When you think about online
education, you probably think of government schemes to bring education
to people in remote villages, or you think of international sites like
Khan Academy and
Coursera, which are used for continuing
or supplementing education. However, these international sites aren't
very relevant when you're looking for tools that will help your kids
with her school exams. There are however, several Indian sites which
cater specifically to this need, with coursework and questions tailored
around the Indian curriculum.
These sites - designed to be used by
schoolchildren, their parents and teachers - offer everything from
coursework to testing and virtual classrooms. Perhaps the most visible
name in the category is Meritnation, thanks to its television ad
campaign. Formed in 2009, the company now advertises a total of 6.7
million and growing list of registered students on its
website and reported an operating revenue of Rs.
20.28 crores in 2013-2014. Having raised Rs. 71.5 crores from Info Edge
(which owns 55.81 percent of the stake in the company) in multiple
rounds, it now plans to expand even more into the smaller cities in
India.
Pavan Chauhan, MD and co-founder of Meritnation says that
over the last few years, there has been a rise in the student populace
flocking to them. And why wouldn't they? A wide variety of choices,
better connect with teachers and other students, and even getting
tailor-made coaching all for a low price - or at times even free - have
started to draw audiences towards them. This, combined with the ease of
accessibility via mobile devices helps sweeten the deal further for
students.
by Rohan Swamy,
July 02, 2014
When you think about online
education, you probably think of government schemes to bring education
to people in remote villages, or you think of international sites like
Khan Academy and
Coursera, which are used for continuing
or supplementing education. However, these international sites aren't
very relevant when you're looking for tools that will help your kids
with her school exams. There are however, several Indian sites which
cater specifically to this need, with coursework and questions tailored
around the Indian curriculum.These sites - designed to be used by
schoolchildren, their parents and teachers - offer everything from
coursework to testing and virtual classrooms. Perhaps the most visible
name in the category is Meritnation, thanks to its television ad
campaign. Formed in 2009, the company now advertises a total of 6.7
million and growing list of registered students on its
website and reported an operating revenue of Rs.
20.28 crores in 2013-2014. Having raised Rs. 71.5 crores from Info Edge
(which owns 55.81 percent of the stake in the company) in multiple
rounds, it now plans to expand even more into the smaller cities in
India.
Pavan Chauhan, MD and co-founder of Meritnation says that
over the last few years, there has been a rise in the student populace
flocking to them. And why wouldn't they? A wide variety of choices,
better connect with teachers and other students, and even getting
tailor-made coaching all for a low price - or at times even free - have
started to draw audiences towards them. This, combined with the ease of
accessibility via mobile devices helps sweeten the deal further for
students.
Not everyone agrees. Take the case of 44-year-old
Neelima Sengupta who is mother to a 13-year-old girl studying in Delhi.
Sengupta's daughter [name withheld on request], is now in the eighth
standard and has been attending private tuition classes for the last two
years. After seeing the ads on television, she decided to sign up on
Meritnation as a free member, to see if it can be useful for her child.
"The
site is initially very confusing," Sengupta says. "There's a lot of
different sections and the first time I logged in, there was so much in
front of me that I just closed the site," she admits. But after that,
she went back to the site, and discovered that it's possible to find a
lot of content such as lessons, model tests and videos.
"Most of
it is locked for paid members, and after spending some time on the site I
realised it wasn't for us," she adds, saying, "because my daughter
doesn't have the discipline that's required for something like this. You
have to be motivated to make use of this site, and she's always trying
to avoid her classes. [With private tuition classes] at least she has to
go and sit in a room, and so she ends up having to learn things."
But
Sengupta's experience isn't typical - one of her daughter's friends,
Amrita is a paid user. Her mother, Ranjani [last name withheld on
request], says, "These days, you don't want to send off your child to a
stranger's place for tuitions, and if you call a teacher over, you have
to be home all the time. For us, Meritnation was very convenient,
because Amrita can log in every day from home by herself, and we can
monitor her progress at night. There are safeguards on the computer
which let her visit only sites from an approved list, which is much
better than having to take her to tuitions every day. And my husband and
I also are more involved in her studies this way, which is important to
us."
Meritnation, of course, is just one of the players in this
increasingly crowded market, which includes players like like
Testbook,
Gradestack and
even companies with a physical presence, like the Aakash Institute have
entered the space.
