The Tech Panda takes a look at seven EdTech startups that are building the future of Indian education.
Geekster
Geekster is an EdTech platform that focuses on providing quality technical education to aspirants wanting to build their career in technology. The organization offers in-demand skill programs that are delivered by industry experts at zero upfront cost. The platform aims to fill the huge skill gap that exists due to a lack of resources, geographical limitations and more importantly, due to the difference in college education to industry requirements.
Ankit Maggu, Founder, Geekster, says, “There is a huge gap between what employers eye and what candidates pursue. Once this is addressed and the candidates get the right skills in demand in the industry, it opens a plethora of opportunities for the students.
We are encouraging users to learn and widen their career horizon without any financial concern
“Geekster is trying to fix the same by giving top quality industry relevant education to aspirants and with the pay-after-placement we are encouraging users to learn and widen their career horizon without any financial concern. We have been witnessing an exponential growth in the number of users on our platform, and with the rising number of successful placements, we can expect climbing traction too.”
Origin
Founded by Ankit Maggu and Sahil Miglani, Geekster was established in October 2020, and is located in Gurgaon, Haryana.
Philosophy
Geekster believes that quality education should not get deterred by financial or geographical barriers.
Growth Story
The brand has been imparting personal mentorship, and live classes delivered by the instructors hailing from esteemed brands like Google, Amazon, and Microsoft.
iDreamCareer
iDreamCareer (iDC), founded by Ayush Bansal in 2012, helps students effectively navigate their higher education and career options through a one-stop personalized career navigation solution.
Philosophy
Indian students even now depend on peer and family for their career decisions with career guidance & counselling not available to most. 93% of Indian schools don’t have any counsellors impacting better higher education & career choices, particularly less privileged students. iDC’s solutions address this gap and help students make better, informed career choices.
Growth Story
It has beenrecognized as among world’s top 200 Edtech companies by ASUGSV Summit 2020 & the top 100 EdTech companies in South Asia by Holon IQ 2020. iDC works with high school & undergrad college students via its full-stack career & college guidance product that includes 1,000+ hours of content on careers, colleges, exams, scholarships, reliable & validated psychometric assessment tools & personalized counselling. Its’ current reach is 20 million+ students across India and the Middle East. iDC along with its non-profit vertical Aasman Foundation works with UNICEF, UNDP, CSR arm of Hero, Kotak, Ernst & Young among others to make career guidance accessible to students from low-income families.
Truscholar
Asset Chain Techlligence Pvt. Ltd., known as Truscholar, is providing a Blockchain based digital platform, with privacy by design, as the underlying principle to provide the self sovereign identity and credential wallet to learners. Data will be stored on a decentralized system. There will not be any system downtime as the data is stored on the cloud in block forms. The information is immutable to change the data; and proper authentication will be required from the connected blocks too.
Unlike all other technologies which are largely plagued with the nuisance of a centralized way of storing, recording and sharing data, TruScholar has deployed a completely Decentralized Ledger Technology platform to secure all academic credential data in an immutable distributed ledger. By adding a protective layer of security to certificates, blockchain can help ensure authenticity and identify fraudulent documents. Verifiable credentials will help Institutes to build immediate TRUST on credentials and increase the employability index of their learners and help them to create a flexible pathway based on skills they will acquire over time.
Blockchain can help reinvent the sector and deliver superior learning experiences to students from peer-to-peer education to’ learn to earn’ opportunities
Samit Singhai, the Co-Founder at TruScholar says, “Current credentialing process consist of many issues like cumbersome issuance, high designing cost and time, high operational costs and time, tedious verification process and centralize storage prone to hacking, that’s how TruScholar started filling in a previously existing gap. Apart from its security features, as blockchain accelerates into the mainstream, institutions will also have greater control and transparency over their data. Blockchain can help reinvent the sector and deliver superior learning experiences to students from peer-to-peer education to’ learn to earn’ opportunities.”
