Addictive Learning Technology limited (LAWSIKHO)

Lawsikho

Addictive Learning Technology limited

Our company is a professional upskilling and career services edtech platform which caters primarily to senior & mid-career professionals, and in some cases to young professionals as well. We also cater to college students looking for advanced skills and recent graduates who are struggling to find jobs. Our company offers upskilling courses which includes Law, Finance, Compliance, Human Resources, Business Consulting, Artificial Intelligence, Content Writing and Data Science through three distinct brands LawSikho, Skill Arbitrage and Dataisgood.

their website - https://lawsikho.com/

LAW SIKHO

It consists of three sub-verticals which are described as follows:

a. Legal Upskilling - It focuses on providing upskilling opportunities in the domestic as well as international market. Example International - US Intellectual Property, Tax , Accounting, Bookkeeping, Corporate Compliances, Technology, Real Estate, International Contract Drafting, International Business Law, International Labour Laws,

Example domestic - Diploma in Advanced Contract Drafting Negotiation and Dispute Resolution, Technology Law Fintech Regulation and Technology Contracts,M&A Institutional Finance and Investment Laws, Corporate Litigation, General Corporate Practice, IP Media and Entertainment, Labor Employment and Industrial, English Communication, Corporate law and Practice

More details here - https://rb.gy/zroiay

b. Test prep - It focuses on preparing the students for standardised assessments & competitive exams. Some of our popular test prep courses are judiciary test prep courses, bank law officers exams, CLAT (PG), UGC, NET/JRF, CIPP/CIPM, Independent Directors’ Self-Assessment Test and other test prep courses

c. International Bar Exams - california bar exam, uk solicitor qualification exam, canada bar exam

SKILL ARBITRAGE

Diversifying their educational offerings. By entering domains like compliance, HR, finance, bookkeeping, content writing and business consultancy, they showcased their commitment to holistic professional education.

Here are all the skill arbitrage courses - Skill-arbitrage

DATA IS GOOD

“DataIsGood” empowers individuals to navigate the dynamic world of data science and technology. It believes in facilitating successful transitions for those coming

from non-tech backgrounds, equipping them with data science skills and knowledge

More details here - https://dataisgood.com/

DEPL (DataIsGood Edutech Private Limited) was acquired on August 26, 2023 with 3.36cr as cash component and 13.5 lakh shares out of which 25% is issued as on date to Ankit Maheshwari

However, this vertical does not make any contribution to the revenue as of August 31,

Did 36 lakh sales in december 2023 out of this 34% was from USA.

Total Student year wise - 5169 7792 4954 2137

Annualized this year - 12405

Did 50 cr sales as on Dec 2023, this year 60cr + close to 70cr is their target

Collaborations and partnerships

  1. They are an approved training partner by NSDC (National Skill Development Corporation) which operates as a PPP under the Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship of the GOI. Upon course completion,you will receive a co-branded certificate bearing the names of NSDC and Skill India.

  2. Texas A&M University School of Law, a distinguished member of the Texas A&M University outlines the establishment of an LLM degree program with a specialised emphasis on U.S., Indian, and international law.

  3. Warsaw University of Poland has established a partnership agreement with them.

  4. Entered into a collaboration agreement with Swiss School of Management. The

What are they doing differently??

  1. The entire model of trying to educate which can be practically applied and then trying to get you are remote international JOB is very unique

  2. They prioritises skill development and career outcome over purely theoretical pursuits. It provides a wide range of educational products and services, including courses, training programs, live workshops, practical assignments, outreach initiatives, profile building initiatives, performance coaching and networking opportunities. This ensures that learners receive a well-rounded education that not only imparts theoretical knowledge but also fosters practical skills crucial for professional success. Training sessions, practical exercises, mentorship, and real-world case studies come together to create a dynamic and immersive learning environment.

  3. Their strategic initiative involves establishing an all-inclusive placement platform within their ecosystem which connects recruiters and students, streamlining the placement process. Their comprehensive approach encompasses not only matching students

with job openings but also preparing them for interviews and assessments, equipping them with the skills and confidence needed to excel. This singular platform consolidates placement opportunities, interview preparation resources, and networking events, enhancing the overall employability of our students

Page number 184 -186 of RHP should give a better understanding

So the biggest differentiator here is they are not only teaching but also helping u secure jobs and they are not charging for this service either to the employer or candidate.

