Ed-tech Startups: A Highway Towards Rich Quality Education For India

Since ages, the Indian education system has been following rigid methods of educating the students. Right from the tender age of 5, children are made to fall into the vicious cycle of sitting for classes in school, surviving through the long hours at tuition classes, filling out hundreds of pages as homework, rote learning from textbooks, vomiting it out on the answer sheets during examinations and then anxiously waiting for the results, only to repeat the same cycle but at a higher level.

Its way past high time we change the ways we acquire education and make it more student-friendly to foster effective learning. This seems possible only if the education system holds the hands of technology and decides to move forward. The development of technology is boosting by leaps and bounds. In such a scenario, the education sector must make the most of it.  

Education Technology startups, more commonly called as ed-tech startups are a pragmatic solution to better the education system of India. Edtech startups is a platform that combines education and innovative technology and provides to students effective learning methods and solutions which are very different from the education imparted at the brick and mortar schools.

As per the reports released by Google and KPMG in 2017, the online education market in India currently stands at USD 247 million and is estimated to rise to $1.96 billion by 2021. At present, there are about 1.57 million users of online education. This user base is said to increase to 9.5 million by 2021.

These figures clearly indicate that the students have started demanding for quality options in the field of education. They have started looking out for gaining a deep understanding of the concept at lower costs. To cater to this demand for education by the students, the ed-tech startups have dived into the education sector.

The ed-tech startups are undoubtedly going to be a harbinger of change in the education system of our nation. They have already brought in AR(Augmented Reality), VR(Virtual Reality), MR(Mixed Reality) in order to present effective education solutions. These provide students with practical and experiential learning through AR and fosters interactions via VR. Some of the best examples of edtech startups which are into AR and VR would be NewGenApps, Smartivity, and Veative. These startups are not just providing top class and effective educational experience but are also cost-efficient since the hardware and software used in making these technologies available too are cheaper.

With the advent of ed-tech startups:

• Websites and apps are being developed by the ed tech startups that provide on-the-go study material and content which makes it easily accessible on laptops and mobile phones. The app and website are also updated from time to time with new concepts and topics.
• Since every student signs up individually, the website has each student’s individual profile which enables the website to track the student’s progress, analyse the weakness and accordingly provide study material and tests for further improvement.
• Schools too have welcomed the efforts made by the edtech startups by developing STEM and Innovation labs to teach subjects like Mathematics, Science, Technology, and Engineering, etc. in a practical way.
• Further, the use of AI (Artificial Technology) has enabled the tracking of a student’s progress and helps in customising the learning approach based on the performance. Schools, colleges and other educational institutions fail to realise that every student learns at his/her own pace. By providing personalised education, edtech startups like Byju and Vedantu who are equipped with customised learning algorithm help each student to grasp subjects at his/her own pace. 
• Edtech startups bridge the knowledge gap that exists between the urban and rural education by providing the same education to all which doesn’t happen in traditional education as the skills and knowledge of teachers teaching in urban India and rural India differ vastly.
• Moreover, in a highly competitive world where a zillion of careers has been created, an intense need is felt, for education that trains the pupils for such careers. Ed tech startups like upGrad are the perfect platforms that provide innumerable courses which range from Blogging to Data Science and Blockchain.
• As edtech startups are the birth children of technology and are accessible on digital mediums, the content put up is highly visually appealing, even the most complicated concepts are made easy to understand for the students thus strengthening the students’ knowledge.

In India, there are many small as well as big edtech startups that performing greatly in the market. Some of the small edtech startups include Open Door, ClassPlus, NeoStencil, etc. Big startups that have risen to massive success over the past few years include Byju, the largest funded edtech startup in the country founded by Byju Raveendran, upGrad, a higher education platform co-founded by Ronnie Screvala, Embibe, the largest Artificial Intelligence platform for education in India, and Unacademy, which provides around 50,000 courses.

At present, India is home to over 3,500 ed-tech startups. The loopholes present in the Indian education system is such that they cannot be filled overnight. If we all join hands and together and shift our likes from the traditional methods of schooling to online education, and for a change instead of participating in the mad race of scoring more marks, focus on deeply understand concepts, the country will blossom producing not just highly qualified individuals but also intellectual and experienced professionals.