Language learning app LingosMio reached 70K subscribers within 6 months of its launch The online language-learning platform LingosMio enables users to learn languages through full-fledged online courses.

The online language-learning platform LingosMio enables users to learn languages through full-fledged online courses with ease. In conversation with Entrepreneur India, Alok Arora, founder & CEO of LingosMio.com, shares his thoughts about the online language learning platform – its need & objective behind starting such a platform, and challenges faced to scale it further:

Tell us about LingosMio.

LingosMio is a product of Insperia Education. It is a language-learning platform, where users can learn languages through full-fledged online courses with ease. The courses at LingosMio are created with mindset that languages are a thought process and it's important to understand the thought process in order to be fluent in a particular language. Therefore, LingosMio allows you to understand the root of each word and how to use the words to make sentences on your own.

At LingosMio, the most important thing in the course is the accent on conversational skills and the actual use of the language. The courses have a great focus on speaking and listening skills. Moreover, we have used recorded voices by native voice artists, which help students to understand the accent better. This is not something you find in other language programs.

What was the objective behind starting it?

I was always fond of learning foreign languages. Over a year ago, I took a trip to South America. Whilst travelling across most countries was a breeze since I spoke Spanish, but I felt that I missed out on Brazil since I did not speak Portuguese. I came back and decided to learn Portuguese. Since it was difficult to find a good tutor, I looked online, but there weren't any good resources. That's when the idea of LingosMio came up.

Kindly throw some light on your revenue and business model.

We have kept the courses free. We do not have a revenue model in place as of now. Since our mission is to make language learning accessible to everyone. We are working on tie-ups with major institutes for certifications and examinations, but that is in the pipeline.

What challenges did you faced in terms of taking your product to the market, convincing your customer about its benefit etc?

The biggest challenge is to make people aware about the product. Since there are a lot of ineffective learning products out there, a lot of people can be skeptical about trying new products. However, once people have tried LingosMio they have stuck to it. The simple reason for this is that LingosMio is highly effective, when it comes to digital learning products.

How big is online market in India? How do you see your organization growing in coming years (future road map)?

India's online education market size is set to grow to $40 billion by 2017 from the present $20 billion. LingosMio is focused on the digital language learning market. At present, we are present in more than 200 countries offering courses in English (via Spanish and Portuguese), Spanish, Hindi and Mandarin. We plan to introduce these courses in more source languages and expand our target audience. We plan on revolutionizing the way people learn languages.

As far as the Indian market is concerned, we are offering courses in Spanish, Hindi and Mandarin via English that cater are used extensively here. The courses are distributed online via our website www.lingosmio.com and our android app. We have recently started with English courses for Hindi and Urdu speakers. These will be available on mobile soon.

What is your geographical reach?

Our market is anyone who wants to learn any of the foreign languages we offer. A large part of our traffic comes through Central and South America to access the English courses. Infact after just 2 months, the LingosMio app is ranked among the top 10 education app in 9 South American countries.

LingosMio is also very popular among a few African countries with the people striving to learn the LingosMio languages. The most popular languages are English and Spanish. We have realised that a lot of people around the world wish to learn Hindi and Mandarin Chinese. There are little to no sources available for these languages online. Particularly in the way we teach these languages. So that is another target area. As far as South East Asia is concerned, we have a lot of users from India, Philipineses, Vietnam and Thailand, who are looking to learn Spanish or Mandarin Chinese.

We have a huge number of users from Philippines and United States, who wish to learn Spanish. The reason for this is the large number of call centres in Philipines for the Latin American market.

What makes LingosMio unique from others dealing in the same sector?

Most platforms do not actually teach the language, but are mere add-ons to help anyone studying a language. LingosMio offers courses, which explains the concept and then makes the user practice them by way of exercises. Our courses also have a lot of grammar explanations clubbed with exercises to practice those concepts. The course has a great focus on conversations. Each chapter ends with a conversation; no other course has conversations structured in the same style as LingosMio. Infact, LingosMio engages the user in a conversation with the system something none of the other platforms do. We also offer the users a chance to practice for their formal language examinations using a similar testing platform, again something none of the above platforms have.

How does it provide a consistent experience regardless of the quality of the Internet connection?

Students can access the courses via our website and also via our Android app. In the app, the students can download the chapters and then access the chapters' offline also at their convenience.

To what extend it is reliable in terms of learning languages?

All of our courses are made by a panel comprising of experienced language teachers, native speakers, linguists and students. As a result the content is not only reliable, but also highly relevant and fresh. We have focused on those elements of the language that are most widely used and also those that a student needs the most when learning a new language.

Right now, what all languages you are teaching and how good is the response from your customers?

At present, LingosMio offer courses in Spanish, English, Hindi and Mandarin Chinese. The response has been exceptional and with very little marketing we reached a subscriber base of 70,000 within 6 months of launching. The biggest thing for us is that a lot of people have written to us telling us about how they have been learning the respective languages at their University, but they have made much more progress and feel much more confident learning with LingosMio and this is reason for the high rankings on the play stores.