INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
Gradeup, an edtech startup in India that operates an exam preparation platform for undergraduate and postgraduate level courses, has raised
$7 million from Times Internet as it looks to expand its business in the country.
Times Internet, a conglomerate in India, invested $7
million in Series A and $3 million in Seed financing rounds of the four-year-old Noida-based startup, it said
Times Internet is the only external investor in Gradeup, they said.
Gradeup started as a community for students to discuss their upcoming
exams, and help one another with solving questions, said Shobhit Bhatnagar, cofounder and CEO of Gradeup, in an interview with
TechCrunch.
While those functionalities continue to be available on the platform, Gradeup has expanded to offer online courses from teachers
to help students prepare for exams in last one year, he said
These courses, depending on their complexity and duration, cost anywhere between Rs 5,000 ($70) and Rs 35,000 ($500).
&These are live
lectures that are designed to replicate the offline experience,& he said
The startup offers dozens of courses and runs multiple sessions in English and Hindi languages
As many as 200 students tune into a class simultaneously, he said.
Students can interact with the teacher through a chatroom
Each class also has a &student success rate& team assigned to it that follows up with each student to check if they had any difficulties in
learning any concept and take their feedback
These extra efforts have helped Gradeup see more than 50% of its students finish their courses — an industry best, Bhatnagar said.
Each
year in India, more than 30 million students appear for competitive exams
A significant number of these students enroll themselves to tuitions and other offline coaching centers.
&India has over 200 million
students that spend over $90 billion on different educational services
These have primarily been served offline, where the challenge is maintaining high quality while expanding access,& said Satyan Gajwani, Vice
Chairman of Times Internet.
In recent years, a number of edtech startups have emerged in the country to cater to larger audiences and make
access to courses cheaper
Byju&s, backed by Naspers and valued at over $5.5 billion, offers a wide-ranging self-learning courses
Vedantu, a Bangalore-based startup that raised $42 million in late August, offers a mix of recorded and live and interactive
courses.
Co-founders of Noida-based edtech startup Gradeup
But still, only a fraction of students take online courses today
One of the roadblocks in their growth has been access to mobile data, which until recent years was fairly expensive in the country
But arrival of Reliance Jio has solved that issue, said Bhatnagar
The other is acceptance from students and more importantly, their parents
Watching a course online on a smartphone or desktop is still a new concept for many parents in the country, he said
But this, too, is beginning to change.
&The first wave of online solutions were built around on-demand video content, either free or paid
Today, the next wave is online live courses like Gradeup, with teacher-student interactivity, personalisation, and adaptive learning
strategies, deliver high-quality solutions that scale, which is particularly valuable in semi-urban and rural markets,& said Times Internet
Gajwani.
&These match or better the experience quality of offline education, while being more cost-effective
This trend will keep growing in India, where online live education will grow very quickly for test prep, reskilling, and professional
learning,& he added.
Gradeup has amassed over 15 million registered students who have enrolled to live lectures.The startup plans to use the
fresh capital to expand its academic team to 100 faculty members (from 50 currently) and 200 subject matters and reach more users in smaller
cities and towns in India.
&Students even in smaller cities and towns are paying a hefty amount of fee and are unable to get access to
high-quality teachers,& Bhatnagar said
&This is exactly the void we can fill.&