This year, a total of over 10.2 lakh students
took the class XII CBSE exams in India. Another 1.5 lakh students took
the ICSE exam in the country and abroad, and over 66,000 students took
the ICE examination in India and abroad. And these numbers do not
include the state boards. According to Global Information Inc., the
Global Market for eLearning is set to reach $169 billion by 2018.
What's on offer?To
say that online education sites will remove the interpersonal
relationship between students and teachers is a gross mistake. Because
for most of the online education portals the idea is to take coaching to
the masses. This combined with facilities like online testing, real
time results, providing counselling specific to the students problems
and also giving animated as well as interactive lectures in the form of
videos are just some of the things that sites are doing now in India.
Take
the case of the recently started online portal, Testbook. Started six
months back by six IIT graduates, the website offers students wanting to
appear for exams like the GATE, SBI PO, and the SBI Clerk exams a
chance to take mock tests. Not only that, but it provides analysis of
the students' exam results, giving them part by part feedback about
weaknesses and strengths. The best part is it is free - the founders say
that they are building a subscriber base for now, and will bring in
paid premium features over time.
"We wanted to help students
preparing for these exams," says Ashutosh Kumar, one of the founders of
Testbook. "A lot of them do not have access to give the mock tests
online, or even if they do there is no way to compare and check the same
against a very wide population base. That is what we wanted to change."
Six
months after the beta version of Testbook went live, the service now
has over 28,000 registered users, who have solved a total of over nine
lakh questions.
"There is a difference between a traditional
coaching class, which conducts test series and an online portal," says
Kumar. "For one, not all students are the same and neither is their
ability to grasp the concepts. An online portal allows for a tailor made
solution, unique to each student. We analyse the student's responses,
[and] if a student cannot answer a difficult question the following
questions are easier so that he or she can first work on the basic
concepts. The results can then be analysed after the test is over."
A
relatively new player in the market is Gradestack, which allows users
to choose from a wide variety of courses beginning from class 11 and 12
exams to higher education.
Explaining how online education portals
have evolved in the last five years, Meritnation's Chauhan says that
there was a definite market as well as need to reach out to students and
provide them with that extra edge for their academic life.
"One
of the most important question that we wanted to address was, can we
take coaching to a student's desktop or laptop or mobile device and
provide them the ease of learning with a tailor-made solution for their
needs. Meritnation began with the idea of bringing a more interactive
education format that could be easily assimilated by the students," he
says. "Along with the mock tests also came online tutorial, videos,
animations and a lot more that helped in making the learning more
interactive. Besides all the various boards, the state boards, central
board and the ICSE board have different syllabi and accordingly need to
be prepared for in an interactive manner so that the students can
benefit from it."
Taking coaching online isn't restricted to the
digital startups either. Aakash Educational Services Limited is better
known for its brick and mortar coaching centres, but the company
recently launched a service called
iConnect. Barely 20-days after launch, it had
already seen over 3000 students sign up.
Aakash Chaudhry,
founder, Aakash Educational Services Ltd, says, "We really wanted to
move on from the actual classrooms to the virtual ones. There was a
solid reason behind it too. We wanted to connect to children studying in
remote areas, who were talented but did not have access to quality
education for these exams. Also we wanted to give the students both in
the urban areas as well as the remote ones the freedom to choose what
subjects or what sections of the subjects were their main problem areas
so that they could just concentrate on those sections."
A complete
coaching package is available for Rs. 10,999 for entrance exams - that
is a pretty high price, but if a student is weak in just a few modules
in certain subjects, they have the option of getting individual modules
instead. A student can choose to study just one particular topic for
only Rs. 99. The packages not only include the online study materials
but also have full tutorial videos, which have a teacher explaining the
entire chapter. After that there is the assessment section where the
student is tested and results calibrated on a national level with others
who have taken the same exam.
"Students can also avail for help
from experts via posting their queries online. They have the option to
like a video or dislike it too if they do not find it easy enough to
understand," Chaudhry says. Also on offer is a 14-day free trial period
where the students can register and see whether the services are good
for them. "If they like it they can pay for the syllabi coaching they
want, " he adds.
The fact that offline coaching centres are making
a move online shows that the category is going to be very important in
the future of education. As the number of Internet users in India
continues to grow, this market will only grow bigger.
