Next in Ed-Tech
Ed-tech startups are creating
mobile-first, analytics-focused and gamification platforms that are making
education more engaging and fun for both teachers and students.
Let's say after a game on
his mobile phone a 12-year-old boy has been able to master a little more of
Calculus, or an impatient girl in fourth standard plugs into a tablet to know
more about the `bite marks' on Pluto, they wouldn't necessarily be representative
of a distant future.
Education-technology
startups over the past decade have been transforming how youngsters learn,
mainly via visual or interactive online modules that make learning instant and
complex concepts more palatable. Several of these firms, though, are tethered
to the formal model of education in India that is rooted in rote-learning and
focused on test scores, which has largely meant linking students to tutors
online or helping them improve test scores by generating multiple practice papers.
With technology rapidly
evolving and students wanting to reach beyond structured boundaries,
entrepreneurs and educationalists are pushing the limits trying to engage
better with them. They are creating mobile-first, cloudheadquartered,
analytics-based products, with emphasis on simplification and ease of use.
The four-people team at
Oust Labs wants to make preparing for exams fun by putting friends and
classmates through gamelike competitions on its mobile application. The
startup, founded last year, encourages students to hang out with friends on
Oust as they bust challenges designed for 9th-12th standard students in
science, math and social science.A leaderboard features the top scorers, just
as in gaming apps.“Unlike regular test-prep solutions we are using mobile
gaming as a mechanism to drive engagement with users,“ said CEO Shrikant
Latkar, former chief marketing officer at mobile advertising firm InMobi.
This latest crop of
startups are emblematic of a big change over the initial era of ed-tech companies,
and their ingenuity is helping draw investors. From $13.06 million invested in
ed-tech startups in 2014 across 13 deals, investors pumped in $107.5 million
across 22 deals last year, show data from financial research firm VCCEdge.
“Mobile-first solutions and
gamification technologies are the future of education, since they can scale
very rapidly at low cost,“ said TV Mohandas Pai, chairman of Manipal Global
Education and an investor in ed-tech startups including Oust Labs, Magic Crate
and OnlineTyari, which, too, is a test-prep firm. Magic Crate provides
skill-enhancing activities for children in ages 4 to 8 in a subscription-based
service starting at Rs 549 a month.
CarveNiche Technologies
mines and analyses data to teach maths.Its automated learning platform,
beGalileo, works like a multiplelevel storyboard through which a student has to
progress step by step. In the background, the platform analyzes the user's
learning minutely. “It will go as minute as... this child is struggling with
decimals, he doesn't know fractions, etc. The system will place the child on a
learning path on a knowledge graph. This is the path you need to cross to reach
your goal,“ said CEO Avneet Makkar.
Avneet said she got
feedback from students that they tend to get bored studying alone. So
beGalileo, which already has an option for an online tutor, will shortly
introduce social learning through `Speed Math' for students to be able to
challenge friends and other users online.
Impartus Innovations is a
video-based learning platform. It captures classroom lectures that are made
available to students for anytime re-learning. Amit Mahensaria, chief strategy
officer, wants to take this further.“The new thing is connected classrooms...
Students are not learning in a located period, they are doing it in their own
pace and at their own time. In this, videos play a deep role.“ The platform
allows students to watch lectures on an app, talk to teachers and other
students, find related study material, create bookmarks and make notes.
Impartus is also for
teachers.It allows teachers to make short videos on the basics of a topic that
have to be viewed before a class. The teachers can then go deeper into the
subject during class, which will also be videographed. “We are also coming out
with tools for teacher improvement,“ said Mahensaria. “We can say when you were
teaching these portions you were off the topic... or maybe x students were
disinterested. In the classroom, we have cameras recording the students as
well. This involves behavioral psychology that will read the students through
machine learning and say if they are confused, bored, etc.“ Of course, some
teachers initially resisted being video-graphed but now Impartus's platform is
now in use at premier schools including the Indian Institute of Management and
PES Institute of Technology, both in Bengaluru.
“The thinking with the
latest breed of ed-tech startups is totally new and their development cycles
are much faster, which is anyway the nature of cloud and mobile.Also, these
solutions are a lot more user-friendly,“ said Anand Sudarshan, director at
Sylvant Advisors, which has 19 ed-tech startups in its portfolio.
The big challenge, however,
is to be able to convince institutes to buy or subscribe. “Sales cycles are too
long and complicated with schools and direct selling to parents or students has
its own complications,“ Sudarshan said.
This is also because, as
Mohandas Pai said, “Talking of education as a large market in this country is a
joke since the addressable market is very small...Total funding on education
from the government as well as private players combined makes for less than 6%
of GDP.“
Taslima Khan & J Vignesh
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ET18MAR16
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