It is the combined use of computer hardware, software and educational theory to enhance, engage and individualised classroom learning. Edtech refers to the industry of companies that create educational technology.
Edtech’s growth can be attributed to the potential scalability for individualised learning. IoT devices are being acknowledged and appreciated for their ability to create digital classrooms, no matter where the student is.
Blockchain tools are assisting teachers in grading tests and holding students responsible for their work. Edtech tools are changing the very core of what constituted classrooms in the past.
The last two years have seen monumental growth in the Edtech industry fuelled by a need to continue education during the harsh lockdowns of the COVID-19 pandemic. Edtech fulfils a variety of purposes in the education field.
Improved student outcomes.
Enhanced individualized education.
Reduces the teaching burden on instructors.
Better engagement with the students.
Accessible long-distance learning.
Gamification of learning inducing fun.
Accommodation of multiple learning styles.
Instant feedback to teachers.
Encourages collaboration.
Why Is Edtech Under Government Scanner?
The Department of Consumer Affairs has taken a very serious note of the complaints they have received over the aggressive misselling of courses by Edtech companies like Byju’s, Vedantu, UpGrad, Unacademy, Great Learning, WhiteHat Jr and a few other edtech startups.
The Advertising Standards Council of India (ASCI), in its annual complaint report, shows that the education sector has emerged as the largest violator of the advertising code between April 2021 and March 2022. The ASCI has stated that nearly 33% of the total complaints that it has received in this time period pertaining to the Edtech sector.
It also highlighted that these complaints were not a new development, considering several Edtech startups have lately been under the consumer radar for misleading advertisements. A case in point was the case between Pradeep Poonia and WhiteHat Jr. in 2020-2021.
Pradeep Ponia on LinkedIn
The limelight on the Edtech sector has also been highlighted by the UGC (University Grants Commission) issuing a diktat to higher education institutes to withdraw any degree or diploma programs that are offered in partnerships with Edtech companies.
On Friday, the government issued a warning to the Edtech companies, clearly stating that it will be forced to bring stringent guidelines to curb unfair trade practices and encourage better transparency.
What Steps Should an Edtech Company Take To Comply With the Government?
In absence of self-regulation by the Edtech companies, the government has warned of stringent regulations to address the below-mentioned agenda :
Curb misleading advertisements.
Upholding consumer interests across the system.
Deal with blatant disregard for existing guidelines and regulations.
Maintain robust checkpoints that align with consumer interest.
Address the high cost of education through Edtech companies and make it more affordable.
Challenges Faced by Edtech Companies
The Edtech industry witnessed a boom in 2020, thanks to the lockdowns bringing the face-to-face ways of teaching to a standstill. It has helped to modernize an industry that was deeply traditional and reserved.
The opportunities and potential for growth of Edtech are limitless. However, it also offers some big challenges.
Survival in a highly competitive market
This industry is tough and unforgiving due to the very fluid nature of technology. Constant upgrades and newer technological advances mean the industry has to not only keep up with it but also has to pitch a very unique value proposition to its subscribers.
A new entrant needs a new value proposition and an older player needs to adapt consistently to keep their value propositions relevant and unique over time.
Building partnerships with a traditional industry
This is probably the biggest challenge of them all. To earn the trust of an industry that is as traditional as it is old. Validation of claims of adding value needs strong documentation support.
Being Relevant in an ever-changing world of technology
This means staying on top of every new technological advance that occurs in this sector and also making it relevant to the existing business model. This is as time-consuming as it is costly. A necessary evil tool for survival.
An audience-grabbing market strategy
The first step is to make a product to fit the market. Then reach out to the target audience. Of course, the biggest consideration is the price of the product. And the last and most relevant is getting and keeping customers.
Managing fears about data collection and security
While the world has moved online, the fears of data collection and security are very real. These fears, sometimes, rule the decision-making process and have to be successfully addressed.
Communication Flow
The communication gap between the company and its target audience has to be properly addressed. The target audience and their differences have to be understood and the communication technology has to be designed accordingly.
User activation and usage
The only way to retain the customers year after year is to encourage user engagement, spark their interest and continually remind them of the product’s value. The app has to be easy to use and easily accessible. This requires constant software updates and regular customer communication.
Managing retention
This is possible through a high level of customer service, offering different levels to cover beginners, intermediate and higher levels of educational material, and offering a customized learning path to suit a customer’s need.
Conclusion
While the Edtech industry saw a great boom during the pandemic lockdowns, now the schools have reopened. There is also a dearth of funding options due to a slowing economy and the looming threat of an economic crisis.
All this is leading to massive layoffs within the sector and shutdowns of a few startups. Now, the edtech industry is facing government scrutiny and ire. Presently, it looks like the USD 3 billion market is in a spot of trouble.
However, with the vastness of the world and the opportunities that this sector of education has opened up, it is clear, that while it may undergo some changes, it is here to stay.
FAQs
Why are Edtech companies under the government scanner?
The government has concerns over the complaints regarding misleading advertisements by edtech firms in India.
What is the future of EdTech companies?
As per a report, the edtech industry will reach $4 billion by 2025.
Why do EdTech startups fail?
Edtech startups spend huge amounts of money on advertising and gaining customers but they fail to make money from their business models.
One of India’s Edtech giants BYJU’s recently laid off its 500 employees. Similarly, other well-recognized Edtech companies like Unacademy, Vedantu, Whitehat jr., etc. have also handed pink slips to hundreds of their employees in the latest Edtech crisis.
So, is the Indian Edtech market actually coming to its end? When did it start to crash and what are the causes? Which of the brands will survive the situation?
In this blog, we will find the answer to all these questions.
The coaching centers have been a part of our education system for a long time. Beginning with the small tuition classes with 5-10 students to the big coaching institutes with hundreds of students, this business has travelled a long way.
Mostly, the inability of the school curriculum to prepare students for competitive examinations and the lack of well-trained teaching staff are considered to be the reason for the advent and proliferation of these coachings.
Well, whatever the reason be, the truth is that today coaching centers have become an indispensable part of the Indian education system.
These coaching centers charge high fees, sometimes even higher than the school fees for an entire year, to prepare the students for different exams. They offer classes, study material, question banks, test series, and even hostel facilities for the students.
Several cities have emerged as coaching hubs for different examinations, such as Kota for IIT-JEE coaching, or Delhi’s Rajendra Nagar for UPSC coaching.
In continuation of this, with the arrival of new technology, online coaching centers came into the picture. The major advantage of these Edtech companies over offline coaching centers was their cost-efficiency.
They offered the same course to the students as the offline coaching center but at a very low price, comparatively. It was owing to the lower expenditure needed to run these businesses.
Actually, to run an offline coaching center one has to spend a humongous amount of money on infrastructure, teaching staff, admin, support staff, housekeeping, electricity & water bill, etc.
Other than this these coaching centers also have to take care of marketing through billboards, seminars, etc. which further escalates their running cost. In the end, students are the ones who have to pay for these expenses in terms of the high fees charged by these institutes.
On the other hand, the online coaching centers do not have to spend money on infrastructure, extra staff, or other facilities. All they need are a few experienced teachers who would record the subject-wise lectures for them.
So, even for the teachers instead of regular monthly payments they only had to pay them once. These companies also hire the teachers on a profit basis to organize doubt-clearing sessions for the students.
This made their functioning expense go really low. Moreover, back when these companies actually started, the digital modes of marketing, such as YouTube or Instagram, were cheaper. Due to this, they were also saving on their advertisements and marketing costs.
However, owing to the soaring internet costs this market did not grow much until 2017 when “Jio” entered the Indian telecommunication industry. With its extremely low-cost internet connection, Jio revolutionized the way the coaching industry of India functioned.
Growth of the Edtech Industry in India
Owing to the availability of cost-effective internet connections, this led to the rise of digital coaching institutes in India. The market of these institutes was not restricted to a particular city or zone. They could actually approach any student across the country.
Moreover, with the pre-recorded lectures they could even sell customized courses or subject-specific courses to students. If a student only wanted to study Physics, he/she was not compelled to pay for other subjects as well. Therefore, initially, the Edtech market required ultra-low working capital and was a high-profit margin business with boundless potential to scale.
Due to all these advantages, a large number of investors with billion-dollar funds approached these companies even turning many of them into unicorns.
VC Investments in Indian Edtech Startups
But, here is the twist, as the entry barrier to starting an Edtech company was quite low the competition started to increase. The cost for course making was low and the selling was easy. This invited countless individuals to enter the field.
This sudden increase in competition led to a number of other changes in the digital market. Owing to the increased number of advertisements for similar products, the cost per conversion escalated multiple times.
This drastically increased the cost of investment in the Edtech business as the margin between investment and profit shrank to become thinner. This led to incurring losses in most of these companies.
Effect of the Pandemic on the Edtech Market
Although COVID-19 brought the entire world into turmoil, bringing several challenges for the entire human community, this pandemic was bliss for the Indian Edtech companies.
With the shutting down of schools and offline coaching centers, the Edtech industry saw its boom in 2020. The edtech companies utilized this as an opportunity to habituate customers to online learning.
Resultantly, while they offered more discounts, more free sessions, and other free services to the customers, they also hired more staff and gathered more funding for themselves.
This was the time these companies invested all their energy and resources to bring the Edtech market to its hype as almost all the students were using online classes.
The Edtech companies at this point exploded like no one could have imagined inviting more players to join the field.
The Post-pandemic Struggle of Edtech Companies
Later in 2021 or the beginning of 2022, the pandemic started to fade away leading to the re-opening of schools, coaching centers, and other institutions. As the students rejoined their respective institutes the resources gathered by the Edtech companies were no longer required.
The students got involved in their offline activities as earlier, preferring a physical classroom over the virtual one. This led to the major collapse of the Edtech industry in India.
Finally, the companies began to suffer heavy losses and had to fire the surplus staff including both the teachers as well as the sales team. But, is this Edtech crash occurring for real?
Unfortunately, the answer is yes. So, the next question appears, who will survive it? To get the answer we have to know who all are the participants in this struggle.
Who Will Survive the Edtech Race?
There are three types of players in the Edtech market. First are the super-brands like BYJU’s, Unacademy, etc. These companies have made a name and reputation in the market which is exceptional and considered quite reliable by the customers.
Second, are the companies with huge funding with which they are able to promote and advertise their products much more efficiently and effectively.
Third are the personal brands such as Study IQ, Physics Wallah, etc. These are the brands that have grown organically on the basis of their content instead of marketing. These are the most powerful and most profitable players in the field.
Amongst the three categories, the first ones to get out of the race are the high-funding companies. Even when these companies are able to attract customers with their advertisements, the lack of content and inability to produce results causes trust issues with customers. This causes an early detachment of customers ensuing huge losses for these companies.
The super brands have no doubt made an irreplaceable image in the market and have earned trust with their services. So, it is expected that they will remain a part of the industry maybe but will have to incur some losses. However, the top players in the game will always be the personal brands. They will always remain profitable and if they stay on the right path they could even become bigger than the super brands one day.
The reason for this is that they have a brand value like nobody else. It separates them from the commoditized Edtech market. As they have gained this place due to their quality content and customer trust there is the least possibility of collapse.
Moreover, they have incredible distribution channels with their customers being the source of their publicity. They are able to connect students without even running any ads so their acquisition costs are very low. Therefore, they have an edge over their competitors and run their businesses without even funding.
