Edtech platform Vedantu aims for 1 million paid users by March, 2022

Online live tutoring platform Vedantu has seen significant growth in the number of users coming to the platform, and the company aims for its paid userbase to touch one million by March next year.

Vedantu, which competes with players like Byju's, has also launched a national initiative - V.O.T.E (Vedantu Online Talent Exam) that will include an assessment exam for students of grades 5-12.

"2020 and the pandemic has had a major impact on the industry and the company. This is the year when the category and the category awareness shot through. The challenge was around making parents aware and understand the format, and get them to trust the format because their default was to go to an offline tutoring or coaching centre," Vedantu Chief Executive Officer and co-founder Vamsi Krishna told PTI.

He added that during COVID-induced lockdown, online classes were the only option.

"This was a mega awareness-building episode and parents now know that this is a viable option. This year, we have seen growth and it will continue to work in our favour...We had around 700,000 users who took the free live class in the academic year 2019 and in 2020-21, the year is still not over, but that number is surely going to cost 7.5 million unique students who take a free live class on Vedantu - its more than 10 times," Krishna said.

He added that in terms of paid subscribers, it was around 45,000 last year and this year, Vedantu expects to cross more than 250,000 paying subscribers - clocking a 5x increase.

"Even revenue grew by 6X from last year to this year. I think every metric grew substantially. These used to grow at around 2.5 to at max three times before this...By the end of March 2022, the paid user base is expected to cross 1 million," he said.

Krishna added that as schools open and normalcy returns, the company does not expect the high growth rates to continue.

"I'm obviously not expecting the same growth rates of 7x to continue this year...online education is still very early in India and there is less than 3 per cent penetration. I believe that it should go anywhere from 3x to 4x. But the strong pace of growth will surely continue," he said.

Talking about its V.O.T.E initiative, Krishna said the year 2020 has been a tough and unrelenting year for students owing to physical school closures, which has caused a major gap in academics and education.

"Vedantu believes that every kid in India requires a platform and opportunity to make a comeback in learning. We are launching a series of student-centric initiatives this year. The national, student-centric programme will help kids prepare first-hand and achieve their academic goals," he said.

With an aim to impact 1 million students to make a comeback in learning, Vedantu's is taking the first big step with the launch of V.O.T.E (Vedantu Online Talent Exam) - an assessment exam for students of grades 5-12, he said.

"V.O.T.E will provide learners with the right platform to prepare first-hand, get in-depth performance analysis and discover their all-India rank without having to appear for an actual competitive examination. With personalised report cards for 1 million students, it will cover skill level and subjective analysis of every student to understand their areas of improvement," he said.

The mega prize winner will stand a chance to become the CEO of the company for a day and win a trip to NASA.