The dialogue begins with an explanation of who the speakers will be by Luis González, managing director of the Germán Sánchez Ruipérez Foundation and founder of Readmagine in 2006,: these are Gauthier Van Malderen (Perlego), Eduardo Yagüe (Odilo) and Marc Boutet (Demarque).
Before the dialogue, each one makes a brief presentation about their work as leaders of their respective projects.
The first is Van Malderen, founder and CEO of Perlego. In order for us to understand what Perlego is and what it offers, he begins his presentation by emphasizing the great discontent that seems to exist among students who need textbooks, since the prices are considerably high. This is the problem that arises in the consumer realm; in the case of publishers, the problem stems from how consumers deal with their own problem, and that is that both second-hand sales and piracy are the two practices that most harm these publishers.
Perlego helps alleviate this situation by offering a membership website where students can find a lot of material of their interest in different formats. Publishers benefit of it too since Perlego reduces traditional production costs, taking into account that the printing part is a problem for textbooks and what they cost.
Perlego offers an all-you-can-read model and they also collaborate with different companies so that students have advantages in both services.
The next speaker is Eduardo Yagüe, director of Odilo. Odilo’s goals consist of democratizing access to education and promoting study and reading habits, helping users reach their full potential through what they call learning ecosystems. They have more than 8,000 clients, more than three million resources available (which represents the largest educational catalog in the world) and are present in more than fifteen countries.
Odilo offers the following things:
-Access to the largest educational catalog in the world.
-Unlimited learning experiences.
-Intelligent and personalized platform.
-Business Intelligence.
-A dedicated team: personalized learning and professional services.
Its direct impact on aspects that can be measured constitutes successes such as increasing reading habits in three out of five users, a 134% improvement in reading comprehension and 90% savings for families.
Marc Boutet, CEO of DeMarque, is the latest guest to expose his model. First, he informs us that they collaborate closely with Cantook Education and then gives us a brief tour of the beginnings of DeMarque, a company he founded in 1990, when he was 15 years old. At that time his idea was to bring educational content closer to people from schools, so he designed a software for it. They worked with floppy disks and methods that were very different from what is common now, but they knew how to adapt and continue to do so.
In 2011 they began to distribute in bookstores and it didn’t take long for them to want to provide access to ebooks in schools. It is currently one of the few platforms that are used in all schools.
In their attempt to collaborate with publishers they found certain problems to solve:
-How to align actors (publishers, school, ministry) around a disruptive version.
-How to convince that the project is an added commercial value and is not a replacement for physical sales.
-How to imagine features that do not meet existing needs in the school.
-How to generate adoption of the technology.
After the presentations, the dialogue moderated by Luis González begins in which the different participants put their opinions and visions in common on various issues related to the academic book industry and educational content, such as how they face the global approach of their projects since each market has its particularities, if they have any pedagogical strategy or how they intend to deal with the non formal content, the kind of educational content that is offered, for example, from platforms such as YouTube.
Gauthier Van Malderen is the co-founder and CEO of Perlego, the largest textbook subscription service, launched in Jan 2017. Perlego’s mission is to make education accessible to all by partnering with learners, instructors and publishers around the world. Gauthier has raised $75m USD to date and has won 26 awards including Europas Best Edtech, Virgin Voom and KPMG pioneer awards. He is a Bocconi & Cambridge graduate
Eduardo Yagüe is Head of Global School Business at Odilo. He is graduated in Economics (International Economy and Development) from the Universidad Complutense de Madrid, and Executive MBA by Instituto de Empresa. With over 20 years’ background in major companies in the Education and Publishing industry, he has extensive experience dealing with printed and digital learning resources and services, including school and higher education textbooks, school’s management platforms, foreign languages learning materials, literature for children and young adults, assessment tools and teacher training services.
Marc Boutet is Ceo of DeMarque, the company which co-founded the company 30 years ago when he was 15 years old. Successfully programmed and commercialized best-selling software such as Typing Pal & Budget Express. Extensive managerial experience through entire product cycles, industry shifts, company turnarounds. Involved in many industry committees which are shaping the future of publishing. Received multiple business awards in Canada, France, and Italy. Holds degrees from McGill and Laval University