Conclusion
Presently, the Edtech market in India is under heavy loss. The industry is at its worst and facing a huge crisis. The reason for this is the re-opening of schools, universities, and offline coaching centers.
However, like any other market, the best players in the field who have gained the trust of the customers and built a reputation for themselves will always stand strong with a profitable business, surviving the highs and lows.
FAQs
What is the future of EdTech in India?
Edtech is growing rapidly in India and is estimated to reach around $30 billion in the next 10 years
How many EdTech companies are there in India?
There are nearly 9,043 EdTech startups in India.
How big is the EdTech market in India?
The market valuation of the Indian Edtech industry is $2.8 billion and is expected to reach $10.4 billion by 2025.
If I ask you to name an e-learning app where students can attend live classes, watch pre-recorded videos and give tests, most of you will surely name Byju’s. And why not! Byju’s is India’s most famous edtech decacorn valued at $22 billion.
Currently, the app has 10 Cr+ downloads on the Play Store with students spending 71 minutes on average time on a daily basis from 1700+ cities.
The app has 6 million paying subscribers with an 85 per cent renewal rate. All these statistics show how much Byju’s has grown over the years. In India, the education system is majorly based on an offline learning model. Then how did this company popularise the e-learning concept?
In a country like India where parents hate mobile phones and the internet in the hands of their children, how did this company make both students and parents understand the benefits of studying online?
The answer to all of these questions lies in their marketing strategy. Let’s break down the brilliant marketing strategy of Byju’s in great detail.
Before we dive deep into Byju’s marketing strategy let’s first understand who exactly is their target audience.
The target audience of this growing edtech company is millennials and gen z from grade 1 to the ones who are studying for competitive exams like CAT, IAS, JEE, NEET, GMAT, UPSC and banking exams.
But, apart from the students, the parents are also the target audience of the company since they are the decision-makers and the ones who pay money for the classes. With that understood, let’s analyse our marketing strategy of Byju’s.
Byju’s Marketing Strategy During COVID-19 Pandemic
During the COVID-19 outbreak, while many of the brands were facing losses, Byju’s on the other hand substantially increased its user base and revenue.
The Indian edtech company became a decacorn and crossed a $10.5 billion valuation during the pandemic after getting funding of $100 million from Silicon Valley investor and analyst Mary Meeker’s Bond Capital.
But, how did the company become so successful during the outbreak? To find an answer to this question let’s see the marketing strategy of Byju’s from the start of the pandemic.
In March 2020, when all the schools and colleges were shut the company provided free access to its complete app till the end of March.
So, for 2 months students could attend live classes and watch interactive videos without spending any money. Students who were studying in classes 1-3 could learn Maths and English concepts and students in classes 4-12 could study Maths and Science concepts.
Now, why did they give free access to the classes?
See, people love free things. When we hear this four-letter word our behavioural pattern changes and the entry barrier is eliminated.
The principle of reciprocity is also associated with this strategy. According to this principle, when someone helps us we get obligated to return the favour. So, if students use the app for 2 months and enjoy the learning process the chances of those students returning back and buying the subscription are much higher.
This strategy was very successful and the company registered 6 million new students in the month of March and 7.5 million users in April.
The edtech company said that they witnessed a 150 per cent increase in student enrollment due to this free strategy.
In August 2020, the company acquired WhiteHat Jr, an online coding school for $300 million.
Later, in April 2021, Byju’s acquired Aakash Educational Services Ltd (AESL) for USD 1 billion which is the biggest acquisition of Byju’s to date. This partnership will help the company grow its presence in the test preparation segment.
The company didn’t stop here, in July 2021, the company acquired Toppr, an online learning app for $150 million.
Byju’s wants to create its own ecosystem and that’s why it is continuously acquiring a lot of companies. The edtech giant knows that if they want to stay in the market for a long time they need to either defeat their competitors or destroy the competition by acquiring them.
Let’s see what marketing strategies Byju’s used before the pandemic.
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Brand ambassadors are very important for any company since they give a more human touch to the brand and build authority and trust with the people.
In 2017, Byju’s made a television advertisement with Shahrukh Khan to launch their official app. This advertisement was telecasted during the India-Pakistan cricket match. This is such an amazing marketing strategy, right? We all know that the India V/S Pakistan cricket match attracts maximum eyeballs.
So, when lakhs of people were watching the match they see the King of Bollywood say ‘let your children fall in love with learning’. Due to the massive fanbase of Shahrukh Khan, a lot of students and parents started gaining interest in Byju’s app. The interesting thing about this advertisement was that it targeted both the children and parents. This campaign was very successful.
To make better relationships with Gen-Z Byju’s also tied up with Disney. Since the popularity of Disney among kids is humongous it gave the brand an added boost.
Educational games, digital worksheets and the trademark Disney stories made parents understand that their children can learn using fun activities and stories. This partnership helped in strengthening Byju’s K-12 (kindergarten to Class XII) space.
Busted Biggest Myth about Technology
Now, due to the pandemic, both parents and students have understood the importance of e-learning. But, in the past, many parents felt that mobile phones were the biggest problem in the lives of their children. Parents felt their children only use mobile phones and the internet to play games, chat with their friends and watch useless videos.
They didn’t understand that technology can help their children in studying as well. To break this myth of parents Byju’s launched a video campaign ‘Come Fall in Love With Learning’. This campaign helped parents understand that there is nothing wrong with studying using mobile phones.
Sponsored Indian Cricket Jersey
In 2019, Byju’s sponsored the Indian cricket Jersey. The logo of Byju’s on the cricket jersey was unveiled in a video campaign named ‘Keep Learning’. In this TV commercial, Virat Kohli, Rohit Sharma, Shikhar Dhawan, KL Rahul and Rishabh Pant walked onto the pitch wearing the cricket jersey with Byju’s logo on it.
This shows that Byju’s has clearly understood how much Indians love cricket and are using this opportunity to grow this business. Imagine how much of a positive impact it would have created both on students and parents when they see their idols explaining the importance of learning while wearing the jersey with Byju’s logo on it.
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India is a nation of different cultures and languages. So, when any company is making its marketing strategy it is very important to target people using the language that they speak.
In the early stage, Byju’s usually launched campaigns in Hindi. Although afterwards Byju’s realised that to connect with the people living in different parts of India they need to launch regional campaigns.
In May 2019 the company roped in Mahesh Babu for a video campaign targeting Telangana and Andhra Pradesh. The new campaign highlighted the evolving learning habits of children and how Byju’s app makes learning fun for them. It also explained that technology can be a friend to students and can help them study more effectively.
Later, in July 2020 the company partnered with Sudeep Sanjeev and launched two television ad-campaign in Kannada. They also launched two new television advertisements with their existing brand ambassador Mahesh Babu in Telugu.
All the four ad films were of 50 seconds each. The advertisements highlighted how students are enjoying online learning and encourages parents to accept the new method of learning.
Partnered with ICC to Become its Global Partner
Byju’s sponsoring ICC
Byju’s wasn’t just satisfied with sponsoring the Indian cricket Jersey. In February 2021, International Cricket Council (ICC) announced Byju’s as its global partner from 2021 to 2023. The three-year contract allows Byju’s to partner with all ICC events including the upcoming T20 World Cup in India and the women’s World Cup in New Zealand.
Byju’s will get extensive in-venue, broadcast, and digital rights across all ICC events. Since the ‘Keep Learning’ campaign was very successful it made sense for the company to invest more money in cricket.
Byju’s Became the First Indian Edtech To Sponsor FIFA World Cup
Byjus Sponsoring FIFA
After integrating cricket into its marketing strategy Byju’s is now leveraging the most famous sport in the world, football. On March 24, 2022, the company announced that it is sponsoring the FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022 which will take place from November 21 to December 18, 2022.
Through this sponsorship, Byju’s will get the rights to the 2022 FIFA World Cup marks, emblem and assets and the ability to run promotions.
Conclusion
The major takeaway from Byju’s marketing strategy is that you should focus on your target audience and brand presence.
If you see their marketing strategy from the beginning you will notice that they were directly speaking to students and parents. They made students understand that they can turn their boring studying patterns into exciting ones.
The company also understood that even though students are their end consumers, parents are the ones who will spend money on their packages.
Most parents feel that their children shouldn’t use mobile phones and the internet for studying. The company knew that if they didn’t break this myth they would never succeed. That is why they launched the ‘Keep Learning’ campaign where they explained the benefits of studying online.
In India, people are in love with cricket and acting. That is why they made Shahrukh Khan their brand ambassador and sponsored Indian cricket Jersey and became ICC’S Global Partner. This made Byju’s a household name and people started trusting the brand.
All these things show that they had studied the Indian market and the psychology of people carefully. So, next time when you are making a marketing strategy for your business first understand your target audience’s needs and behaviour patterns.
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The worldwide education sector is seeing a major shift towards online platforms in the quickly changing field of educational technology (EdTech), where digital transformation impacts the future of learning. As the need for customized and easily accessible learning experiences grows, EdTech is essential in meeting the many needs of students in today’s dynamic learning environment.
In the evolving EdTech landscape, Toppr stands out as a dynamic platform, redefining learning by placing students at its core. It addresses the changing demands of learners in the digital era by exploring the larger EdTech context. Toppr anticipates a time when learning is an immersive experience and responds to the demands of education today with tailored learning paths and creative solutions.
In this article, let’s explore the world of Toppr—its founders, business and revenue model, funding, growth, and more
Even amidst the unprecedented times of the Covid19, one sector that has seen exponential growth is the EdTech industry. With the nationwide lockdown, as announced at the end of March, and many other successive lockdowns and strictures in numerous Indian metropolitan cities, most industries faced severe roadblocks to barely run their operations let alone, maintain or improve profitability. However, amidst the pandemic, online education and e-learning platforms have seen astonishing adoption and growth. This, however, is not surprising because the educational institutions are shut, making 1.5 billion students resort to a variety of digital education sites like Toppr to ensure learning continues. The company had seen good growth before it was acquired by Byju’s on July 24, 2021, in a deal consisting of cash and equity shares, as it acquired Great Learning.
According to a report by BARC India and Nielson, there has been a 30% increase in the time spent on education apps on smartphones since the lockdown. The Edtech sector worth Rs 15,000 crore, has been battling challenges with the low B2C market penetration. The current surge of usage is thus, proving to be pivotal.
Edtech startups are attracting many more investors in the post-Covid19 world, thanks to the increased adoption of digital learning during the lockdown. The learning app Toppr focused on students in classes 5 to 12 and had managed to raise around $112.1 million till July 29, 2020, it’s Series D funding round. Toppr had previously competed with unicorn companies like Byju, Unacademy, Vedantu, Meritnation and more. However, after it was acquired by the edtech giant, Toppr’s revenue declined. The revenue of Toppr noticeably shrunk by 40% in FY21, as per the reports dated January 19, 2022.
After the lockdown subsided, and the coronavirus became less active in terms of potency and the people affected, the edtech sector has been seeing a huge downfall. Layoffs or job cuts and decreased security now wrap the edtech domain. So, here’s learning about when Toppr was founded, how it has served in the pandemic, Toppr’s funding, Toppr’s business model, Toppr revenue, valuation and more.
Toppr is a Mumbai-basedEdtech startup, which had seen a 100% growth in paid users on a monthly basis, with free user engagement witnessing a 100% spike. The company was founded in 2013 and offered questions, solutions, concepts, practice tests, videos, and more to students. It also prepared them for competitive entrance exams such as IIT-JEE mains, BITSAT, and NEET.
