Education Coaching and Training – Dutch Uncles

Here’s Why Extracurricular Learning Is The Fastest Growing Edtech Segment

Aakash Sharma — Wed, 25 Aug 2021 03:35:08 +0000

With the advent of edtech and the rapid digitisation of education in recent years, every element of education and training has changed through technology. Classes have shifted online, doubt clearing sessions are scheduled on student portals, exam registrations are done on websites, and so on.

Among the changes, one that is emerging as the fastest and most enticing for students is the digitisation of extracurricular learning and activities.

What is ‘Extracurricular Learning’ in edtech?

Due to the growing importance of holistic development, extracurricular learning is becoming one of the fastest-growing areas of educational technology (edtech). Extracurricular learning mainly includes activities such as yoga, general culture, arts, crafts, dance, and reasoning.

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Given the vibrant and profitable potential in the field of extracurricular learning, many start-ups have emerged with innovative ways to seize the new opportunities.

Yellow Class – a key extracurricular learning player

Yellow Class, the ‘Online Free Hobby Classes for Kids’ platform, is an edtech company that focuses on extracurricular activities as teaching pedagogy. The edtech start-up offers children a wide range of extracurricular learning activities through its live instruction platform using artificial intelligence to ease up interaction and participation.

Yellow Class was founded in June 2020 by Anshul Gupta and Arpit Mittal to provide free extracurricular and leisure activities for children under the age of 12. More than 1 million children have participated in over 150 million minutes of activities on the platform. The start-up also plans to add new categories such as musical instruments and sports under its ambit of extracurricular learning.

Yellow Class has raised $6 million in Series A funding led by Elevation Capital. It will use the funds to improve products, develop richer content and increase recruitment and expansion to more than 500 cities in India and other regions.

Market insights

The extracurricular learning sector in India has witnessed steady growth in recent years. The segment is expected to reach $5.8 billion in valuation by 2021. In its current form, which is a fragmented market dominated by local and small businesses, the market has a lot of potential for companies to become industry leaders.

Since most school programmes and education infrastructure are purely academic in nature and usually do not focus on the holistic development of children, extracurricular options of learning available easily online are coming to the mainstream. Today’s parents highly favour alternative ways to promote children’s hobbies and other activities.

How can new edtechs enter this segment?

As mentioned above, the extracurricular learning market is witnessing an upward trend due to the transforming face of education and increasing competitiveness. Students and parents alike want to engage in multiple productive activities that can form their base for holistic development.

Start-ups and emerging businesses must heed these tectonic changes and start building solutions to fill the gap between traditional education and edtech. Just like Yellow Class has jumped in this industry, gaining a much-needed beginners’ advantage, other businesses can also follow suit and develop unique one-stop-shop learning solutions.

Businesses and entrepreneurs operating in the edtech space can adopt digital extracurricular learning solutions and training modules. They can focus on a wide range of topics and mentors like influencers and professionals who can enlighten the young minds about alternative careers and productive extracurricular activities.

While using children-friendly edtech solutions, entrepreneurs can also use e-gaming, AI gamification tools and features like interactive chatbots to keep students engaged. Edtechs can also deploy digital activities such as polls and quizzes in the user interface for more engagement.

Essentially, by creating a new category in the ed-tech space and giving kids easy access, fun, and interactive classes, edtech businesses can grow their ventures in the edtech boom while helping students learn actively and passionately.

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Indian Edtech To See Foreign Capital Inflow As China Tightens Its Rules

Aakash Sharma — Tue, 03 Aug 2021 08:35:07 +0000

The Chinese government recently unveiled new rules for the country’s private education sector that prohibit after-school businesses, including education technology (edtech) companies, from making a profit, raising capital, or participating in IPOs.

Central government agencies have issued instructions to “reduce the burden on students enrolled in compulsory education”. The administration requires private teaching and coaching companies to re-register as non-profit organisations. The new rules prohibit authorities from approving new businesses and puts previously registered online education businesses under review.

Why does this move by the Chinese matter?

At a time when India is witnessing some of its biggest tech start-up IPOs, including Zomato’s recent listing and Nykaa’s upcoming IPO, the new Chinese regulations have ended the hopes for an IPO for the country’s biggest online education start-ups like Yuanfudao and Zuoyebang. These rules also limit fundraising for educational tech start-ups that are already listed publicly.

China has called for transforming its for-profit after-school educational institutions into non-profit educational technology institutions. It aims to prevent edtech start-ups from raising funds and going public.

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With the hopes of cashing in on this new development, Indian edtech companies are already hiring public policy executives to weigh options.

Indian edtech market and possible impacts on it

The education sector in India is highly controlled. Most of these laws and regulations apply to traditional educational institutions that offer education up to class 12th or higher. However, some states such as Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Uttar Pradesh and Goa have recently begun to pass laws to regulate online education service providers and edtech companies. States like Maharashtra and Rajasthan also have formed committees to pass legislations concerning edtech.