Philosophy
With the motto of “Becoming Intel inside of education world by powering all learning credentials over blockchain and helping them to retain their skills passport; Truscholar aims to become revolutionary solution to help universities/ institutes/ edtech startups to issue a verifiable and immutable copy of digital certificate and Badges to their Learners to cherish it for their lifetime.
Stats
Currently, all credential issuing authorities provide credentials manually or in low-tech digital formats that are easily misrepresented. While the verification process is time-consuming and tedious, appointing an independent party to check the credentials records is costly and time-consuming. Because data is centralized, there is a risk of data hacking, as well as system downtime and maintenance.
TAM in this space consists of a Global Student Population of 1.5 Billion with Academic Credential Market Opportunity growing at a 21.1% CAGR and Digital Badges Market Worth $205.6 Million by 2023. SAM includes 500 Million enrolled in higher education through offline education.
Growth Story
TruScholar’s USP, which differentiates it from its competitors, is that most of their competitors are located outside of India and hence their solutions are not designed for Indian needs. They may not know the core problems of India’s education sector. Also, there are multiple issues related to data security, privacy and storage. TruScholar is proud to be the first of its kind in India and targeting the specific needs of the Indian education sector. Also, they follow privacy data protection guidelines to the dot and all of the data is stored within the Indian subcontinent.
Truscholar have boarded 140+ top educational institutions, universities, event organizers, ed-tech/e-learning and corporates in the country, who are using them consistently for issuance and verification of certificates and badges, since Aug 2021. As a result, they have issued over 25,000 digital certificates and successfully verified and authenticated over 11,000 certificates/credentials.
ForeignAdmits
Started in 2020 by IIT-Bombay alumni Ashwini Jain and IIT-BHU alumni Nikhil Jain, ForeignAdmits is an end-to-end study abroad platform for students and agents that gives peer to peer mentoring by international graduates and alumni network, provides data driven personalised guidance, helps managing college application digitally, brings all the post visa and pre departure services such as education loans, FOREX, GIC, blocked account, accommodation, health insurance, credit cards and bank accounts on a single platform.
We want to become a global leader in the overseas education space and help anyone, from any country, access the world’s best education to achieve their full potential using our technology
Ashwini Jain, Co-founder CEO, ForeignAdmits, says, “We want to become a global leader in the overseas education space and help anyone, from any country, access the world’s best education to achieve their full potential using our technology. Students especially in tier 2 and 3 towns don’t enjoy exposure and guidance when compared to their metro counterparts. This is true for countries across the World. With the use of technology, we aim to transform the overseas study industry with better, efficient and trusted technology products. This will also enable counsellors and agents to help students with a better admission and post admission experience.”
Growth Story
ForeignAdmits intends to help over 1,00,000 students over the next 12 months. The company has also launched India’s first Integrated Study Abroad Guidance Product which offers financial & career counselling, admission and post admission support in one place.
It has grown 10X in the last 12 months across various business growth parameters. Currently, the platform sees 2 lakh monthly traffic organically, which is growing at 25% m-o-m. The company has over 250 agent’s partners network in place to meet the growing demand of data driven and peer to peer admission counselling in India. ForeignAdmits with a team size of close to 100 is currently serving students in India and 10 other countries and has over 35 universities partnerships.
The Designer’s Class
The Designer’s Class was built with one definitive mission – to democratise design education by making it affordable, accessible, relevant, and engaging for all design aspirants regardless of age, geographical location, or income bracket, by adding significant value to the students’ knowledge base, skill set and resume.
We are committed to deliver premium design education for future design enthusiasts making them quality oriented, affordable and future ready
Samarth Bajaj, Co-founder & CEO, The Designer’s Class, “We are committed to deliver premium design education for future design enthusiasts making them quality oriented, affordable and future ready.”