When the platform announced free access to live classes and video classes, the CEO and Founder of Toppr, Zishaan Hyath said, “in the view of the evolving situation around the Covid19 pandemic, many schools are shut, hence why we are making Toppr live classes completely free for all students in classes 5 to 12. Besides that, our video classes have always been available as a free learning resource”.
Growth of Toppr During Covid Pandemic
Toppr Operational Revenue FY18-FY21
The Edtech firms have also taken to the digital media to acquire users and inform people about the free live classes on offer. There had been a 128% growth in digital ad spending by edtech apps during the lockdown, as per the BARC Nielson report. It is not just the big players that spent on advertising as they also acquired an impressive count of users abroad.
Amid Covid, there were more than a dozen Edtech startups including Byju’s, Vedantu, etc., that have raised funding as investors through platforms that have registered strong growth during the pandemic. The learning sessions on its app per month had also witnessed a 2x growth, which was 14 to 15 million before Covid and became 32 million post-lockdown.
Toppr already had around 60,000 students on its learning platform and was aggressively seeking to bring around 2.4 lakh students onboard. The Edtech segment is likely to be on a roll ahead as investors globally are expected to put $87 billion in the world market over the next 10 years. The Indian market is also believed to grow at over 20% per annum to hit $2 billion sizes by 2021.
Though Toppr, which is now a part of Byju’s, showed good growth in FY20’s financials when the company recorded its operational revenues at Rs 84.3 crore from Rs 56.4 crore, which it saw in FY19, FY21’s revenues for Toppr dipped by 40% to stand at Rs 50.6 crore. The last known Toppr valuation was over $100 mn, when it was sold to Byju’s.
The company had emerged as the highest traffic destination for K-12 learning and hosted over 1 million sessions every day. The community of 50,000 educators from across the country had contributed to the platform with over 35 lakh learning pieces, including questions, solutions, concepts, games, and videos curated for the students.
This is was because the annual subscription for the academic year 2020 to 2021 on Toppr started at Rs 20,000, which is cheaper than its competitors. For example, Vedantu’s annual subscription for all subjects for a class 10 student costs Rs 48,599. Given the high costs, the penetration of Edtech platforms was limited, which is why Toppr decided to bring down the cost of their subscription to get more users to the platform.
Some of the well-known competitors of Toppr
Furthermore, the company changed its product strategy and created packages of shorter duration to help people tide over the current crisis. Toppr now has a 3 month and six-month package, starting at just Rs 3000. Both Toppr and Byju’s have registered an increase in paid users during the lockdown, Toppr has seen a four-fold increase, while Byju’s has seen its paid subscriptions double. However, things toppled in FY21, when the company’s operational revenue plunged by 40%.
Apart from the main product, which is the school learning app, Toppr also spends on teaching coding to kids and their school operating system (OS) built for teachers and administrators. Toppr School OS is an app for schools and teachers through which they can map curriculum, plan lessons and manage class timetables, automate attendance, assign homework.
Toppr school is an artificial intelligence-based Operating System to run “in school” and “afterschool” learning, creating a standardized and personalized experience. This helps in continuing to engage and explore various features and includes parents and students who are trying online learning as a go-to learning resource in these difficult times.
It also helps in taking tests, correcting test papers, etc. during or after school hours to save time. On the other hand, the coding product, which is called Toppr codr, launched recently, is another opportunity for the company to raise at least $50 million, if let’s say, the overall opportunity for us in digital learning is around $200 million.
Toppr raised a total of $112.1M in funding over 11 rounds. The latest funding of Toppr was raised on Jul 29, 2020, from a Series D round as edtech startups continue to benefit from the pandemic-driven online learning boom. This last round of Toppr funding was worth $44.31 mn. A Dubai-based investment firm, Foundation Holdings, led the fresh investments into the Mumbai-based e-learning platform. Existing investors such as Kaizen Private Equity also participated, according to a statement.
Date
Name of the Funding Round
Deal Value
Lead Investors
July 29, 2020
Series D
$44.31 mn
Foundation Holdings
June 12, 2020
Series C
$189.90K
Kaizenvest
April 10, 2019
Debt Financing
$5.57 mn
Milestone Trustee Services
December 19, 2018
Series C
$35 mn
–
May 9, 2018
Debt Financing
$1.96 mn
Alteria Capital
October 23, 2017
Series B
$5.69 mn
–
April 24, 2017
Venture Round
$336K
WGG International
October 30, 2015
Debt Financing
$2 mn
–
May 7, 2015
Series B
$10 mn
Eight Roads Ventures, Helion Ventures, Elevation Capital
May 24, 2014
Seed Round
$2 mn
–
Toppr – Business and Revenue Model
The Toppr business model is similar to a freemium business model, which remains the same even after it is acquired by the edtech giant, Byju’s. The company offers free live and offline classes, which can be availed full-fledged if the users go for paid subscriptions. The majority of the Toppr income comes from the classes and their subscription fees. The Toppr revenues witnessed a 3X growth between 2016-2019, where revenues received from the students from 5th-12th grade was equally split.
Toppr – Growth and Revenues
The operating revenues of Toppr grew by 49.5% to $11.44 mn (Rs 84.3 crore) during FY20 from $7.65 mn (Rs 56.4 crore) earned in FY19. Furthermore, the income from financial assets of Toppr also witnessed a 46% growth to nearly $814K (Rs 6 crore) during FY20.
Looking at the side of expenses of the company, Toppr spent around $27.63 mn (Rs 203.7 crore) in total during FY20. Thus, it has registered a 31.6% increase when compared to the aggregate costs, which were Rs 154.8 crore during FY19. Coming to the unit level, Toppr has spent Rs 2.41 to earn a single rupee of revenue during FY20, which can be stated as a marginal improvement from what it was during FY19.
However, it is evident that Toppr failed to save its scale in terms of its financial performance in FY21 when BYJU’S acquired edtech startup reported a 6.2X of cash outflow, which increased from Rs 20.74 crore in FY20 to Rs 128.07 crore during FY21. The revenue of the company in FY20 was recorded to be Rs 84.32 crore, which plunged by 40%, thereby recorded at Rs 50.6 crore. The company has also been noted to have lost Rs 128.3 crore in FY21, which increased by 13.1%.
Coming to the unit level, Toppr spent Rs 3.54 to earn a single rupee of revenue. This is reported to be around 46.3% more in contrast to what Toppr spent (Rs 2.42) during FY20. Besides, the acquisition of the company might also be a result of Toppr’s inability to raise follow-on capital, and to scale.
Toppr – Layoffs
Toppr has announced that it would be firing close to 300 employees as of June 30, 2022. This news came when BYJU’S owned WhiteHat Jr. has already reported laying off around 300 employees. The Toppr layoffs would be close to 300 with immediate effect, and this can also go up to 500 later on, according to some reports.
FAQs
When was Toppr founded and who is the founder of Toppr?
Toppr edtech startup has been founded by Zishaan Hayath and Hemanth Goteti in 2013.
Company Profile is an initiative by StartupTalky to publish verified information on different startups and organizations. The content in this post has been approved by WhiteHat Jr.
Coding, as we know, is the language of computers.
The world has changed today for good and coding drove a significant part of the change. From a set of instructions to the machines called computers, coding has now turned into something familiar, a language that is similar to the other languages we can speak or write, one of our native languages.
Technology, computers, and coding sprawl along such a large and significant part of the human civilization that we simply cannot imagine us living without our dear machines.
Nowadays, we not only use coding to make the computers understand what we think but with it, we innovate, invent and demystify the world of riddles we are living in!
If coding interests you, then there is WhiteHat Jr. It simply reveres coding.
WhiteHat Jr. is an online coding platform specially designed for kids between the age group of 6 to 14 years. The company also extends numerous trials for its students for free app design. With WhiteHat Jr, kids can now sit back at their homes comfortably and learn from the demo classes. WhiteHat Jr was acquired by Byju’s in August of 2020, but even after that, the company has been operating as an independent entity.
Let’s go through the WhiteHat Jr. success story and know about the Whitehatjr, its founders, Whitehat Jr fees, competitors, revenue, business model, funding & more here in this article.
WhiteHat Jr is the leading computer programming learning website for kids to code. It is a platform that connects kids with the top coding teachers. The fundamentals of coding reasoning, algorithmic and structure thinking are taught to the kids for creative outputs at WhiteHat Jr.
WhiteHat Jr – Startup Story
Though WhiteHat Jr was there as a company it got known to almost all of us when its present parent company, BYJU’S acquired it for $300 million in an all-cash deal on August 5, 2020.
Moving to the startup story of the brand, WhiteHat Jr. Founder and Former CEO, Karan Bajaj, traced the foundation of WhiteHat Jr. to one of his deeply personal experiences with which he wanted to bring a change to the world.
Bajaj was a father of two daughters back then, and he felt that technology, truly, is bringing paradigm shifts in every possible industry, and therefore, his daughters also need to rein in the power of technology to absorb the upcoming shifts in their workplaces and their lives. Therefore, he wanted his daughters to be always at the centre of creating technology and coding. Besides, he also went through research that claim that if kids are used to coding from an early age, they tend more experimentative and creative. All of these factors worked at the back of Bajaj’s mind and propelled him to create an organization that will act as an institution for coding for children and adults.
Karan had MIT and TUFTS in his mind but founding one such organization was certainly difficult, with his passion and dedication, he finally founded WhiteHat Jr in 2018
This company was founded in 2018 by the former Discovery Networks CEO (Karan Bajaj). This platform was planned to empower children. When Karan approached the investors to raise funding for his brand, they were surprised as he was pitching without a working product. Then, he explained to them that the investment thesis had already changed since 2015.
WhiteHat Jr – Mission and Vision
The mission and vision of WhiteHat Jr are to “empower a whole generation to become creators versus consumers of technology.”
WhiteHat Jr – Founder And Team
Karan Bajaj is the founder of the company WhiteHat Jr. and had also been the CEO of the company before announcing his resignation on August 4, 2021. He also led Byju’s Future School, a key element of the company’s international expansion for a year, after WhiteHat Jr. was acquired by the Edtech giant, Byju’s on August 5, 2020. Bajaj had served as the CEO of Discovery Networks India before he stepped down in 2018 to fully focus on WhiteHat Jr., which he founded in the same year.
Aside from his professional career associated with his company, he is also a renowned Indian author, whose first two novels, Keep Off the Grass (2008) and Johnny Gone Down (2010), have been best-sellers.
Bajaj initially got a BE degree in Mechanical Engineering from The Birla Institute of Technology, Mesra and then went on to pursue an MBA in Marketing from The Indian Institute of Management(IIM), Bangalore. He started off his corporate career with The Procter and Gamble Company, where he served as an Assistant Brand Manager. He assumed various leading positions in a range of distinguished companies including Ariel India, Herbal Essences, Kraft Foods, Boston Consulting Group, and more before he founded WhiteHat Jr. in 2018.
Karan Bajaj was born in 1979 in Shimla, Himachal Pradesh, and spent various stages of his childhood in different places, owing to his father’s transferable job.
Karan Bajaj, CEO, WhiteHat Jr
Karan Bajaj quit WhiteHat Jr. on August 4, 2021. The founder and CEO of WhiteHat Jr., has made way for Trupti Mukker to take his position. Trupti had served successfully as the head of the customer experience and delivery in BYJU’S and is declared the CEO of the company.