As the Indian edtech sector continues to grow, governments may seek to regulate education technology platforms in specific ways for many reasons, but primarily to protect students’ rights.

The new Chinese laws certainly benefit India in the short term. The main reason for this is that venture capital financing has to go somewhere as it is deflected from the Chinese edtech sector. For this, India is a good and profitable opportunity in investors’ eyes. In the long run, however, the results of these events have no certainty.

India can anticipate more public-private collaborations in education in the coming days, similar to what Unacademy announced with the Government of Karnataka. Unacademy has signed a memorandum of understanding with the Karnataka government to offer free education to 4,500 students wishing to take the competitive exams. The three-year programme is part of the edtech giant’s corporate social responsibility (CSR) programme and offers tuition, scholarships and free Unacademy Plus membership through online testing to select qualified students.

What can India’s edtech players and new entrepreneurs take advantage of?

Considering that the fourth or fifth largest edtech firm in China is more extensive than BYJU’S (India’s biggest edtech player), the possibility for India to make the most of China’s policy disruption is immense. In the future, there will undoubtedly be much collaboration and cross partnerships between edtech companies, other industry segments and the government.

As edtech gets bigger and holds more weight to impact policy-based decisions, edtech start-ups will want to be in the government’s good books. These changes will further help attract a chunk of the foreign capital earmarked for China to India.

As scales gradually shift towards India via the massive demand, large talent pool and regulatory support from the government, edtech entrepreneurs are bound to benefit. It is high time for entrepreneurs and every stakeholder to put themselves out there and utilise the benefits that come with the capacity to submerge into the global stage as a free-market superpower, using education and technology as tools for success.

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Unacademy’s Acquisition Spree

Shalmoli Sarkar — Wed, 28 Jul 2021 10:35:09 +0000

Much to the likes of Byju’s acquisition haul, Unacademy is not behind. Between March 2020 till February 2021, Unacademy has made 7 acquisitions and with the recent live game streaming platform Rheo TV, the count becomes 8.

The deal involves a 100 percent stake of Unacademy in Rheo TV and therefore will enable the exit of its previous investors. The investor list includes names such as Lightspeed India Partners, Sequoia Capital India’s Surge, AET Fund, founder and former CEO of RedBus Phanindra Sama and former country head of Google Mobile Mahesh Narayanan.

The online live gaming streaming platform Rheo TV – a brainchild of Ex-Unacademy colleagues Saksham Keshri and Prakash Kumar, will now join Unacademy’s Relevel – a platform that aims to bring disruptions in India’s job market. Relevel will up the employability skills of the Indian job seekers by allowing them to showcase their skills through tests and secure employment in various companies.

Why is Unacademy making such speedy acquisitions?

In 16 months, the acquisitions made by Unacademy ranged from small-medium-sized edtech startups that served the competitive entrance segment such as UPSC, NEET, GATE, ESE and other government exams. The deals taking place at a faster pace also come to the close of the heels of Byjus acquiring India’s largest offline tutorial chain Aakash Educational Services to offer omnichannel learning solutions and become a pioneer in the test prep market. Its partnership with Disney to provide online learning solutions to kindergarten kids and the recent first-ever foreign haul with Osmo – A US-based educational game system, reveals Byju’s ambitious global dreams.

Looking at these deals, it became imperative for Unacademy to strengthen its anchor in India’s competitive exam segment.

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Unacademy has made 7 acquisitions and with the recent live game streaming platform Rheo TV, the count becomes 8 within 16 months.

The Acquired Products of Unacademy

Unacademy, since the beginning of 2020 till Feb 2021 has acquired the below startups:

Kreatryx: Kreatryx offers videos, test series and a postal tracking platform for GATE and ESE exams. Their deal was an undisclosed one and took place in March 2020. Kreatryx now runs as a separate brand with Unacademy being the parent one.
CodeChef: CodeChef is a platform for aspiring programmers to make it big in the world of algorithms, computer programming and programming contests.
Prepladder: It offers online learning solutions for students appearing for medical entrance examinations such as NEET, PG and FMGE.
Mastree: Mastree is a one-stop subscription product for STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Mathematics) courses, for classes 5-8, which includes live Classes in small groups for mathematics, science, public speaking, creative writing and Vedic mathematics.
Coursavy: A platform that caters to the exam preparations of UPSC aspirants.
NeoStencil: An exam preparation platform for government jobs.
Tapchief: It was the first acquisition made in Feb 2021, the online platform helps professionals to earn incomes without full-time jobs.

How are the acquisitions going to benefit Unacademy?