Origin
Edutechtionalists India Pvt. Ltd. the entity behind the brand is a Mumbai-based new generation edtech venture founded in September 2021 by serial entrepreneurs Samarth Bajaj and Adeesh Nahar with Vishal Bajaj, a technopreneur.
Growth Story
The platform focuses on a range of courses built in partnership with leading names in different verticals of design ranging from fashion, interior design, photography, makeup, fine jewellery, and a lot more.
Foundations of fashion & Couture by veterans Abu Jani-Sandeep Khosla: Fashion Entrepreneurship, Textile Design, Development for Grades 11th & 12th and Trend Forecasting from Masaba Gupta; How to create a Fashion Brand & Upskilling Yourself on urban wear street style from Rhea Kapoor; Bespoke, Garment Construction, Ethnic & Streetwear for Men by Kunal Rawal; Fashion Fundamentals and Drafting & Garment Construction by Payal Singhal; Fashion Illustrations and Advance Portfolio Development by Arpita Mehta; Celebrity Styling by Tanya Ghavri and Sustainability in Bridal Fashion by Jayanti Reddy, are some of the current courses available on the platform, along with a comprehensive Interior design course taught by none other than Gauri Khan.
All its courses are available in 7 different languages (English, Tamil, Telugu, Hindi, Bengali, Marathi & Malayalam).
Creative Galileo
Creative Galileo is an Indian character-based early learning platform for kids in the ages 3-10, with over 7 million downloads and 7,00,000 monthly active users in just over a year. To emphasize personalized needs, inquiry-based learning methods, and experiential activities, resulting in a fun, interactive curriculum for children globally, the edtech platform has forged over 20 industry-leading partnerships with content studios in various international markets. Aligning itself to the UN’s SDG goal of “Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all,” the company is on a mission to bridge the digital and learning divide.
We want to enable bespoke learning for children across the globe through their favourite characters to strengthen their foundation during their early years, which will also help develop and strengthen critical thinking, confidence, cognitive skills, and emotional intelligence
Prerna A Jhunjhunwala, Founder, Creative Galileo, said, “We want to enable bespoke learning for children across the globe through their favourite characters to strengthen their foundation during their early years, which will also help develop and strengthen critical thinking, confidence, cognitive skills, and emotional intelligence.”
Origin
Creative Galileo was founded in July 2020 by Prerna A Jhunjhunwala and co-founded by Nikhil Naik, ex Vuclip. As the country’s first-of-its-kind character-based early learning platform for kids aged 3-10, it is the only early learning app to be ranked in the top 20 education apps in Play Store, India.
Philosophy
Creative Galileo offers a well-rounded curriculum for children through engaging and compelling narratives, gamified content, interactive learning journeys, and detailed parent updates.
Growth Story
With extensive plans to expand in Southeast Asia, Creative Galileo recently started its foray with international alliances such as EBS Korea, a leading educational content specialist broadcasting company.
The startup recently made it to HolonIQ’s annual list of the 100 most promising EdTech start-ups from India & South Asia. Partnering in Creative Galileo’s high-growth journey are some leading investors like Kalaari Capital, East Ventures, Affirma Capital, and Valiant Employee Investment Fund.
Online Live Learning (OLL)
OLL is a marketplace for enthusiastic teachers and eager students. The platform enables teachers to expand their expertise, and students can easily enrol to expand their knowledge bank.
It allows students to pursue their interests in fields such as technology (coding, robotics), arts, languages, lifeskills (public speaking) and 100+ more options. All of the courses offered by OLL are live interactive and have been internationally certified by organisations such as STEM and UNESCO.
Origin
The startup was founded by 2 students Shreyaan Daga and Koshika Mahajan carry the same passion to revolutionize and create a community for the education sector. The founder Shreyaan Daga is a 17 Yr old and has dropped out of formal education after the 10th grade to pursue his dream of upskilling 1 billion people through OLL.
Philosophy
OLL targets students from 1st – 10th grade in Tier 2 and 3 cities as the demand for skill development is extremely high in this age group.