After the acquisition of WhiteHat Jr. by Byju’s in 2020, Bajaj continued to be the CEO of the company and resigned exactly after 1 year.
The company founder and ex-CEO Karan Bajaj previously mentioned that the company had 400 employees and 1,500 teachers in 2020 and disclosed the company’s plans to double its employees and teachers.
WhiteHat Jr – Name, Tagline and Logo
“Your Own Personal Teacher Live, Online Classes” is the tagline of the company.
WhiteHat Jr – Logo
WhiteHat Jr – Business Model
The business model of the company is particularly based on teaching coding to young kids. The Edtech startup has now extended the students’ grades and is now accepting students from grades 1st to 12th grade. The company targets children and guardians to offer various programming courses for a better future in this digital environment. The teaching format of WhiteHat Jr. is live 1:1 online classes. Furthermore, the company also offers free trial classes.
WhiteHat Jr’s portal has got more than 700,000 registrations and around 7000 classes are conducted daily routine for kids. Each class conducted costs around INR 600 to 700. There are different course levels, which are priced at Rs 5,999, Rs 29,999, Rs 89,999 and many more. The student resurrection rate for the paid classes is around 75%. Suddenly, the refund fee has become 3% which is very low for an Indian Edtech company.
WhiteHat Jr – Funding And Investors
The company has raised a total amount of $387.3 million in funding over the 3 funding rounds it has seen.
Date
Transaction Name
Money Raised
Lead Investors
August 3, 2021
–
$376 million
Byju’s
September 9, 2019
Series A
$10 million
Nexus Venture Partners, Omidyar Network
April 16, 2019
Seed Round
$1.21 million
Nexus Venture Partners, Omidyar Network
The company is funded by 3 investors. Byju’s infused $376 million in its latest towards its acquiree on August 3, 2021.
WhiteHat Jr – Growth and Revenue
Before the lockdown began, WhiteHat Jr. went from Rs 1 crore to Rs 10 crores in revenue. Since the lockdown, the value started doubling. When BYJU’s approached in June, the revenue of the company was running at $75 million. The revenue run rate was reported at $150 million as soon as the acquisition was completed. Then, in August, the first month after the acquisition, the rate was again reported to be $220 million. The revenue of the company has surely seen quite a growth over the years. The company had listed revenue of INR 19 crore from its operations in FY20, which stood at only INR 6.7 lakh in FY19.
Byju’s had owned WhiteHat Jr. in a deal worth $300 mn in August 2020, which made FY21 a special year for WhiteHat Jr. Apart from the Byju’s acquisition of WhiteHat, the startup also witnessed a surge in its revenue under the ed-tech juggernaut.
WhiteHat Jr. Revenue Breakdown
The revenue from operations in FY21 was recorded to have surged by 25.5X to be INR 483.9 crore. Around 99% of its revenue came from the course fee it charges from the students, which increased 25X from INR 478.3 crore during FY21 from INR 19 crore in the previous fiscal. Apart from that, WhiteHat Jr. obtained INR 3.36 cr in revenue from the sale of goods or course materials that it offers students whereas another INR 2.27 cr in income was received from other operating revenues. Also, WhiteHat Jr. received INR 74 lakh as interest income.
WhiteHat Jr. Revenue Verticals
FY21
FY20
Course Fee
INR 478.34 cr
INR 19.01 cr
Sale of Goods
INR 3.36 cr
–
Other Operating Revenue
INR 2.27 cr
–
WhiteHat Jr. Expenses Breakdown
WhiteHat Jr.’s expenses also surged along with its scale, which witnessed a 31X increase to INR 2175.2 cr in FY21 from INR 69.7 cr in FY20. Looking at the expense verticals, the company lost quite some money to arrange for the employee benefits, which contributed 42.9% of the total WhiteHat Jr. expenditure during FY21. The costs for the employee benefits witnessed a 27X rise from INR 33.5 crore to INR 932.4 crore. The costs for the advertising and promotions of the company rose by 43.6X to INR 891 crore from INR 20.42 crore. Nearly all of its expenses verticals saw a rise including support services, IT and communication costs, legal, professional, and recruitment fees, and more. Here’s a brief look at the expense breakdown of WhiteHat Jr:
WhiteHat Jr. Expense Verticals
FY21
FY20
Employee Benefit Expenses
INR 932.37 cr
INR 33.50 cr
Advertising and Promotional Expenses
INR 890.93 cr
INR 20.42 cr
Support Service
INR 110.54 cr
INR 2.28 cr
IT and Communication Expenses
INR 81.39 cr
INR 2.69 cr
Legal and Professional Fees
INR 44.23 cr
INR 3.80 cr
Recruitment Expenses
INR 39.76 cr
INR 2.71 cr
Other Operating and Admin Expenses
INR 75.98 cr
INR 4.30 cr
WhiteHat Jr. Financials
Looking at the overall financials of WhiteHat Jr. in FY21, the company operating revenues surged by 25.5X, and its total expenses jumped by around 31X, which made the losses jump too. The annual losses of WhiteHat Jr. soared by 34.5X from INR 48.95 crore to INR 1690.5 crore. The unit economics of the company states that WhiteHat Jr. had spent INR 4.49 to earn a single rupee of revenue in FY21. The EBITDA margins of the company worsened too, which was recorded at -338.31% in FY20 and became -235.17% in FY21.
WhiteHat Jr. Financials FY20-FY21 Comparison
WhiteHat Jr – Partnerships
WhiteHat Jr has witnessed a number of partnerships throughout the years of its existence. Here’s a review of some of the most noteworthy collaborations of the company:
WhiteHat Jr. partnered with software giant Microsoft to offer a “Code with Minecraft” course for the students on December 23, 2021. This association of Microsoft and WhiteHat will ensure that the students master important coding concepts with the help of a highly curated curriculum based on Minecraft.
WhiteHat Jr. collaborated with FutureSkills Prime, which is a combined initiative for digital skilling of students by Nasscom and the Electronics and IT Ministry on September 2, 2021.
The company, in partnership with 500+ schools, declared on 3rd August 2021, that it would extend the coding curriculum to the students, the number of whom are expected to be around more than 1.25 lakh.
WhiteHat Jr – Advertisements and Campaigns
WhiteHat Jr has been quite infamous in terms of the advertisements it has encouraged all the while since it came into being. The advertisements of the Byju’s-owned startup were allegedly based on imaginary kids and their unreal geniuses after they attain WhiteHat Junior’s academic programs. For example, in one of its advertisements, a 7-year-old has been projected as an app developer and a TedX speaker. This has largely been condemned by all including the ASCI, who had processed around 15 ads from WhiteHat Jr and has identified that 5 of these ads are in potential violation of the ASCI Code, which eventually led to the pulling off of such ads.
Furthermore, there also have been numerous aggressive claims of Whithat Jr via its social media platform. However, when they came on the radar of ASCI, they were already very old and most of them were already taken off. However, ever since BYJU’S acquired WhiteHat Jr, Byju Raveendran himself has ensured that the advertisement and the messaging of the brand would be proper and would address the mass as well as the kids properly.
Refreshing its promotional efforts, Whitehat Jr. has seen to be concentrating on the real kids and the real apps they are capable of building. The campaigns that WhiteHat Jr launched under #RealKidsOfWHJr and #YoungAchieversOfWHJr focused on the real-world applications of coding featured by real kids. The coding platform that was acquired by Edech giant Byju’s also demonstrated a change in its social media activities, where Whitehat Jr now started posting the feats of real children. Furthermore, Whitehat Junior also collaborated with multiple celebrities including Hrithik Roshan, Mahesh Babu and R Madhavan after its Coding Seekho Duniya Badlo campaign went live on TV in the first week of November 2020.
The latest advertisement that Whitehat Junior launched featured Hrithik Roshan. Promoted as #PickItUp, the popular Bollywood actor was seen picking up the guitar. This Whitehat Jr ad is designed to wipe off the notion that age is a bar along with encouraging the students and others to choose music classes from Whitehat Jr and make music.
#PickItUp Campaign
WhiteHat Jr – Challenges and Controversies
WhiteHat Jr has seen its fair share of challenges since it was founded, which were associated with the scaling and growth of the company. WhiteHat Jr came under the radar of the Advertising Standard Council of India (ASCI) after the startup made false claims of imaginary kids who learned coding from WhiteHat Jr and landed jobs at Google and other organizations, became TedX speakers, and more. WhiteHat Jr also sued Pradeep Poonia, who shared posts against Whitehatjr.
Pradeep Poonia Defamation Case
Pradeep Poonia claimed that WhiteHat Jr.’s advertisements are all false and based on imaginary characters like Wolf Gupta, who the company has shown landing a job at Google after learning to code from the Karan Bajaj-led startup then. Poonia also referred to the startup’s instructors as “uneducated” and “housewives”. Though the company later had to remove the advertisements involving Wolf, WhiteHat Jr. filed a defamation case worth Rs 20 crore against Poonia’s statements and later withdrew the same. In the last court hearing, the court prevented Pradeep Poonia from:
Telecasting and transmitting any information received by hacking the servers of WhiteHat Jr.
Helping others take down the content of WhiteHat Jr.
Using his social media handle WhiteHat Sr. on Youtube
Using the URLs using the name “WhiteHat”
Keeping the tweets posted on September 12, 2020, that contains defamatory comments on WhiteHat Jr.
Keeping the tweets posted on September 5, 2020, where Poonia has called WhiteHat Jr.’s business a “pyramid scheme” and other tweets he shared in September and October of 2020
In another case, the company also filed a defamation suit against Dr Aniruddha Malpani. All of these had already cost the company much in terms of its revenue and reputation.
Employees’ Resignation
More than 800 employees dropped their resignation letters in around 60 days’ time after the company asked them to join work from the office within a month. Employees from across teams including the coding, sales and math department resigned from the office after being asked to join offices from their respective locations. On March 18, 2022, WhiteHat Jr. sent an email informing them to join their offices within April 18, 2022, which is why the employees have voluntarily put down their papers. Employees termed this decision of the company as a cost-cutting exercise.
Yes, it surely can be a method of cutting costs where we have already seen the bad market conditions that the ed-tech companies are dealing with. Unacademy and Vedantu, two other unicorns from the ed-tech space together have already laid off close to 1200 employees. Lido Learning is another ed-tech company that has laid off around 150 employees recently.
WhiteHat Jr. Layoffs
Byju’s-owned WhiteHat Jr. has laid off somewhere close to 300 employees in its recent batch of layoffs, as confirmed on June 29, 2022. The layoff exercise, which went through the whole of the 3rd week of June has led to the trimming of the WhiteHat Jr. workforce that was engaged in code-teaching and the sales team of WhiteHat, where some of them even worked in Brazil. The sales, operations and marketing team was mainly affected by this round of job cuts. Reports claim that the total count of laid-off employees can also go as high as 600. Business restructuring is sighted as the reason behind these layoffs. The laid-off employees were asked to submit their office laptops and IDs on the same day, as the reports went.
The edtech sector, importantly, has been hammered lately by the layoffs in the post-Covid-19 period. The Covid-19 period, however, has seen problems like the Great Resignation. Apart from the edtech companies of India and various other companies and startups laying off their employees in huge chunks fearing a funding winter in the country, many other companies, which feature among the top companies of the world, have also pronounced their layoffs in 2022.