Unlike Byjus that began offering learning solutions in the K-12 segment and then forayed into test preparation space, Unacademy was focused on becoming the market leader in the competitive exam space. By striking deals with Prepladder a platform for medical exam prep, Coursavvy – dedicated to UPSC aspirants, and NeoStencil – a platform for government exam preps, it has created a niche for itself in the edtech market since few platforms cater to these segments.

Though Byjus also offers UPSC and medical exam preparations, in terms of user base, it is dismal. Whereas startups like Coursavy and Prepladder, before getting acquired, had already secured a loyal userbase of UPSC and medical aspirants and this acquisition will further benefit Unacademy to enhance its learning content and expand its market.

By acquiring Tapchief, it has upped the game of enhancing the employability skills of job seekers which has largely been untapped to date. While leveraging Tapchief’s suite of solutions to help professionals interact and learn from experts, work with businesses from across the world and aggregate their brand online, it will enable the edtech major to build Unacademy Pro, a platform that will help an individual strengthen its skills and knowledge to get a dream job. To keep up its pace with the rival’s acquisition of WhiteHat Jr., Unacademy has stepped its foot in the competitive programming space as well. For honing the public speaking skills and enhancing the creativity of the school students from grades 5th-8th it has acquired Mastree.

So, overall it becomes evident that Unacademy wants to build its presence mostly in the test preparation segment for undergrad and postgrad students and wants to enter and bolster its presence into the field of job-seeking individuals.

Learnings from Unacademy

Not following the suit

Unacademy did not follow the K-12 suit like other edtech platforms to retain its uniqueness. It realised that if its rivals have a hold in the school segment and are going global then it should bolster its Indian market by providing online learning solutions in various college and government entrance exams.

Something for the job seekers

Most of the undergrads in India are not workforce ready. To match up with the dynamic business environment, companies are scaling themselves up and want to equip themselves with the best workforce. Hence, the corporates today are hunting for individuals that have special skills and competencies to help them achieve their objectives. With initiatives like Relevel and Unacademy Pro, they are focussing on the individuals who can upskill themselves and be job-ready.

Innovative Learning Product

With the acquisition of Rheo TV, it might be possible that Unacademy launches learning solutions amalgamated with gaming to give online learning a fun avatar.

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The Way Ahead, Simplilearn’s Global Expansion

DU Desk — Wed, 21 Jul 2021 09:02:36 +0000

The legacy players in the online education market who have been in the business since before ed-tech became a hot sector are now market leaders. The start-up is one among those players who are on their way to conquering the globe in their ambitious market plans.

Who is Simplilearn?

Simplilearn is an ed-tech start-up headquartered in Bengaluru and is a veteran start-up in India’s online higher education sector. Founded in the year 2010, they are a market leader in its league and provides differentiated offerings in the digital skilling space. They provide training in disciplines like Cyber Security, Cloud Computing, Project Management, Digital Marketing, Data Science, etc.

Simplilearn’s Online boot camp

Simplilearn provides an online ed-tech boot camp by partnering with world leading universities and companies. Through the boot camp, they provide post-graduate and master’s programs as well as certification courses for consumers. The bootcamp is mainly aimed at offering digital skills training.

Simplilearn’s Global Expansion Plans

Simplilearn’s Global Expansion plans come on the heels of their recent investment received by Blackstone, a Private Equity Firm who purchased a majority stake in exchange for $250 M. Simplilearn will take advantage of Black Stone’s global network to fuel its expansion plans. Blackstone’s global expertise in education technology will act as a stepping stone for Simplilearn to go global.

Products going global

With the new funds in place, Simplilearn plans to reinvent the company as the ‘world’s largest digital skilling company’. By leveraging Blackstone’s global footprint, Simplilearn will launch new programmes and build better ed-tech products.

Markets being targeted

Simplilearn will first target the US and European markets as part of their global expansion. They will double down on their primary markets US and India. They will also be expanding to Latin America.

Partnership with global universities

The company will partner with global businesses and universities through Blackstone’s value-add to the firm and their scale. Empowered by the partnerships, Simplilearn will continue its expansion plans across the world.

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Simplilearn will take advantage of Black Stone’s global network to fuel its expansion plans.

What’s in it for me?

Simplilearn’s growth story is a lesson in start-up evolution for budding companies in ed-tech. Their growth and success are attributed to a number of milestones along their journey which have turned out to be defining moments along their growth. Simplilearn broke into the ed-tech market when there were close to 0 market players. Slowly awareness around ed-tech platforms for upskilling grew and so did Simplilearn. What really helped Simplilearn expand were the multiple investment rounds received. This was a crucial milestone since they were able to diversify their product offerings and target global markets.

