Kompalli: Edtech's primary competitors are consumer inertia, Netflix, and Zomato
Phalgun Kompalli · The AI Moat Everyone is Ignoring | Phalgun Kompalli, Founder UpGrad and Bodhium Labs · Aug 27, 2026 · at 35:08
Phalgun Kompalli, co-founder of Upgrad, explains how edtech sales funnels lose the vast majority of prospective leads to inaction and entertainment rather than to competing education companies.
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“So I think when we started, the biggest challenge was not competition. I would say even right now, the biggest challenge is not competition. So let me give you an example, right? So let's say we had, we got a hundred leads. Let's say one person joined. We had one person conversion. What did the other 99 people do? 98 of them dropped off and did nothing. There was only one other person who might have taken a competitor program. So, it is not like we're losing to competition. It's like somebody says we're losing to Netflix. Our competition is Netflix. Our competition is Zomato. Our competition is people wanting to do something else.”
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