The top competitors of WhiteHat Jr are Coding Blocks, Coding with Kids and Camp K12.
Coding Blocks Pvt Ltd
It is the top #2 competitor of WhiteHat Jr. The company is headquartered in New Delhi, India. It was founded in 2014. It operates in the Educational Technology industry.
Coding with Kids
It is also one of the competitors of WhiteHat Jr. The company is headquartered in Redmond, WA. It was founded in 2013. It conducts classes and camps for kids between the age of 5 to 18.
K12
It is the top #3 competitor of WhiteHat Jr. Headquartered in the US, K12 was founded in April 2000. It is a company that offers online schooling and curricula. It is an organization that provides education designed for the people searching for it online.
The company is currently ramping up its women-only teacher base in India. Presently, the platform is having over 7000 educators and is actively recruiting teachers for all its core disciplines and music from all around the country. The company is eyeing to make its teacher-base to 20,000 shortly. The continuous ramp-up base is aiming towards matching the growing base of students across countries like India, Canada, New Zealand, Australia, and the UK.
FAQs
Who founded WhiteHat Jr?
Karan Bajaj founded WhiteHat Jr., who was also the CEO of the company before he resigned on August 4, 2021. He is an Indian author and technology entrepreneur.
What is WhiteHat Jr Business Model?
The business model of the company is on teaching coding to young kids. The Edtech startup has now extended the students grades to 12th from grade 1. The company targets children and guardians to offer various programming courses for a better future in this digital environment. The teaching format is a live 1:1 online class. It also offers free trial classes.
Who are the Top Competitors of WhiteHat Jr?
The top competitors of WhiteHat Jr are Coding Blocks, Coding with Kids, and Camp K12.
How much is WhiteHat Jr Revenue?
WhiteHat Jr. recorded a revenue of $63.39 mn in FY21.
What are Whitehat Jr fees?
The WhiteHat Jr. fees start from around Rs 6500 only and go up. The Whitehat Jr fees per month depend on the duration and the complexity of the course it offers.
What are Whitehat jr free courses?
Whitehat Jr has free/trial classes that give the students an opportunity to test the kind of classes/lectures they receive before going for WhiteHat Junior.
The ed startups in India saw an unprecedented rise in their demand and popularity as the country went on a nationwide lockdown on March 25, 2020. When the pandemic was supposed to be a tough year for all the entrepreneurs out there, the edtech industry in India alone raised a whopping $2.2 billion with Byjus singlehandedly raising over $1 million out of it.
2020 for that matter can be considered the year of ed-tech in India with a plethora of startups mushrooming in the market. However, two years after the pandemic, things have started to get back to the new normal where students and aspirants of the various competitive exams have been embracing the offline journey.
It is time for the ed-tech startups to come a full circle by tapping into the offline market which a lot of them have left unattended within the comfort of online classes and management.
The startups in the education technology field that reeked $11.7 billion in the first quarter of 2022 in funding only saw $3.4 billion flowing in the month of April without any Unicorns being produced. While in May, although the country saw the entry of its 100th unicorn, the ed-tech industry only saw $1.6 billion coming in with a drop of 53% on a monthly basis.
Venture Capital firms including Sequoia and Y Combinator have already announced alarm bells warning startups to cut costs and increase runaways. The market situation is pushing these startups to go hybrid now more than ever before.
This article will look at some of the ed-tech startups and their plans to soft-land into offline classes again while making sense of the current market scenario of the industry.
List of Edtech Startups Planning to Enter the Offline Market
Byjus
The growth of Byjus over the years in general and during the pandemic, in particular, have been phenomenal. In 2020, it became the highest valued startup in India at over $22 billion.
Byjus has relaunched its offline classes in and around the capital already. With the offline classes and the pre-recorded online tablet classes costing the same, the startup looks forward to establishing more and more offline classes in the country.
Himanshu Bajaj, Head of BYJU’S Tuition Centre has made it clear that the firm is planning to launch 500 more tuition centres in over 200 cities across the country.
Unacademy
From beginning as a humble Youtube channel to revolutionising the very idea of online education, Unacademy has been a significant part of online pedagogy during the pandemic.
Within a span of two months, the startup grew from being valued at $2 billion in November 2020 to reaching $3.4 billion in August 2021. Unacademy has also made announcements of the launch of its various offline classes across the country.
On 8th June 2022, they launched their offline classes for NEET, IIT – JEE and other foundation courses for students from classes 9-12 at their Unacademy centre in Delhi.
During its launch, Co-founder and CEO Gaurav Munjal said, “We are confident our foray into physical learning centres with the best curriculum at a competitive pricing will help learners in cracking their goals and look forward to scaling them up across India”. The startup aims to enrol 15000 learners across its various centres in Kota, Bengaluru, Jaipur, Chandigarh, Ahmedabad, Delhi and Patna
Physics Wallah
It is the latest entrant into the unicorn club by receiving $100 million in its maiden funding led by WestBridge Capital and GSV Ventures in May 2022. This ed-tech platform that helps students prepare for various competitive exams was founded by Pandey and Prateek Maheswari in 2016.
Currently, they employ 1900 people including 500 teachers and 100 tech experts. This is apart from a versatile group of associate professors who would be answering the queries of the students online.
Physics Wallah plans to open 20 offline centres in 18 cities. They plan to enrol at least 10,000 students for the 2022-23 academic year.
Imarticus Learning
Imarticus Learning was launched in 2012 with the goal of training individuals to transfer careers in the fields of financial services, analytics and AI, business analysis and core technology.
By closely working with the demands of the industry, this ed-tech startup has been able to attract a lot of students as they collaborate well with relevant players in the market like IBM, KPMG, Genpact, Rise Mumbai by Barclays, Moody’s Analytics, Motilal Oswal etc.
They use dynamic technologies and learning methods to train their students. However, the post-pandemic wind has laid this startup a little low as well. So as to maintain its hold even in the offline educational situation, the firm is planning to launch more offline centres in tier 2 and tier 3 cities.
The CEO Barshikar opinionated that “There are numerous advantages of the hybrid model. You can cater to a larger audience and often give learners an option to pick what suits them best”.
The Other Side of the Emerging Market Situation
The market scenario does not look great for ed-tech startups as classes worldwide are retreating back to complete offline classes. Switching to offline mode also means that the capital and competition involved are going to skyrocket.
Investors have started to demand proof of profitability over revenue generation possibilities. At a time when investments from VCs and other investors are crunching, the demands of the situation will only make things difficult for the ed-tech industry.
The anxiety inherent in the situation is seen clearly with the rampant layoffs that these startups have embarked on. Indian ed-tech startups have already laid off 6000 employees.
It is expected that the industry might see another 60,000 layoffs this year. Vedantu alone has laid off 1200 employees already. Unacademy had announced that they laid off 600 employees in April as a part of their cost-cutting initiatives.
This is apart from the 325 part-time workers that they had laid off earlier. Another leading ed-tech startup named Lido Learning laid off more than 150 employees in February 2022 as the financial crunch was too much.
Many startups are on the verge of closing down despite funding as their venture in itself loses its meaning in the offline world.
There is no doubt in the fact that ed-tech startups have made a difference in the learning process that Indians were used to. They have played a significant role in reducing the digital divide during the pandemic. As schools and colleges are rolling out their offline classes, it is time for the hitherto online platforms to embark on the hybrid modes of classes. As investments dry up and offline classes reign, the future looks grim for ed-tech startups.
FAQs
Why do ed-tech startups fail
Many ed-tech startups fail to figure out the right business and revenue model which is one of the reasons that most edtech startups fail in India.
Why is the ed-tech industry booing
As all the schools were closed many edtech startups started providing quality education online which was the reason edtech startups started booming in India.
Is ed-tech profitable?
Yes, ed-tech is one of the most lucrative and profitable industries in India.
Company Profile is an initiative by StartupTalky to publish verified information on different startups and organizations. The content in this post has been approved by Lido Learning.
These days conventional on-campus, in-person education is being replaced by online education. According to some research done in 2019, it was shown that the online education industry will surpass $230 billion by 2025, and considering the significant influence of the COVID-19 outbreak, online programmes are expected to experience much more growth by 2025.
In reality, the pandemic has proved how effective and long-lasting e-learning can be. It ensures that education is available in the event of a public health emergency, natural calamity, or another event that prevents students and instructors from travelling. It may serve students from all around one country and beyond, bringing in perspectives from all over the world. In addition, it has also been observed that the e-learning atmosphere promotes a better work-life balance.
Lido Learning is an ed-tech business that uses an engaging online platform to transform education for every kid in India. So, there are several other online platforms for Indian students to engage with. What is Lido Learning doing differently?
In Lido Learning’s online platform, students benefit from cutting-edge content such as interactive games and animated videos as well as a personalised platform for homework, quizzes, tasks, and motivating professors, thanks to their fascinating and enjoyable live online lessons. Despite all such perks, Lido Learning surprisingly shut down its operations in February 2022.
Read this article further to know more about Lido Learning’s founder, business model, revenue model, funding, downfall, and more.
Lido is India’s top Small Group Tuitions platform, offering sessions in Math, Science, English, and Coding to children from Kindergarten to children in 10th standard. Cutting-edge interactive animated video material and gamified learning taught by India’s top 5% of teachers are part of the Lido experience. Each class has a maximum teacher-to-student ratio of 1:6 to ensure that the students get ample mentoring, feedback, and clarification.
A student requires a face-to-face connection in a group of no more than 6 students with an instructor to educate them, interactive content to keep them interested, and tailored technology to boost results for optimal student learning. These three elements have been integrated at Lido to create a 21st-century classroom that is entertaining for children, trustworthy for parents, and empowering for its instructors.
Lido Learning’s exclusive Roblox game development platform is for kids to take their first leap in a game development environment.
Roblox teaches youngsters how to:
Basic understanding of the Lua code language for Roblox studio scripting.
Roblox game development fundamentals such as model creation, terrain editing, cutting through portions, and adjusting game lighting.
How to use Roblox to publish and share functional games so that others could benefit from their new game production abilities.
Lido is the finest option for kids because it outperforms all other digital learning applications and tutors.
Individual Attention: Every Lido lesson is engaging and interactive with just 6 students, ensuring that each child receives personal attention, continuous feedback, and the chance to clear up any doubts right away.
Interesting Content: Each lesson includes interactive games, HD animated films, and live quiz contests in class, all designed by Stanford, Harvard, and IIT alumni to ensure that the kids learn ideas and enjoy learning.
Real-world Qualities: Lido addresses both school and non-school abilities such as teamwork, leadership, and imagination, preparing children to be job creators rather than job seekers.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, the education sector in India has been the most impacted. Today’s learning is no longer restricted to specific conventional classrooms. The government’s limits and tight safety measures have prepared the way for the new approaches.
The government, public and private schools, coaches, coaching institutions, students, and instructors have all been inclined towards embracing the digital style of the learning experience, which is a result of COVID disruptions, resulting in the EdTech revolution we are experiencing today.
The Indian EdTech business is reported to have garnered $16.1 billion in venture capital financing, up from $500 million in 2010. The K-12 segment, higher education, and upskilling sectors are driving this industry’s expansion.
India’s EdTech business is expected to reach $30 billion in the next ten years, thanks to the increasing popularity of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) and distance education.
The widespread usage of mobile phones, on the other hand, is thought to improve students’ connectivity and learning capacities. Nevertheless, even as accessibility improves, pricing remains an issue for specialised EdTech devices, particularly for lower and lower-middle-income families, restricting their reach.