They have over 100 people in marketing just to get their students placed

Latest update as on 17 april 2024

Their marketing edge

  1. Marketing through their Blog (iPleaders): So this website had 25 lakh organic visits per month as is a big lead generation for them. They say it is india’s biggest legal blog.
  2. They have 286k followers on youtube, 154k on Linkedln and 95.6k on instagram

So if you see this year they are at a run rate of selling 12k courses when compared to their yearly IPleaders organic visit of 3cr it is just 0.0004%

In one of the interview the promoter said “”we have enough leads also we have too many leads that we are not able to cater to okay because I don’t have our sales””

I will talk more about their sales team later but this was just to give the context.

Areas of growth and promoters priority

  1. Doing 20 CR Revenue per month which is a matter of scaling up their sales team as per them rest all is in place. They don’t hire from tech companies, they have special training and it takes 3 months to build a good sales guy. It will take 18-24 months

  1. He doesn’t want his placement numbers to fall. Like right now he is giving result to 40-50% of his students so this has to be maintained for which the B2B BD has to be developed to get his students a job.
  2. He wants to build a stronger brand like he says trust is the biggest asset in this industry and it is difficult to build it. When he says people are earning X amount of money remotely, students tend not to believe it. So he want to make a web series to educate people and there are movie makers who approached him.
  3. New product and innovation

Market size

  1. “”Indian legal Market Market is $2 billion Legal Services Market and US legal Market is close to $400 billion 200 times bigger . There are 1.5 lakh to 2 lakh law firms which have 2 to 10 to 20 lawyers mostly 2 to 10 if you include even the 20 size then it is 2 lakh law firms 2 lakh law firms they each of them can hire five people remotely that means 1 million job””
  2. This is only for the law side. Need to get an idea for skill arbitrage and dataisgood

Valuation

At current run rate they are at 54 times PE unlike the screener PE which says 167. Until august 2023 they did a PAT of 3.15cr and they have 1.59cr shares

They are planning to do 4x sales in 3 to 4 yrs. Please note this is an asset light model, these kind of businesses have huge operating leverage as their biggest cost is creating a new course (IP) once you have that done. Basically each new student increases the margin.

From august 2023 to february 2024 they helped freelancers secure 2.4cr worth of job and now they are going to charge 10% platform fees on that

RISK

  1. Our company is recognised by the name of our brand “LawSikho” rather than Addictive Learning Technology Limited. So consumers can perceive it to be a Law based company which would lead to loss of business from skill arbitrage & data is good.

  2. When they scale up their business they will have to maintain freelance work/job opportunities. The biggest challenge here is if somebody form india is working for an international company remotely data protection is the biggest fear/risk to the employer so their ability to build trust and sale this is something to watch out

  3. They will have to keep creating new courses if they want to grow at the pace they have targeted. Lot of initial cost goes into creating a new course, it is like an upfront sunk cost and if the new course does not get the traction then all the time/effort/money goes for a toss

Example - They have a team whose entire focus is on cracking exams and then they sit down and figure out how they have to teach their students. They also buy all courses available in market and with lot of technology and human effort they figure out how to crack the exam

If we see there is a lot of qualitative aspects here, their quality of course is what gives them the edge. So to maintain the growth while introducing new cources and keeping the quality in intact is something to look for

Other RISK

I just read all their 1 star reviews though Indians have a problem of giving 1 star very easily but if the problem stated by everybody is same then it is actually a genuine problem. Here are some common problems .

Problem with login and App

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Their nature of business is such that protecting their IP is their priority but to maintain that balance of making your app complicated/difficult to access and protect your IP is key to watch.

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I think they have this refund policy and they being in the field of law and they being very expensive and since they have this success ratio of 40%-50% in JOB placement the unsuccessful candidates can be a huge pain to the company. They can do case on you, write bad about you etc etc. So to protect their brand value it is very important to maintain a health job placement.