Finally came the ed-tech revolution which took Simplilearn to an all-time high. When teaching and learning became completely digital, it was just more investments, expansions and new products for Simplilearn. Learning from their journey, ed-tech start-ups need to align their business model with the current market needs. You also need to create an investment worthy business and invest heavily in technology talent. It’s also important to bring disruption into the business at the right time before it’s too late. Expansion is key to growing as an ed tech start-up. You need to target new, uncharted territories and new markets early on.

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Edtech Startup, Pedagogy Has Grabbed the Investor’s Eyeball

Vaishali Das — Sat, 03 Jul 2021 03:35:05 +0000

Who is Pedagogy?

A hybrid e-learning platform, Pedagogy is an Ahmedabad-based edtech startup, easing the way of utilising books and resources for competitive entrances and various other examinations. Founded by Archin Shah, Abhilash Sonwane and Ritesh P. Gandhi in 2016, the startup is changing the perspective of preparation for entrances like JEE and NEET examinations by providing study materials from trusted publishers and coaching.

What does Pedagogy do?

Pedagogy is amplifying the resources’ part required for clearing any competitive exam. It is enabling the students with an affordable platform where they can get books and study materials from renowned publishers, authors and coaching institutes at a very low rate. Not only for the students but this startup is also taking care of the publishers and the coaching institutes by providing them with a platform to sell their books in a smartbook format for publishers and authors and for institutes, it has a ready to use platform for live sessions with personalised apps at zero cost.

Services and Products Provided by Pedagogy

This edtech startup is the hot star of education bringing trusted and mainstream content from publishers like MTG Learning Media, Universal Books, Trueman Book Company, Disha Publications, Dhanpat Rai Publication, etc. It also gathers information from teachers and authors and brings it under a single and cost-effective platform.

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The edtech startups provide an e-learning experience alongside the courses, from fancy to general diplomas, everything is attracting the investors more into the education startup space.

It provides customers with an Infinity pass, which include JEE pass, NEET pass, and UGC NET pass with smart books starting at Rs. 49. This Infinity pass is like an e-library of handpicked and popular books from leading publishers and coaching classes in smartbook format accessible via their website or by their app only. This pass provides access to 100 plus books at the price of a movie ticket. With this pass one can have unlimited practice sessions, unlimited test series, reference notes and flashcards by the best content creators for exams. Along with this they also provide a video course by motion institute making the learning process more efficient. It also offers a personalised study and a practice platform for students which is super affordable and easily accessible.

Recent Funding: Investors Showing Interests Why?

The edtech startup has recently raised $400,000 in a pre-series a funding round led by Inflection Point Ventures (IPV). The startups plan to use the raised capital to enhance its marketing, product development, operations, sales and support.

With students being constantly pressurised as to which resources to follow, pedagogy brings the easy solution of partnering with trusted publishers and coaching institutes, bringing their expertise under one roof. In the pandemic it is providing heavy books at an affordable price to the students who are preparing for various competitive exams.

What are the takeaways for edtech startups?

In the pandemic as people are forced to stay indoors, the education system has taken the route of digital platforms. The edtech startups provide an e-learning experience alongside the courses, from fancy to general diplomas, everything is attracting the investors more into the education startup space.

This is the only platform that is enabling educational content creators like publishers, coaching institutes and authors. It allows the publishers to sell their physical books in the form of smart books, allowing coaching institutes to set up live sessions at zero cost, and providing students with an e-library. This startup is providing the students with all the resources they need to succeed in their exams. Along with students it is providing opportunities for publishers, authors and coaching institutes to take up the digital mode of learning-teaching process.

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Cuemath is Eyeing the Global Math Market

Anju Nambiar — Fri, 18 Jun 2021 07:35:03 +0000

Cuemath, an EdTech start-up offers a math learning platform with an after-school math and learning programme for the K-12 class. Founded in 2013, Cuemath has a global presence in 20 countries including India, the US, UK, Europe, parts of the Middle East, and the Asia-Pacific region. A purely math focused ed-tech company, Cuemath is headquartered in India but has a major global presence. Cuemath’s user base currently stands at over 2 Lakh+ global students and more than 10000 teachers.

Targeting new markets – Opportunities awaiting Cuemath

For FY22, Cuemath has grand plans to expand even further. The start-up is looking to venture into more markets and has set a target for 30 new markets/countries to expand into. By the end of financial year 2021-22, Cuemath wants to get into a total of 50 markets.

Niche global markets

Cuemath hit the nail on the head in ed-tech. By catering to a niche market (math), they discovered a huge global opportunity. It seems like the whole world will soon be their playground. By positioning themselves as a ‘global math brand’, Cuemath is aiming to build a ‘math platform for the world’.

What’s the Math market like in EdTech?

A pure math market offers massive opportunities in EdTech. It’s estimated to be around $20 B annually and the number of students and teachers waiting to be onboarded is huge, from a global perspective.