EdTech startups in India are looking forward to focusing on improving educational objectives, results, and student engagement through improved technical and innovative solutions.
Lido Learning – Name, Logo and Tagline
Lido Logo
The tagline of Lido Learning says, “#MakeSuccessAHabit”
Lido Learning – Founders
Founder of Lido Learning – Sahil Sheth
Lido Learning was founded by Sahil Sheth in 2019.
Sahil Sheth
Lido’s Founder and Chief Executive Officer is Sahil Sheth’s purpose is to use technology to aid students to realise their maximum potential by making learning engaging and exciting. Sahil has been involved in India’s EdTech movement since its inception, about a decade ago. He sold his first firm, Infinite Student, to Byjus and served as the business’s vice president until 2018.
During his time at Byjus, Sahil discovered that, while children enjoyed viewing self-paced videos, they favoured the real-time engagement and flow of opinions with friends and peers which can only be achieved during face-to-face, small group, live tuition lessons. Sahil completed his bachelor’s in science, mathematics, and economics from Duke University, America.
Sahil has been involved in India’s EdTech movement since its inception, about a decade ago. He sold his first firm, Infinite Student, to Byjus and served as the business’s vice president until 2018. During his time at Byjus, Sahil discovered that, while children enjoyed viewing self-paced videos, they favoured the real-time engagement and flow of opinions with friends and peers which can only be achieved during face-to-face, small group, live tuition lessons.
After figuring out all the prevailing shortcomings of conventional tuition classes, Sahil created Lido learning to compensate for the same. Lido Learning was founded with one clear aim, which is, to revolutionize the conventional local group tuition class sector by providing tech-enabled learning tools to tutors and world-class learning to all children, allowing them to achieve their maximum capabilities in the classroom and even beyond.
In 73 days, Sahil Sheth and his team built the platform. The platform’s testing began with kids in Delhi and Mumbai, followed by Chandigarh and Lucknow. Moreover, the creators discovered that their concept was more interesting and engaging than traditional tuitions throughout the testing.
During the trials, they discovered that parents in smaller cities were delighted that their children were receiving the same high-quality education as children in larger cities.
Sahil Sheth commented on this, saying, “Students in smaller towns were thrilled to be getting the same product and the same quality of teachers that students in the bigger cities were getting. That is when Lido’s vision changed. It was not just about making tuition classes convenient anymore, it was about democratizing education for all.”
The student-to-teacher ratio at LIDO is 1:6. LIDO is also giving their kids a “Rockstar teacher” who will educate them with “interactive content” to keep them engaged. They also have a customised platform to help them enhance their outcomes.
Lido Learning – Vision and Mission
Lido’s mission is to inspire and empower every child for the future.
Lido Learning – Business Model
Lido’s business model is B2C Education Solutions – companies that provide online courses, tutoring, educational materials, interactive toys, learning games, and so on.
Lido is a platform enabling students to take live online lessons. Math, English, and science are among the disciplines taught online. It offers self-paced lessons, discussion-based lectures, individualised practice, performance monitoring, and other features for smaller groups of students.
Its income strategy is subscription-based. Lido Learning now offers materials and tutorials for classes V through X, however, for the firm to stay afloat, customers must pay a price to have yearly access to the tutoring.
Lido Learning – Funding, and Investors
Some of the most well-known angel investors sponsored the EdTech firm, Lido Learning. Mukesh Bansal, founder of Myntra, Vijay Shekhar Sharma, founder of Paytm, Anupam Mittal, founder of Shaadi.com and a Shark Tank India judge, Ronnie Screwvala, founder of UpGrad, and Ananth Narayanan, founder of MedLife.
Date
Round
Amount
Lead Investors
Sep 10, 2021
Series C
$10M
Unilazer Ventures
Nov 25, 2020
Seed Round
–
–
Mar 29, 2020
Series B
$7.5M
BAce Capital
Nov 11, 2019
Series A
$3M
Ronnie Screwvala
Lido Learning – Competitors
Lido Learning’s top competitors include Vretta, Cuemath, WhiteHat Jr., Vedantu, BYJU’s, ENpower, Lawpilots and Uvaro.
Lido Learning – Downfall
Lido Learning is an EdTech firm, based in India, whose demise came as a huge surprise to the market. Lido Learning abruptly pulled the plug on February 4, 2022, leaving 150 employees with serious doubts about the future of the company.
Inability to Pay the Workforce Their Salaries
Employees are a firm’s foundation; without them, the firm would not be able to run properly. Now, a corporation must adequately care for its employees to achieve this. When the teachers and personnel of Lido Learning were not paid, a red flag was raised. Teachers and employees resorted to social media to express their dissatisfaction with the firm when their salaries were not paid. They still haven’t paid pending salaries for the people they fired back in January 2022.
Inability for Collecting Funding
Even though Lido Learning has raised $24 million in funding to date from well-known investors such as Vijay Shekhar Sharma and Anupam Mittal, several organisations who intended to participate in the startup backed out at the last minute owing to the epidemic. Several investment arrangements with firms like CureFit and ByteDance were cancelled. As a result, the company’s reserves were depleted, causing financial troubles.
No Refunds for Customers
Another major cause for this EdTech’s collapse is that the company’s consumers were not effectively treated, their needs were not satisfied, and the service was poor. Some expectations were not met when clients requested to end the trial period, and refunds were not issued. The termination of their memberships resulted in poor word of mouth and negative comments from consumers, and the company’s image suffered as a result.
Company Profile is an initiative by StartupTalky to publish verified information on different startups and organizations. The content in this post has been approved by Smartail.
Education is one of the most influenced industries by technology. The application of AI is not limited to healthcare, retail, or marketing only, AI in the education market is the new trend. AI is helping to enhance the learning experience and provide interactive solutions to the education system. AI in the education market is expected to grow at a 40% CAGR from 2021 to 2027.
Smartail has brought up the solutions to fill the learning gap among students and enhance teachers’ effectiveness in the classroom. Deepgrade is a Smartail’s AI-powered tool that improves teaching methodology.
Read the startup story of Smartail, its founders, business model, and more about Smartail and Deepgrade.
Smartail was founded in 2019 for bringing innovative and efficient solutions to address problems in the education sector with the power of Artificial Intelligence. Its flagship product is an AI-powered tool – Deepgrade.
Smartail – Industry
Smartail is in B2B SaaS EdTech (Education Sector). The total market size (APAC, Middle East, North America US, Canada) for AI In Education is expected to reach $20-25 Billion by 2030. Smartail is focused on AI in education using NLP, Deep Learning, and Computer Vision.
Smartail – Founders and Team
Swaminathan Ganesan, Kannan Ganesan, and Aslam Sheriff Basha
Swaminathan Ganesan and Aslam Sheriff Basha are the co-founders of Smartail. Aslam Sheriff Basha is the CGO and Swaminathan Ganesan is the CEO of Smartail. Kannan Ganesan is the Chief Technology Officer (CTO) at the startup.
Swami is a technologist and a product visionary, and Aslam a business expert and a magician in emotional intelligence complemented each other towards driving solutions for various customers in their previous stints as colleagues. As the entrepreneurial bug bit both, the next logical step was to build a product and take it out to the market.
Swaminathan Ganesan is an Experienced Technology Specialist and Product Leader with 19+ years of experience in building software applications for renowned organizations globally. Proven solution architect and Subject matter expert with business acumen to identify pain points/challenges/use cases and solve them using a design thinking approach. Swami’s previous role was with Terralogic Inc as VP of Digital Transformation, has to experience managing globally distributed teams across Sanjose, New York (Digital Media Customers), Ho Chi Minh City (VN) and Bangalore.
Aslam Sherieff is an Experienced Business Leader and Growth Strategist with 19+ years of experience in building software engineering teams to deliver cutting-edge products for renowned organizations as a part of an extension to engineering teams across Sanjose (US), Bangalore and Ho Chi Minh City (VN). People person where the strength lies in taking new requirements, scoping, Proposal, SOW, business closure, planning resources, hiring, onboarding, ramp up and delivering as per KPI metrics and Governance defined. Aslam’s previous role was with Terralogic Inc as VP of Software Services managing India, US, VN engineering deliver teams and Inside Sales, and growth planning.
Kannan Ganesan (CTO) is an Experienced Technical & Product Leader with 15+ years of experience in the software application development domain. Solution architect and Subject matter expert in software engineering practices, Industry trends, tools, techniques, and approaches. A leader with a passion for technology has served organizations such as JP Morgan Chase, HSN and Cognizant respectively in various roles. Kannan has close to a decade of experience working in the US for JP Morgan Chase and HSN based out of Tampa, Florida. His previous role as VP at JP Morgan Service India Private Limited drove the payments development division.
Smartail – The Idea and Startup Story
Smartail startup Team
Founders of DeepGrade having been in the industry for nearly 20 years and hiring fresh talent out of colleges, they felt there was still a huge gap in terms of Industry expectation and talent availability. It pushed them to get to the root cause of this perennial problem and find a solution for this – Thus Smartail was created.
One of their key findings was that this pain area is something that must be addressed from the grassroots, right from school. They also believe that Artificial intelligence can make a significant impact in driving this solution, also the key is not only to address the pain of the students but their gurus, for a simple reason you empower and enable one teacher you impact thousands of students. Thus, the first product of Smartail “Deepgrade” came into existence.
Smartail – Name, Tagline, and Logo
Smartail Logo
Smartail full form stands at Smart AI labs. Hence shorter representation is Smartail and their tagline is enabling and empowering the teaching community with AI.
Smartail – The Product and Service
Deepgrade Logo
Smartail’s artificial intelligence-based flagship platform Deepgrade empowers institutions with state-of-the-art answer paper correction. Deepgrade is an AI-powered answer paper correction platform for educational Institutions. Using Deep Learning, Machine learning, NLP, and Computer vision, not only correct your MCQs but all your descriptive text answers, diagrammatic answers, Maps, Chemical formulas & more. With Deepgrade correction you get to see never seen deep reports that enable you to make intelligent decisions.
Smartail – Business Model and Revenue Model
It’s a SaaS B2B and they have a Subscription-based revenue model. The subscription price per student per month is provided to educational institutions. Their pricing range is 25 to 35 INR per student per month.
Smartail – Customer Acquisition
Initial customers/users are someone who believed in your purpose and objective that they intended to achieve. As said before DeepGrade is a solution that addressed the pain points of the most important people – teachers and students. DeepGrade as a product and benefits spoke for itself, this helped them grow bigger.
Their most important userbase are academicians who believe in lifelong learning and continuous upliftment. DeepGrade gives both teachers and management greater visibility into students’ performance and their understanding quotients. Positive effects of this Data-driven decision in every classroom are greatly welcomed by many educators and help in improving the holistic development of their institution.
Their flagship product is not just a service or process, it is a seed for this century’s greatest technology transformation in the education industry. Making people understand the purpose and objectives of DeepGrade helped them gain more support from every educationist in this industry.
They have conducted seminars, workshops and conventions with thousands of scholars from various subject areas. This took the Smartail product into the hands of their customers today.
Smartail – Growth
They have two office locations and the users are all the stakeholders of the education industry spread across the earth. Smartail plans to spread the pitch across nations and make DeepGrade adaptable to every educationist interested in data-driven decisions to improve the quality of their future generations.
