that we are doing something right, making decisions that give better end results to the customer for eg: a job or a placement rather than giving fancy experiences without output is what will make us stand apart for the long term. Focus on long-term customer satisfaction.

We thank Alex George for spending his valuable time and sharing his learnings with all of us.

You can read other Recap'22 Interviews here.