Math is one subject that’s a staple for students pursuing all kinds of courses and curriculums. By tapping into this global need, a plethora of markets open up. The Math market is riddled with ed-tech solutions that skim the surface but don’t address the core challenges of students, that is understanding concepts over rote-learning methods.

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Cuemath hit the nail on the head in EdTech. By catering to a niche market (math), they discovered a huge global opportunity

What’s in it for me?

Even in a trending, saturated sector like EdTech, there are opportunities to uniquely position yourself. Most EdTech start-ups are offering the same learning outcomes. Find out what nobody is looking at and utilise the opportunity to stand out from the crowd. Whatever niche you pick, understand the core challenges for learners and address them head-on.

Find deep global markets to venture into, while keeping your base strong in your home market. When venturing into new territory, it’s important to recognise the common theme for all learners. For instance, the need for a math learning solution is common for all students and is the foundation for most subjects including advanced technologies like AI (Artificial Intelligence) and ML (Machine Learning).

While venturing into new markets, don’t deviate from your in-house products and services. Instead, customize your existing products based on what the foreign markets need and tweak them according to the requirements. That is how you can easily break into new markets successfully.

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Little Singham, The New Teacher in Indian EdTech

Shalmoli Sarkar — Fri, 18 Jun 2021 06:35:02 +0000

The covid induced lockdown has revolutionised the chalk-blackboard classroom into a technology-driven one. EdTech companies are increasingly introducing gamification and animation using VR and ML in their learning module to offer a personalised learning experience for the children.

Cartoons and animation have always fascinated young children that kept them glued to the screens. Informative and animated shows like Dora the explorer have successfully cemented loyalty amongst children.

Anchoring on to animation and cartoons, Prerna Jhunjhunwala the founder of Creative Galileo e-learning has designed an EdTech app- Little Singham for children of age group 3-8 years that combines traditional learning with games, animation, and storytelling to make learning fun and immersive. Little Singham, launched in 2020, received 1 million downloads within six months of its launch.

What is Little Singham doing Differently in the EdTech Market?

Little Singham is a character-based early learning app for kids that focusses on strengthening the foundation on six major learning pillars namely numeracy, language, social and emotional development, motor skills, creative expression, and discovery of the world. These learning domains have been gamified and are embedded with learning videos, audiobooks, and interactive games. The learning modules of Little Singham consist of engaging story characters like Little Singham and his friends Babli, Lattu, and Hawaldar Karate that create an immersive learning experience. Gamification and animation help children comprehend moral values such as friendship, kindness, and helpfulness easily and that remains etched in their minds for a longer time.

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Little Singham, launched in 2020, received 1 million downloads within six months of its launch.

The Psychology behind Little Singham App

The little Singham app is designed by award-winning educators, product designers, animators, and software designers who build engaging content to induce curiosity, increase the attention span, build their reasoning habits, distinguish and think deeply. Personalization and gamification are the two most significant factors that are embedded in this learning app.

Its reception in the Indian Subcontinent

The app within its launch of less than a year witnessed 2 million downloads from the Indian sub-continent mainly from Tier-II and Tier-III cities of Nepal, Bangladesh, and Pakistan with an average rating of 4.8 stars. The app monthly receives 2,00,000 active unique users

The Next Step-Little Singham

In the next five years, Creative Galileo will introduce multiple characters in its storytelling and is planning to penetrate deeper with its edutainment content into India’s remote parts by building content in vernacular languages. For the next 18 months, it wants to target 10 million downloads.

What is in it for the EdTech sector for children?

As long as ambiguities regarding normalcy persists, learning through screens will continue to grow. The use of gamification in the formative years in children increases the emotional engagement between parents and kids. The alluring visuals increase the attention span and create deep impressions on the young minds. The inclusion of gamification teaches new skills to kids at an early age.

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Byjus to become $30 Billion Industry by 2031

Shalmoli Sarkar — Thu, 17 Jun 2021 04:35:02 +0000

The closed doors of schools in the pandemic are the tailwind behind the EdTech sector and Byjus aspires to become the undisputed leader of it. According to RBSA Advisors Byjus is gearing to become the largest decacorn EdTech start-up worth $30 billion in 10 years. The recent infusion of funds worth $340 million from investors such as the UBS Group, Zoom founder Eric Yuan, Blackstone, Abu Dhabi sovereign fund ADQ, and Phoenix Rising-Beacon Holdings has increased its valuation upto $16.5 billion surpassing Paytm and inching closer to its ambitious plan of raising a total of $ 1.5 billion in 2021. In 2020, Byjus alone raised a lion’s share of $1 billion from the total funding of $2.2 billion in the EdTech sector, as per Venture Intelligence Data. After attracting a huge volume of investments, this begs a question: how is Byjus eyeing to own a larger pie of the EdTech sector?

