School EdTech Unicorn LEAD elevates Ritwik Khare as COO
Mumbai: School EdTech major LEAD, which recently turned Unicorn, has announced the elevation of Chief Commercial Officer Ritwik Khare as the Chief Operation Officer (COO) of the firm. This comes after Ritwik helped achieve a series of successes towards driving sales and spearheading the revenue function of the company.
Ritwik, a Gold Medalist MBA from FMS, Delhi has over 20 years of experience in leadership positions driving business successfully across industries. In his new role, Ritwik will take the lead in providing a unified customer experience to LEAD’s partner schools and ensure to deliver learning outcomes for students by bringing in synergy between the company’s Academic Excellence and Commercial teams.
LEAD has created a niche for itself in the EdTech industry over the years by transforming core schooling in India with its innovative full-stack School EdTech solutions.
Sharing the excitement about Ritwik Khare’s appointment as COO, LEAD co-founder Sumeet Mehta said, “We are in the midst of a very exciting phase and Ritwik’s deep understanding of the evolving EdTech landscape with customer centricity at its core is remarkable. This makes him a perfect fit to lead our next wave of growth. I am delighted to have him take charge of the company’s overall operations and develop innovative sales models for scaling up at a rapid pace. ”
LEAD co-founder Smita Deorah said, “Both Sumeet and I have a strong belief that if we have to transform education, we will need to transform core learning at school. This can only happen with the right use of technology and the right talent pool working towards it. Ritwik’s new position will further empower the zonal teams towards delivering academic and commercial outcomes for our partners. This internal elevation also reinforces our promise of building LEADers from within the system.”
Talking about his new role Ritwik Khare said, “I am thankful to Sumeet and Smita for their continued belief in me, as together we work towards LEAD’s mission of transforming core school education in India. I look forward to bringing my knowledge and experience to increase the agility of strategy execution and drive continued growth by overseeing the delivery of a unified customer experience to our partners. We are looking at a massive expansion plan in the coming years to make our mission of providing affordable high quality education available to every child in India. Across 500 plus districts in India now, our teams work with schools in areas of academic excellence, marketing & admission services and administrative support.”
Over the years, LEAD has been making international standard education accessible and affordable to students, especially in non-metro cities. The curriculum in a LEAD Powered School is at par with the best in the world, including schools in Singapore, Canada, and the USA.
The leadership transition comes at a time when LEAD is charting out the next phase of growth. The company’s valuation has doubled in the last 9 months on the back of strong growth in its operating and financial metrics. LEAD has seen rapid adoption in the last 4 years and will enter Academic Year 22-23 with 5000 schools across 500+ cities in India with an annual revenue run-rate of $80 million. The company envisions transforming the lives of 25 million students in 60,000 schools by 2026 through School EdTech.