Smartail – Advisors and Mentors
Key people who Advise and Guide Smartail are:
Prof. C Panduranga Bhatta – Honorary Advisor (Former Professor, IIM Calcutta, Honorary advisor)
Dr P Ravi – Strategic Advisor – Academics (Former Regional Director, National Institute of Open Schooling, Chennai)
Mr Priyadarshi Nayak – Strategic Advisor & Transformationalist (Founder & Chairman of CED FOUNDATION TRUST)
Smartail – Recognitions and Achievements
The startup has got recognition as mentioned below:
Selected for #RevvUpcohort2 startup acceleration program by the Telangana AI Mission (T-AIM) & NASSCOM AI mission.
Smartail is listed in the top 10 recommended AI startups in 2021.
INDIAAi Recognized as reinventing the education sector with AI Startup – Startupindia.
Smartail – Funding
Smartail is bootstrapped and funding is through friends and family investors. They are currently in discussion with lead investors like F&F. They are looking for funding for product scaling and revenue generation.
They have future plan to build and validate NLP for regional languages.
FAQs
When was Smartail founded?
Smartail was founded in 2019.
Who are the founders of Smartail?
Swaminathan Ganesan and Aslam Sheriff Basha are the co-founders of Smartail.
What is Deepgrade?
DeepGrade is an AI-powered learning and grading platform by Smartail. It helps in identifying learning gaps among students and improving learning efficiency.
Company Profile is an initiative by StartupTalky to publish verified information on different startups and organizations. The content in this post has been approved by Gradeup.
With exponential growth in the number of internet and smartphone users in India, online learning has become popular irrespective of the age group. Think about it this way – you have notes, recorded lectures and other reference material piling up. The million-dollar question is – where do you start? When do you think you’ll finish? How do you plan out your study schedule and ensure that you’re actually making progress, rather than just convincing yourself of it? These are some of the challenges that Gradeup, with its online Live Courses, is successfully addressing.
With a vision to be India’s largest and most comprehensive online preparation destination for competitive exams, Gradeup was established in 2015 to help students prepare actively for various exams & score better. They have established & nurtured highly engaging exam-specific communities of students and mentors for SSC, Banking, Railways, Teaching, JEE, GATE, NEET, UPSC, Defense, and State level exams.
Gradeup was co-founded by Shobhit Bhatnagar, Vibhu Bhushan, and Sanjeev Kumar. Gradeup was acquired by the Edtech giant, Byju’s on September 7, 2021. The Noida-based online exam preparation platform currently serves as Byju’s Exam Prep, as rebranded by Byju’s. Read on to know more about the Gradeup success story, Revenue, Business model, Funding, Growth and more.
September 8 2021 – Byju’s acquired Gradeup in its 8th acquisition in 2021.
October 12, 2021 – Byju Raveendran of Byju’s feat and his brother join the Gradeup board as Directors.
Gradeup – About and How it Works
Gradeup is India’s largest online preparation platform for competitive exams with a strong user base of more than 20 million exam aspirants. Through Live classes and emphasizing a structured methodology i.e. a daily study plan, they’ve made exam preparation highly effective; while optimizing the process by connecting students with peers pursuing similar objectives to facilitate the exchange of notes, clear doubts, and take better preparatory decisions.
Development of a Community – With the core belief that ‘people prepare better when they prepare together‘, Gradeup focuses on developing exam-specific communities, which are driven by, and focused towards, aspirants. It is the first & only Indian online platform to build a highly engaging community of expert mentors and students; where an aspirant can ask doubts, share updates, and interact with mentors and peers to develop a 360-degree perspective on every topic in the most engaging manner.
Gradeup – Target Market Size
The EdTech industry can be divided into segments such as the K12 segment, which can be further classified into two categories i.e. KG to 7th class & 8th to 12th; followed by the Test preparation segment and upscaling (vocational training). Within these segments, Gradeup caters to the Test preparation segment of the market. The approximate market size of Test prep is 35 Million students. And Gradeup is one of the biggest players in the market with more than 20 Million registered students.
More students are now gravitating toward online education. More than anything, this short term situation is increasing the trust of students and their parents in EdTech. The impact of the current situation on EdTech, in the long run, will be its increased acceptance as an alternative to current offline options.
Gradeup – Founders and Team
Gradeup was co-founded by Shobhit Bhatnagar, Vibhu Bhushan, and Sanjeev Kumar in 2015.
Gradeup founders – Vibhu Bhushan, Shobhit Bhatnagar, and Sanjeev Kumar
Shobhit, Vibhu, and Sanjeev collaborated and established Gradestack Learning Pvt. Ltd. All three of them are self-made and left their jobs to start their entrepreneurial journey. They started without any external support.
Shobhit Bhatnagar
Shobhit Bhatnagar, CEO of Gradeup, takes care of Marketing and Community Development. He is an MBA from the Indian Institute of Management, Calcutta; and a B.E in I.T from Punjab Engineering College. He has over 9 years of experience. Before Gradeup, he worked as a consultant with Ernst & Young and Opera Solutions. Shobhit has been a quizzer in his college days, likes travelling, and is an avid reader.
Vibhu Bhushan
Vibhu Bhushan, CPO/COO of Gradeup, takes care of the Product and Operations. He completed his B.E in I.T from the Netaji Subhas Institute of Technology. He has over 13 years of experience. Before Gradeup, he worked with Yahoo, Infoedge, and was a founder of Floost; an interest-based network and a product of Nogle Technologies. He has been a marathon runner and has a keen interest in athletics. Vibhu has more than 7.5 years of experience in mobile and backend technologies.
Sanjeev Kumar
Sanjeev Kumar is CTO at Gradeup. An engineer by profession, Sanjeev secured his B.Tech degree from MBM Engineering College, Jodhpur. Before Gradeup, he was associated with Infosys as System Engineer. In his free time, he likes to play sports.
Hiring is the most critical part of an organization when it is scaling at a pace. The following three things play a very important role in the company’s hiring process:
Culture fit
Passion for work and the right attitude
Depth in the area of expertise
Current Company Size: The total number of employees in the organization is 330+.
How was Gradeup Started?
Gradeup forayed into the Edtech and test preparation space in 2013. At that time, it worked with publishers and large institutes to mobilize their content and deliver it in an online, mobile-friendly manner for students preparing for competitive examinations.
While this focused on utilizing content in the online space, it was clearly not enough. The learning process lacked the right level of engagement and was, thus, ineffective in improving learning outcomes. It required better direction and planning to help the aspirants.
The team realized that by focusing on learning outcomes, they can contribute significantly to this space and to a student’s preparation journey. And this inspired the founders to solve this problem and fulfill the existing gaps to make online preparation more effective than ever.
“We did tons of student interviews to understand the problems that they face. While doing it we became more and more confident that these issues can be solved easily with the help of Technology. And that’s when we decided to launch Gradeup.”, recalls Vibhu Bhushan, Co-founder of Gradeup.
Shobhit, Vibhu, and Sanjeev, co-founders of Gradeup, had conversations with all major VCs before they got funded. Their pitch was based on the fact that EdTech as an industry has huge potential. Access to high-quality education across all segments of the country is an area of growth and has huge market potential, especially in tier 2, 3, and 4 cities. The question they addressed was “how we can come up with a unique approach that differentiates us in the market and helps us scale faster”.
“During that period, we were in conversation with various investors who all agreed to the fact that sooner or later technology will act as an agent of change in the education sector. And it was just a matter of right time and product that could initiate the disruption process for the offline education model. Our goal was to revolutionize online live learning and emerge as a pioneer in this segment.”, said Vibhu Bhushan.
Gradeup offers two main programs – Gradeup Classroom and Test Series.
Gradeup Classroom isa one-of its kind integrated program, with its online live courses providing a comprehensive learning experience from start to finish. It uses a number of tools and teaching techniques to enhance preparation including:
Live quizzes and analysis
Weekly discussions, mock tests,
24×7 mentor support
Mind maps
A day-wise study plan for each course is designed and delivered by the best teachers in the country.
Gradeup Classroom
Taking this a notch above is Test Series, which gives students access to mock tests based on the latest exam patterns along with previous years’ question papers and fresh questions regularly created by expert faculty. Students get provided with-
Detailed solutions
An in-depth analysis of their performance
They’re all India Rank and Scorecard so that they know where they stand.
It also has an education news portal – NewsEd by Gradeup, which is aimed to help the community to stay updated with all the latest news in the sector.
Gradeup classroom has the following features:
The Learning Process:
The course begins with a Live class on the relevant topics. This is followed by the students accessing ‘Mind Maps’, a unique concept through which students get to recap what they have gone through in digestible nuggets of information, resulting in complete revision in the least amount of time possible. Students are then given chapter-wise quizzes to test how much they have retained, and the answers to these quizzes are discussed along with expert faculty for greater conceptual clarity.
Systematic Study Plan:
Offered to the students, the team focuses on creating a plan not just for completing the syllabus, but finishing it in a convenient way while remaining motivated throughout– something that they will get hooked onto and can follow within and outside of class hours.
Unique and Evolving Framework:
Strengthening the collective model through the contribution of each participant is a mantra Gradeup follows dearly.
Verified Peer-to-Peer Learning:
Gradeup has managed to build a learner’s community of sorts, which is now at the heart of the learning process. Students interact with other students and mentors to solve doubts and ask questions to enrich their learning experience. As much as 95 percent of doubt-solving happens peer-to-peer!
Validation Mechanism:
What sets them apart is that the company has multiple fact-checking processes in place on its platform to filter answers based on their quality. In this way, students are only consuming material that is fact-checked and relevant, so that they do not end up misguiding each other unintentionally.
Building Confidence:
A constant knowledge-focused engagement also builds a sense of camaraderie, confidence, and healthy competition, which is extremely important for comprehensive personality development especially if they are aiming to crack prestigious competitive examinations.
Mentor:
When students enroll for a course on Gradeup Classroom, a personal mentor is assigned to them who is available 24×7 to instantly resolve any doubts that they may have.
Also, Gradeup has a dedicated cross-function Student Success Team that-
Manages core elements of quality content, the comprehensive study plan, constant feedback, and updates, amongst others.
Evaluates every piece of this data puzzle and link together the major internal and external stakeholders – aspirants, faculty, and parents – to establish a transparent communication system.
Keeps the parents informed, the teachers cognizant and the students motivated. Every stakeholder is kept abreast of the progress through virtual Report Cards.
It addresses students’ challenges, either academic or technical, sends reminders for daily academic activity, monitors students’ performance, and organizes live online parent-teacher meetings twice a month.
Lastly, for faculty, the team manages the interface that they can view to check overall batch performance, student-level information, and activity-level information.
Gradeup is a freemium platform. Anyone who is preparing for competitive exams can download the app and visit the website to prepare for their respective exams – they can join the community – interact with fellow peers & mentors to get their doubts answered and they can access preparation material like previous years’ papers, quizzes, etc. All of this is free of cost.
Additionally, on the platform, there are certain paid services like a) Green card– For Purchase of Test series and b) Classroom – Live classes, which aspirants can avail to add further value to their preparation.