The company says they have never lost a consumer case on refund

Some bad reviews on it

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I have also seen many comments on they being good at marketing, actually if you see their website and they way they present their courses it is very tempting. This is actually a very good point but bad as well because if everything is on the back of marketing then things can just vanish.

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Also if we see their business has no recurring revenue, all of my business is from new student, at max a particular student can take 2 courses but it is just like a onetime relation so if they loose the trust in market all of a sudden sales can just fall to 0

There are so many points to cover on this business, very unique and interesting one. I would cover all of them in my next post.

drhp - DRHP.pdf - Google Drive
investor presentation (definitely check it out) - Lawsikho-Investor-Deck-final.pdf - Google Drive
youtube vide (I loved it) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z5Sg7Hh6Vpw

disc- invested,
thankyou

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They are planning to do 4x sales in 3-4 year but on base of FY 23 or FY 24?

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Solid Results

H2FY24 vs H2FY23:
Rev at 35cr vs 16cr, H1 at 31cr
PBT at 5.3cr vs loss, H1 at 5.1cr
FY24 PBT at 10.5cr vs 3.2cr
PAT at 7.2cr vs 2.4cr
OCF at 21cr vs 1.4cr

They still have 49 cr that they have raised in Ipo. Hyper growth will come in upcoming few years.

They have taking 10% comission as well. It will direct add to bottom line. Bottomline will increase more than sales.

Waiting for Inv Presentation if company uploads.

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https://twitter.com/caswapnilkabra/status/1788917271278043427?t=pMchcdmHbYwtW9pWneZ6mA&s=19

Concall updates by SwapnilKabra

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I spoke to a few of my lawyer friends and some of them have used Lawsikho’s services mostly for jobs in other countries and resume additions. They are all happy with the services, especially mentioning that their customer care is very quick and professional. They did face some UI and payment gateway-related issues but these were quickly resolved. They do see an opportunity in this space and said it’s a popular portal amongst lawyers, when I asked them about competitors they said there are a few but not a niche lawyer-focused one like Lawsikho, and the biggest difference according to them is the assistance Lawsikho provides when it comes to placements and the quality of courses is much better.

The only thing bothering me is the runway being too small only a 1200 cr market which will never be captured by one player, they will have to diversify into other spaces. The question is do they plan to do so? If yes will the USP of being a Niche player remain intact?

Disclosure - Researching and not invested.

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I think you got this wrong. Market Size is very large for them as they are going into other fields apart from Law.

In this interaction on YouTube (timestamp: 25:10), Ramanuj Mukherjee said that the Market Size is $7 billion and there are very few players in the market.

I know that’s a very big number and should be taken will a pinch of salt.

But if things go right, there is a big opportunity.

Also, they are growing in the US market also.

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Got the 1200Cr. figure from their Presentation will surely go through the interview. After the response I got from my friends, I have only been looking for reasons to invest.

It clearly says without launching new products, so technically they will have to diversify and diversification comes with the risk of diworsification. Just started digging deeper…let’s see where I land.

*Edit
Disclosure - Invested

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Investor Call FY24

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FY24 Concall

Financials

  • Doubled their revenue and have been doing so for a while now.

Business details

  • Scaled up skill arbitrage well and the cost of acquisition is very low. It has a bigger TAM and can expect faster growth than LawSikho
  • they have been able to expand geographically as they have been able to sell in North America, UK and Canada. it is a very nascent stage but the promoter expects a big chunk of revenue can come from this.
  • doubled their engineering team! which they have earlier struggled with. they create new products and features and reduce costs
  • Making courses AI friendly to adapt with the current world. It will also be a big differentiator as no one else is doing it
  • process of building app as well so that they can bypass other websites and search engines.
  • Rapidly scaled up content creation from the proceeds of IPO
  • they could not meaningfully scam the sales team which they plan to do.
  • Auto funnels are being made which help sell products. IN US, businesses don’t do calls for products below 10,000 dollars and hence use auto funnels.
  • On reducing CAC: companies like google and Meta are gatekeepers of your audience. they will charge you to contact these audience. Most of the CAC goes to these guys. Companies need to build things that brings long term users. For example, a blog which I write should have a lot of subscribers so that I don’t need to advertise them
  • Other methods of reducing CAC are like building content and making it so good that people wait for it. eg: SOIC
  • team size: 600+
  • No immediate plan to monetize opportunities platform. It will be free until it is the go to model