Acquisitions and the International Market Dream

Byjus online learning quickly shifted its gears from personalised learning to gain foothold in online school classrooms and online tutoring platforms etc. by acquiring Vidyartha, TutorVista, and Edurite. Byjus made these acquisitions keeping in mind to launch new product offerings in online learning solutions to schools through Vidyartha and gain access to the international market leveraging the user base of Tutorvista.

Its acquisition spree did not end there. The year 2020 witnessed the biggest offline tutorial chain Aakash Educational Services getting acquired by Byjus in a deal worth $1billion to strengthen its presence in the engineering and medical entrance exam segment.

WhiteHat Jr an online coding platform for kids is perhaps the first start-up that caught Byjus attention within 20 months of its launch in 2020. The platform will soon launch music, science, and English also creating native courses for the mobile. 70 percent of WhiteHat Jr.’s revenue comes from countries UK and USA. Therefore, holding on to Whitehat Jr expansive reach in international markets, Byjus is launching Byju’s Future School, an online live one-on-one learning platform for coding and mathematics for the USA, UK, Australia, Brazil, Indonesia, and Mexico markets.To tap the kid’s age group of 3-8 years in the US market, Byjus has acquired Osmo – a US-based educational games maker which will offer learning solutions in the US market by leveraging its physical-to-digital technology and content.

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According to RBSA Advisors Byjus is gearing to become the largest decacorn EdTech start-up worth $30 billion in 10 years.

What does this mean for Byjus and India?

With the acquisition of several international and national medium-sized EdTech companies and offline tutorial chains, it can be inferred that Byjus does not want to keep any segment of the educational sector untapped nationally and internationally thus creating a high barrier for the new entrants. Right from kindergarten to high school to competitive exams, Byju wants to gain a strong foothold in the national and international markets. To penetrate deeper into India’s semi-urban cities, it plans to introduce subjects in vernacular languages, with a new mentoring programme where every student will have a dedicated mentor. The new mentoring programme will effectively assist in student’s doubt-solving.

India’s Edtech Curve?

In the absence of chalks and blackboards, learning online seems to be the only viable option for students. Though EdTech cannot replace classrooms, the online classes from Byjus will offer a gamified approach in learning, therefore, helping students to grasp each concept. The lines of online and offline learning will be blended and create an efficient educational system.

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uFaber To Create 1000 Jobs by end of 2021

Anju Nambiar — Sat, 12 Jun 2021 07:45:16 +0000

uFaber is an Ed-Tech start-up based in Mumbai which has pledged to hire 1000 WFH (work-from-home) teaching professionals in the coming 6 months. This is great news for job creation in an environment where people are suffering from mass layoffs, dismal job markets, and salary downgrades.

How has uFaber been able to create jobs?

uFaber has been able to create jobs owing to their ‘hyper-personalised’ learning offering. Also, parents renewed interest towards extracurricular learning through an expert trainer or personal coach has helped them immensely. Their job creation boom stems from their discovery of the potential of qualified women trainers working from home. The explosion in the demand for ed-tech platforms amidst the shift to remote learning in the pandemic has helped platforms like uFaber ramp up their hiring efforts. Thus, creating more work-from-home jobs for teaching personnel. uFaber realised early on, even before the pandemic that qualified professional women trainers all across India were waiting for jobs following the WFH model. By targeting this untapped segment, they were able to create a goldmine of job opportunities.

How Start-ups creating jobs is a boon to the economy

The higher adoption of ed-tech platforms is creating jobs which is subsequently proving to be a saving grace for the disrupted economy. Ed-Tech is capitalising on the significant internet penetration within the country and thus contributing to negating the ill effects of Covid on the economy. By creating jobs for the largely untapped segment of stay-at-home teachers in India, Ed-Tech is directing its cash flow coming in from investors to deserving, qualified citizens. The biggest impact of the economic downfall has been the wiping out of jobs. By restoring job opportunities, ed-tech start-ups are helping the economy recover.

Job creation by the Ed-Tech sector

With the steady and accelerated growth of the Ed-Tech sector, it’s become a hot new playground for investors and Venture Capitalists. In 2020, when the pandemic was in full swing, Ed-Tech bagged over $2.2 B in funding, most of which has obviously gone into hiring efforts by start-ups. Ed-Tech’s blended teaching and learning methodology is not only creating jobs now for trainers but is also preparing students to be ready for the unconventional jobs of the future. In 2021, BYJU’s, a big player in ed-tech will be responsible for creating 8000 job opportunities. Similarly, uFaber and another noteworthy player in Ed-Tech, ‘Vedantu’ will add 1000 and 2500 jobs to the market respectively in the remainder of 2021.

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The higher adoption of ed-tech platforms is creating jobs which is subsequently proving to be a saving grace for the disrupted economy.