From 2019-2020, Gradeup grew 4x and closed the year at 30 Crore revenue. Some of the current metrics are:
350M+ Learning Minutes per Month
25M+ Student Registration
2.5 Lakh+ Paid Users
18M+ App downloads
60,000+ Students Enrolled for Live Courses
3.5M+ MAU
Gradeup – Name, Tagline and Logo
The tagline of Gradeup is “Prep Smart. Score Better.“
Gradeup Logo
Gradeup – Startup Challenges
When Vibhu forayed into the Edtech and test preparation space with his business partners, in 2013, he worked with publishers and large institutes to mobilize their content and deliver it in an online, mobile-friendly manner for students preparing for competitive examinations.
His low point at that time was that they made a business model that couldn’t scale. Also, they were quite dependent on external partners; for whom it was too early to change and evolve.
“However, the high point in my entrepreneurial journey was having the realization that our learning processes needed to have the right engagement levels. And this could be done by upgrading our pedagogy systems and product by making them effective and interactive.”, said Vibhu Bhushan, co-founder of Gradeup.
He also realized that students prepare better when they prepare together. Hence, the co-founders decided that moving forward they will have a community-based model where verified peer to peer learning and validation mechanisms builds trust and reliability towards the content and the platform.
The Gradeup funding can be seen in the fact that it has raised a total of $10 million to date.
Date
Stage
Amount
Investors
July 2013
Pre Seed Round
$20k
–
March 2014
Seed Round
$3 million
Times Internet
August 2015
Funding Round
–
–
September 2016
Funding Round
–
–
November 2019
Series A
$7 million
Times Internet
There is only one external investor – Times Internet.
Gradeup – Recognition and Achievements
35 under 35 Young Entrepreneur 2020 – Shobhit Bhatnagar.
Gradeup – Future Plans
The company is going to launch Goprep – a liveonline coaching appthat will specifically cater to the academic needs of students from 8th to 12th; especially those preparing for JEE and NEET. Through the app, it will also offer one-year courses for students from class 8th to 10th for board exam preparation and Olympiads such as NTSE.
Apart from that, Gradeup is planning to raise funds in the coming months. The team will continue to emphasize Live classes as they can deliver high impact outcomes on a large scale. They plan to expand faculty up to 100 and subject matter experts up to 200. The company also plans to further manifest its presence in tier 2, 3, and 4 towns across the country. Hence, the next round of funding will also be utilized to scale the product and tech capabilities.
Gradeup’s vision is to deliver quality exam preparation across the country through the means of technology. In the next 5 years, they plan to cater to most of the exams that happen across India.
Our superior education quality will be able to help 5 crores + Indians who prepare for different exams. We will be able to deliver the best results among our peers because of our strong focus on quality. – Vibhu Bhushan.
Considering the traction that its live online courses have received so far, Gradeup expects the number of enrollments to touch 60,000 students by the end of FY20, and cross 150,000 by the end of FY21. However, the app was later acquired by Byju’s, after which it has turned into Byju’s Exam Prep, serving 3 crore+ students across the country.
Gradeup – FAQs
Who is the founder of Gradeup?
Gradeup was founded by Vibhu Bhushan, Shobhit Bhatnagar, and Sanjeev Kumar.
What is Gradeup?
Gradeup is a freemium online edtech platform to preapre for competitive exams.
How much is Gradeup Revenue 2020?
For FY2020, Gradeup had received around INR 24 Crores worth of revenue.
Is Gradeup Free?
Gradeup offered a freemium platform. You can join the community – interact with fellow peers & mentors to get your doubts answered and can access preparation material like previous years’ papers, quizzes, etc – all free of cost. However their live classes and test preps, you will need to pay a subscription fee.
Who is Sanjeev Kumar?
Sanjeev Kumar is the Co-founder & CTO at Gradeup. An engineer by profession, Sanjeev secured his B.Tech degree from MBM Engineering College, Jodhpur.
What is Gradeup?
Gradeup is India’s largest online preparation platform for competitive exams with a strong user base of more than 20 million exam aspirants. It currently serves as Byju’s Exam Prep after being acquired by Byju’s in an undisclosed deal.
Company Profile is an initiative by StartupTalky to publish verified information on different startups and organizations. The content in this post has been approved by CodeChef.
The educational platforms are growing like never before, with their impressive results after the Covid-19 outbreak, the mark that these startups are leaving is prominent on the startup ecosystem. Coding or computer programming is now turning into an essential skill and has been rising in demand, the like of which was never witnessed earlier.
CodeChef is one of the online coding platforms that has been quite popular and though owned by Unacademy, CodeChef still is growing in its own way. Founded in 2009, Codecheck organizes algorithms, computer programming, and programming contests for programmers. It hosts programming competitions and contests for students and software professionals.
CodeChef, headquartered in Mumbai, Maharashtra also helps organizations connect with developers, brand their products in the developer community, and recruit them. It’s a non-profit educational initiative of Directi, whose aim was to provide a platform for students, software professionals to practice, to build their programming skills through online contests. Apart from this CodeChef also has a ‘CodeChef for schools’ program that aims to reach students and start a culture of programming in Indian schools.
Knowing more about CodeChef, the company owned by Unacademy will not be challenging anymore with this StartupTalky article where you discover all about CodeChef, its Founders, Codechef headquarters, Codechef Owners and key people, Business and Revenue Model, Mission, Growth and Revenue, Logo and its Meaning and more.
CodeChef is a competitive programming community of programmers from across the globe. CodeChef was started as an educational initiative in the year 2009 by Directi, an Indian software company. The CodeChef headquarters are in Mumbai, Maharashtra, India.
Apart from its monthly coding contests for the community, CodeChef has many initiatives for Schools, Colleges and Women in competitive programming. CodeChef is credited with hosting the India regionals of the prestigious ICPC for college students, as well as for IOI for school students in India. In 2020, CodeChef’s custodianship was changed from Directi (founded by Bhavin Turakhia) to Unacademy (Gaurav Munjal, CEO). CodeChef and its various initiatives have been managed and run by its Business Unit Head Anup Kalbalia.
It is a global programming community that fosters learning and friendly competition, built on top of the world’s largest competitive programming platform along with building a large community of problem curators. They host three featured contests every month and give away prizes and goodies to the winners as encouragement. Apart from this, the platform is open to the entire programming community to host their own contests. On average, 30+ external contests are hosted on their platform every month. They also help organisations connect with developers, brand their products in the developer community and recruit. Presently, the CodeChef community has grown to over 10,00,000+ programmers from different parts of the globe.
CodeChef – Logo and its meaning
The CodeChef logo comes very much from the name of the company. The icon can be seen wearing a chefs hat.
Bhavin is a serial tech entrepreneur, who has a special interest in collaboration and payments. Bhavin first co-founded Resellerclub, Logicboxes, and BigRock in 1998. He eventually exited all of them in a $160 mn transaction in 2014. Turakhia then founded Radix in 2012, before founding Flock in 2014, and Zeta in 2015.
He has been the co-founder of Directi from August 1997 to December 2014. He was also the founder of Ringo.co, and still is the Founder and CEO of Ringo, Radix, Flock, and Zeta.
I have always believed that “it is our moral obligation to make an impact that’s proportionate to our potential”. During the last two decades, I have worked with an amazing team of people and continue to do so in our quest to make a difference.
In the year 2009, Directi, an Indian software products company, launched CodeChef to help programmers improve their problem-solving skills through active participation in programming contests. The goal was to help Indian programmers in honing their problem-solving skills by fostering friendly competition and community engagement.
In the year 2020, the custodianship of CodeChef was handed over to Unacademy from Directi. After the transition, CodeChef is led by Bhavin Turakhia, Gaurav Munjal, and Anup Kalbalia.
CodeChef – Mission
CodeChef’s mission is to provide a reliable, valid, and fair method of assessing the skills and knowledge needed to become better programmers and develop a community of highly skilled certified professionals who are good problem solvers.
CodeChef – Business Model and Revenue Model
The CodeChef business model operations are entirely non-commercial. They do not make any revenue at CodeChef as it is a non-profit educational initiative. All of CodeChef’s operations, technology, infrastructure, and management costs were sponsored by Directi. Over time they intended to subsidize some of these costs through strategic partnerships with other companies as well.
CodeChef – Competitors
The top 3 CodeChef competitors are:
TopCoder, Inc.
Services Sunrise Mentors Private Limited
LeetCode
Together they have raised over 16.5M between their estimated 416 employees. CodeChef’s revenue is ranked 3rd among its top 10 competitors.
CodeChef – Growth and Revenue
Bhavin Turakhia, the CodeChef owner said “All our existing programs, contests, etc. will continue to remain exactly as they are, and will only grow better in our new home. This change in custodianship will mean that we have access to greater resources, teams, technology, platforms, and capital.”
It indicates that the contests will always remain free, and we will always be a community-focused and community-driven organization.
Moreover, CodeChef is going to launch a new product, and that is a paid product. CodeChef started making revenue long before Unacademy came into the picture. They already had a certification program and corporate offerings before Unacademy took over the custodianship.
Unacademy has announced the acquisition of CodeChef, in June 2020. The acquisition is likely to help the Facebook-backed firm to launch coding skills vertical for school kids.
“Codechef is one of the best platforms in the world for programmers and their vision is aligned to what we do here at Unacademy Group,” said Gaurav Munjal, co-founder, and CEO of Unacademy while announcing the development on Twitter.
“All our existing programs, contests, etc. will continue to remain exactly as they are, and will only grow better in our new home. This change in custodianship will mean that we have access to greater resources, teams, technology, platforms, and capital,” said Anup Kalbalia, CEO of CodeChef.
The Unacademy learning program is another method of said revenue-generation. However, there have been other free initiatives that CodeChef has launched after coming under the custodianship of Unacademy. They have already added 30+ video editorials to different problems. And all of this has been possible only because the company now has larger access to resources that this collaboration with Unacademy has provided CodeChef with.
CodeChef is no longer a not-for-profit, and have thus removed that phrase from the website’s footer, and the CEO said that it will subsequently, remove it from other parts as well. Again, to reiterate the CEO also said that each and every existing feature/initiative will continue to be free, and they will support all our programs as we have always done.
CodeChef announced the Go for Gold Project in 2010. The goal of the Go for Gold Project is ambitious as the CEO said that “we want an Indian team to win the ICPC contest, one of the biggest competitive programming challenge in the world.”
He also said that the change won’t happen overnight, so their plan is to support learning and reward improvement. They’re providing ongoing scholarships, incentives, promotions, tech assistance, and training for Indian students. With a little push to get started, their mission is to change the world and give Indian students a little more exposure.
“We are committed to being completely transparent about our activities, motives, and finances. You will find details on our allocated budgets, the manner of our budget allocation, and a list of activities that we will conduct under the Go for Gold project this year” he said.
FAQs
What is CodeChef?
CodeChef is an online platform that organizes algorithms, computer programming, and programming contests for programmers. They host programming competitions and contests for students and software professionals.
Where are the CodeChef headquarters?
The CodeChef headquarters are in Mumbai, Maharashtra, India.
Is CodeChef owned by Unacademy?
Yes, in 2020, Unacademy acquired CodeChef and the CodeChef parent company was changed from Directi (founded by Bhavin Turakhia) to Unacademy.
Is CodeChef free?
Yes, participation in the contests was fully free and so was their Youtube channel. However, it is now unclear how CodeChef is serving under the ownership of Unacademy.
What are Codechef key people?
Bhavin Turakhia is the founder of CodeChef and its previous parent Directi, who was the key people of CodeChef, along with Anup Kalbalia, who was the CEO of CodeChef. Now, the Unacademy founders and its key executive are also among the key people of CodeChef.
