Education startups taking the digital route to provide personalized learning opportunities

Education industry is one of the most lucrative and under penetrated segment for the startup ecosystem. While the ecommerce and transportation industries attracted majority of the startups (some even are unicorns by now), the ecosystem is still in nascent stage in the education industry. However, a number of startups such as Byju, Vedantu, Gradeup etc. are now revolutionizing the way learning was earlier perceived.

With Byju’s interactive learning ecosystem, students get to decide what and how they want to learn, understand concepts better using digital aids, analyze their strengths and weaknesses, and have conversations with teachers. The content is tailor made for the student, and they also get to rate their teachers. The Bangalore based startup has already raised $125 million of funding since March’16, including a $50 million investment from the foundation started by Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan. It has already been downloaded by 5.5 million students spread across 1,400 cities and towns.

While Byju has established itself as a repository of the learning material, another startup is charting its own path by replicating Uber/Ola. Hashlearn acts as an Uber-like platform in the education industry, and allows students to book teachers for specific courses/purpose. Another startup, Avagmah, on online distance learning program, offers customized study schedules and employs chat based learning.

Although all of the startups are still in nascent stage, an increased awareness among youth and inclination towards online learning are expected to push them in mainstream business real soon. Narayanan Ramaswamy, KPMG India, said that “Knowledge was earlier confined to classrooms and teachers. (Ed-tech startups) have turned learning on the head from a teacher-centric model to a learner-centric model. I won’t be surprised if they become full-blown online varsities”.