What’s in it for me?

There are plenty of qualified women in rural India who are trained in teaching. Ed-Tech start-ups have a golden opportunity to onboard them to your platform because traditional schools are no longer an avenue for employment for these women. But this opportunity is not only restricted to women since even male teachers are suffering from job losses and are well deserving of WFH teaching opportunities.

Your ed-tech platform can bridge the digital divide between these capable teachers/coaches/trainers, and enthusiastic students who are desperate for personalised learning outcomes. By enabling and empowering women teachers in remote places across India, your Ed-Tech start-up will have a massive leverage both in terms of women empowerment as well as towards contributing to saving the economy. You can make immense profits since the market is huge for 1-1 coaching for several exam prep like UPSC, spoken English, IELTS, etc.

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Leap Finance: A Springboard Making Educational Dreams a Reality

Talat Rais — Thu, 10 Jun 2021 12:35:04 +0000

In the middle of every difficulty lies an opportunity – Albert Einstein.

Two men brought this quote to life when faced with obstacles during their professional careers. Working with Non-Banking Financial Company (NBFC) Incred, Vaibhav Singh discovered major loopholes in the foreign lending market, while Arnav Kumar’s personal experience suggested that availing a loan without a collateral was next to impossible, during his stint at Capital Float.

Exploring new models, the duo took it upon themselves to fix the systemic inefficiencies in the lending market through innovation and decided to start – Leap Finance – in 2019.

Leap finance, as the name suggests, is a fintech start-up based in San Francisco, California, with offices in Bengaluru. The aim is to provide loans to Indian students studying abroad without collateral, at a 5% lower interest rate as compared to foreign banks. The start-up also helps students shortlisted courses, interact with experts, provide test preps, professional help desk and education counselling.

Taking the Leap to Success

In their early days, the duo aimed at building a product that suited a diversified audience. This required them to travel for six months, “living out of a suitcase”. Their first product was designed primarily for Indian students studying in the United States, with an interest rate of 8-10%. Later on, they planned to diversify the product in countries such as the UK, Canada and Indonesia.

Leap Finance tackles the problem of Indian students paying loans at as high as 13% , while their American counterparts avail it at almost half their rate, owing to the lack of credit scores of the former in the foreign countries. The company bridges the gap by assessing secondary documents and the potential income of students bringing down the interest rate, gauging the risk associated with the loan and providing excellent financial products. Thus, Leap Finance in essence, takes a smart and a calculated ‘leap of faith’ based on the alternative data points derived from the students.

“We finance your dreams to study abroad” – The start-up ardently believes in putting the focus on the future of the customer rather than their current or past situation. In simple words, they essentially take into consideration the GRE/TOEFL/IELTS scores, along with degree certificates to assess the potential income of the student. The team states clearly that the economic background of the student has got nothing to do with their ability to avail the loan.

All that the student needs is a strong cosigner to share the burden of the loan. Cosigner is a person whose credit report and income would serve as an added security to the loan sanctioned. This is in contrast with the traditional model of extending student loans.

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The start-up ardently believes in putting the focus on the future of the customer rather than their current or past situation

The Market Play

Indian education industry has been undergoing a revolutionary phase owing to digitisation with the eruption of edtech platforms such as Byju’s and Unacademy, eventually broadening the spectrum of students’ aspirations.

With overseas education being a dream of most Indians, being a fintech cum edtech start-up, Leap Finance is able to cash in on these changing dynamics of the education industry. The share of students wanting to study abroad has increased multifold over the years due to the pro-immigration policies of countries such as Australia and Canada. With the Biden administration in place, the US’s immigration policies have also taken a diplomatic stance for the Indian students.

In the United States alone, Indian students constitute 25% of top US graduate programmes.

That being said, there has always existed a growing need for one stop solution for counselling, guidance, finance among Indian students. There are students called “value maximisers” belonging to the lower middle income group. They are the ones who aspire to have a global career but can’t afford a degree abroad. Alongside them not being able to afford the hefty tuition fee and the expenses of accommodation, their main aim remains to gain the most lucrative option out of the plethora of offers they have at their disposal. Such students most often lack collateral, thus their chances to avail a loan minimizes along with their aspirations. The market thus provided a fertile ground for a business offering for these services to flourish.

Leap Finance offers not just loans on nil collateral but also assisting overseas students to open bank accounts in countries of USA and Canada along with a credit card. Customer satisfaction remains their sole priority, hence, along with assisting students through their Youtube channel called Leap Scholar, the start-up also helps students avail credit card services, provide them with Visa assistance, IELTS and GRE counselling, internship advice etc.