Industry

  • Ed-tech had the worst year last year. there was a funding winter and only they got listed. However, they have not been worried and IPO gave them good funds to work with while the rest don’t! so helped capture market share.
  • 7 states they have seen produce lawyers, judges etc. a lot of success was seen! Also had success in NCA Canada, Solicitor qualification in London and soon success will come in California BAR where results will come in June/July. this success will help with marketing strategies.

Outlook

  • TAM without new products being added: 1200 crores
  • launched a new platform called loss eco opportunities. 3000 visitors per day and 300 applicants per day.
  • currently have 80 sales which they want to scale to 300 in one year.
  • PBT should be 25% in the long run. that’s their target. rn they are targeting growth so they aren’t chasing this margin but it is possible.
  • Because of increasing TAM by skill arbitrage geographical expansion, They think they can double their revenue for 2-3 years. Category, TAM and geography isn’t an issue. 65-130 won’t be easy and 130-260 will be a bit difficult but possible
  • When they reach 100 cr per month, then he will be worried in doubling it.
  • Over the next 2 financial years, Goal is 20 crores per month
  • they want to go offline but they don’t have expertise on it

Risks

  • more like Risk aversion: Slowdown in the economy does not effect them at all. During slowdowns when people lose jobs, they want to take up new skills and find jobs so they invest in education such as their platforms.
  • Risk in AI: They have to keep up with AI because new stuff keeps coming up, this way the cost of course goes up because the learning is already outdated.
  • If people raise a lot of money, then their competition can do a lot of marketing then CAC increase for Addictive learning as well.
  • Hiring remote eliminated problem of finding good employees
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I’m looking at website traffic as a proxy for the sales numbers (Do point out if someone feels that this might not be the right proxy) . From the website traffic, it does not seem like they are growing at the committed rate. The only positive point that I could find was that dataisgood has grown 5x in US on Jan 24 numbers. At these valuations if the growth does not come, then it might be dangerous.

@manhar looking forward to your views on this as well, since you are tracking this closely.

Lawsikho Traffic :

Lawsikho Assignment page traffic

SA Assignment page traffic

Data is good

Data is good traffic in US has grown 5 since Jan 24

Ipleaders blog

Disc: Invested. Re-considering the decision.

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Management to meet on 19th aug to consider Fund raising.

Interesting deviation. Acquisition on the cards? As far as I understand, they don’t really need additional funds to expand the current business

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July data is in.

Seeing a nice spike 80% in lawsikho assignments page

Difference between SA/DIG and Lawsikho has been their blog ipleaders, which is giving lawsikho courses a push.

Lawsikho Referring domains:

SA Referring domains:

DIG referring domains:

Disc: Same as before. Invested. Will reconsider after hearing management’s reasoning for fundraising

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What are your thoughts on today’s fundraising? Promoters are planning to increase their holding through convertible warrants at price of Rs 292/share.

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What are your thoughts now? They have not specifically told about the reason for this fundraising, right?

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It should be view as good sign. Few months back they sold little in IPO and now they are putting at 292 with no discount to market price. Something big is coming. We can wait only.

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Again they are raising funds and this big names will come.
But what they will do with this much money?

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For Acquisitions

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The FY24 AR has a couple of interesting details regarding execution:

  1. Skill arbitrage now accounts for > 50% of the revenue.

SA scaleup has been brilliant.

Year 2023 2024 H1FY25
SA Revenue 2.68 21.09
% of addictive revenue 8% 32% > 50%
  1. Management has mentioned multiple times that the sales team scale up is the crucial factor for the next year. The sales team size has increased by ~50%
Month Full time sales employees sales consultants Total
Oct 2023 80 106 186
August 2024 36 248 284
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