Elements of Khan Academy Business Model

Khan Academy website (https://www.khanacademy.org/) was developed by Sal Khan in 2005. It claims to be providing the world-class education for anyone in the world. This post identifies the website’s E-Business Model as well as analyses the elements of Value Proposition, Revenue Model, Market Opportunity, and Competitive Environment. This post also provides a recommendation for the website improvement in its existing market.

E-Business Model

 

Khan Academy is categorised as a content provider website as it distributes information on subjects such as Math, Science, Computing, Arts & Humanities, and Economic & Finance as well as test preparations and college admissions.

Value Proposition

 

Ultimately, Khan Academy puts inclusiveness at the central of its activities. First, all its contents are completely free. Second, it provides 4 languages option for the platform and even more (around 27 languages) for dubbed videos and translated transcripts. These are very helpful for those whose English is not their first language. Moreover, the videos and transcripts themselves are beneficial for people with disabilities i.e. deaf or visually impaired. Third, it enables customers to personalise their dashboard as needed (subjects and pace). Fourth, it provides the offline version, called KA Lite, to support those in areas without internet.

 

Another important point of the website is, a team of experts from various world rank universities supports every subject taught in it. This assures that the website provides the high quality of education.

Revenue Model

 

Khan Academy is a non-profit company which gains supports from volunteers and donors. Many well-known individuals and organisations have been its donors. Among them are Dan Benton (CEO of Andor Capital Management), Carlos Rodriguez-Pastor (a Peru’s businessman and number 1 billionaire), Google, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, The Walt Disney Company, and so forth.

 

The website has received numerous donations that it even mainly classifies the donors based on the amount of money donated, starts from the range of $50,000 – $249,000 to the range of $2,000,000 above. Thus, it will be less likely that Khan Academy closes down due to run out of resources since it has the solid ones.

Market Opportunity

 

Khan Academy intended to serve kindergarten to college learners, including their parents and teachers, worldwide. In this regard, it has been involving many volunteers and donors around the world to contribute to its multilingual website.

Competitive Environment

 

There have been many free educational websites like Khan Academy, for instance, e-learningforkids.org, futurelearn.com, open.edu, and so forth. However, Khan Academy is relatively more comprehensive and inclusive compared to the others. Each of them has different segment, either targeting children or adult only. They also provide less languages and no offline version.

Recommendations

 

It will be great if the website could adapt the subjects and curriculums to the local context of the targeted countries. So that, the contents will not be too American that are translated into other languages. Instead, they will be more countries’ wise. In Indonesia language version, for example, it will be more beneficial if, there is also sub-subject (under the Art & Humanities) about Indonesia history (not only US and World ones). Similarly, under economic and finance subject, it will be more interesting to know the entrepreneurship condition of the country. To do so, Khan Academy could collaborate with education organisations i.e. reputable universities in the related countries.