Gaining Investors’ Trust

In March 2020, the company raised its seed funding for $5.5 million led by Sequoia Capital, with participation of Bhupinder Singh of Incred and Kunal Shah, founder of CRED. The principal investor at Sequoia, Ashish Agarwal, cited the strong need for approximately $15 billion credit as the reason for market’s attractiveness, which is amplified by Leap’s mission-driven team, that made the investors place their bet on the start-up.

The capital was used to expand the company’s user base, focus on product development essentially with plans to expand the service to countries like Vietnam and Indonesia.

In March 2021, the start-up raised a whopping sum of $17 millions in the investing round led by Jungle Ventures. At the time they had a user base of 5 lakhs registered international students and 2 lakhs active users on the platform.

Securing funding at a time when the global pandemic has dampened students’ ambitions, did prove a challenge to the Leap team. However, they held their grounds. According to Amit Anand of Jungle Ventures, it was the sheer motivation and patience of the student community, especially the ones who held back their admissions at foreign universities, that encouraged hundreds more students to pursue education abroad.

In an interview, Vaibhav in fact talked about Covid-19 being a boost to their business to the extent that 2021 might even turn out to be a breakout year. Agarwal of Sequoia Capital, being impressed at the company’s approach towards tackling the pandemic, was particularly in awe with Leap Scholar – a counselling service provided by the start-up – which helped the start-up strengthen its foothold in the market. Amidst the lockdown hiccup, the company cashed on their online property.

The team aims at using the capital from Series B funding to expand their product portfolio into creating non-lending products in order to dive deeper into new markets.

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Securing funding at a time when the global pandemic has dampened students’ ambitions, did prove a challenge to the Leap team.

Democratisation of Finance

The start-up has come a long in a short span of two years. Alongside them serving as a one-stop solution for students looking to study abroad, they are also bringing in much needed change in the finance industry of the country, particularly in terms of financial literacy and financial assistance through the digital space.

India has the second largest unbanked population in the world, that amounts to 190 million people. Many people do not have access to loan services owing to documentation and collateral issues. This population ends up getting informal credit at an exorbitant rate of interest by moneylenders, often leading to a huge chunk of the population being rendered landless/assetless. Simultaneously those who can avail bank services face a crippled technological system, something that the leading banks of the country are yet to catch up with.

Current situation calls for a revolution in the lending space as the pandemic has taken a huge toll on the financial condition of many. Although NBFCs did solve the problem of collateral to some extent, however, that came with rendering security to banks through a high interest rate. It is more about affordability than availability.

Leap Finance through actively improving accessibility of credit through incentives such as no collateral, has in essence been working towards democratisation of financial services. They solve documentation problems through a requirement of minimum details such as pan card, Aadhar card and credit report of the student.

Through a thorough comparison of various loan options on its website, it offers clarity on the best loan option available via visual representation and interactive interface. This eases the job of students, particularly value maximisers and the ones with less agency, rendering them a one-stop solution in an otherwise fragmented value chain industry.

Creating a Uniqueness

There are multiple players in the edtech industry offering similar services as Leap Finance. One of them is Avanse Financial Services, an NBFC acquired by Warburg Pincus, which stands at a valuation of $66 million. Offering education loans, it has a strong competitive advantage against Leap Finances, owing to its full stack model.

The term ‘full stack’ was coined by Chris Dixon, suggesting it as a company which provided its customer with an end product. In essence, Avanse provides skill development courses and loans to educational institutions besides financial services.

At the current valuation of $22 million, Leap has a long way to go with regards to securing fundings and developing its revenue model. The start-up, in essence, is focussing on diversifying its services in the fields of counselling, customer-driven/tailor-made solutions to issues related to pursuing education abroad, and extending banking services to customers as well.

Going Beyond Loans: Monetisation the User Base

Leap through its Graduate Loan product has built a customer base of 234 crore as of now, i.e. sanctioned 234 crore loans.

At the same time, they are also focussing a great deal on their Youtube channel Leap Scholar. In an interview, the team confirmed plans to expand their services to become a neobank – a smart/digital bank that has no physical branch, but functions to cater to all the services that any physical bank does. Some of the examples of neobanks are Razorpay X and Insta Pay, that help individuals to open a bank account, make payments, request refunds etc.

While these banks essentially offer these services to businesses, Leap Finance aims at becoming the neobank in the international students community, offering full-fledged banking services to its customers.

Earlier it restricted its services to underwriting loans based on students’ future income, which slowly progressed into offering bank account services in the USA and Canada. With the new proposition, it would start earning like a typical bank but with a much more sophisticated and advanced digitised system.

The start-up’s future plans may also include offering courses and tie ups with educational institutions, similar to its competitor Avanse. Leap has been building a strong user base through offering free of cost counselling services through its Youtube platform and comparison of university programmes through its blog. There is a huge possibility in future for the company to start offering international educational courses through its amassed online user base, hence adding another revenue stream.

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