Case Study: EdTech SaaS → Emerging Markets Launch Strategy
Turning a low-connectivity prototype into a commercially viable launch plan
In 2015, an engineer inside Google discovered a way to turn low-connectivity environments into high-connectivity ones. Not a product. Not a feature. Just a magical piece of functionality. My job was to help turn that “LCCS magic” into a commercial EdTech product for schools in emerging markets – and build a launch plan that would actually pay off.
We started with no ICP, no pricing, no vertical, and no business case. Just a clever box that let people access content even with patchy internet. And Google needed answers fast.
We had 9 potential countries and one brutal constraint:
Places with low connectivity tend to be low on budgets as well.
Before we could even think about launch, we had to solve the core tension:
Where does this device actually make commercial sense, if at all?
One thing quickly became clear: it only works in verticals where someone helps pay for it.
Education was the only space where three things lined up:
Governments subsidise access (devices, content, digital programmes)
Curriculum content already exists (Khan Academy, national libraries)
Connectivity problems directly block learning, so offline caching has obvious value
Then came the second insight - the countries with the biggest connectivity problems weren’t always the ones where a launch would succeed.
Need is not the same as readiness. You have to go where the ecosystem can actually support adoption.
That’s what narrowed 9 potential countries down to 4 launch markets — the places with both the demand and the practical conditions to make the model viable.
We turned an undefined engineering hack into a commercial GTM plan by stitching together infrastructure data, policy signals, device penetration, affordability, and school-level realities.
We scored 9 candidate countries across connectivity, electricity reliability, student-to-device ratios, curriculum readiness, and government digital-education agendas. This narrowed the list to 4 launch markets: Mexico, India, Thailand, Brazil.
Then we built a bottom-up model of school types and bandwidth tiers, sizing 27,677 LCCS units and a 1.38M Chromebook attach opportunity.
We mapped each country to the right LCCS variant (HDD vs 3G HDD) based on outages and network strength.
Then we built the commercial engine:
a full pricing + bundling model with breakeven logic, import duties, content costs, and 24 price points across 4 variants and 3 channels.
We created the tools needed to qualify schools and sell the solution:
School-level survey
Product fit decision tree
Scripts for Ministries of Education and partners
Readiness checklist for budget and infrastructure
These turned a complex hardware + content + connectivity idea into something the field could operationalise.
We delivered a complete, scalable GTM blueprint — not just for LCCS, but for Google’s broader EdTech push in emerging markets.
A 4-market launch plan prioritised from 9 candidates.
A 27,677-unit LCCS footprint and 1.38M Chromebook attach sized market-by-market.
A margin-safe pricing model with 24 price points across variants and channels.
A repeatable framework (survey, scoring, decision tree) that Google teams could use to assess any future EM market.
A single, coherent path for reaching 300M+ students and 10M+ teachers.
Big tech doesn’t struggle with ideas - it struggles with focus.
The hard part isn’t the hardware; it’s deciding where it works, who pays, and how it scales.
Once those answers are clear, even a tiny engineering hack can become a real business.
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