New crop of niche edtech players help solve less obvious problems

Some use behavioural science and cognitive skills to help execs level up across crucial career cusps, others bank on AI-enabled counselling for students

While the Covid-19 pandemic disrupted most industries and businesses in the country, one sector that actually gaied from the outbreak was education technology, or edtech as it is more popularly known.

With schools, colleges and other educational institutions having shut, the sector was quick to cash in to bridge the gap, and, in turn, make edtech a household name. However, public imagination is probably more caught up by the large players such as Byju's, Unacademy and Vedantu to name a few. 

While these companies have done phenomenally well, there is a whole crop of startups in the education space that are catering to more niche needs and solving the less obvious problems. 

Take for example, Harappa Education, the first Indian investment of James Murdoch-led Lupa Systems. The Delhi-based startup uses behavioural science and cognitive skills, Harappa’s Thrive skills offering has academic and corporate experts to help professionals level up across crucial career cusps.  

"It’s been exciting to see nearly 15x growth of our consumer business over the last year," says Shreyasi Singh, founder and CEO at Harappa Education. "As of today, we have more than 350,000 learners enrolled on the platform. Early and mid-career professionals, with 5-15 years of work experience make up to 91 per cent of all our learners, showcasing the significance of Thrive Skills for career growth," Singh adds. 

Harappa began as a B2B (business-to-business) focused edtech startup and has since then worked with more than 50 enterprise and institution partners from across the country, including Mahindra Group, Infosys, ITC and others. Mid-pandemic, it also launched its direct-to-consumer segment by opening up its flagship "Embracing Change" course for free enrollment. That alone saw more than 200,000 learners enroll within nine months. 

Deciding what course to take up after school has always been a tough choice for most students, more so if they plan to apply to colleges outside India. Solving this problem for students is AdmitKard, a venture capital-funded edtech startup that simplifies access to higher education opportunities. It aims to mentor students in the college application process, backed by data and technology. 

"We provide AI-enabled counselling that addresses the queries of students. Post this, once they are registered, we do a thorough tech-based profile evaluation which considers over 35 parameters that form the basis of suggestion for the students in terms of courses, universities, career etc. Now that the platform has acquired data, we provide personalised guidance to the student. We also connect students to mentors that are people who have experienced those universities and environment and can provide legitimate information and understanding to the aspirants," says Rachit Agrawal, co-founder of AdmitKard.

The platform also recommends relevant current international students, called Mentors, who can provide real -experience sharing of their journey to studying abroad. Students get end-to-end guidance from availing the best education loans, academic and language test preparations, profile building, accommodation services and financial services.

The firm recently raised a pre Series-A round of Rs 10 crore, which saw participation from a host of edtech professionals including Vamsi Krishna and Pulkit Jain of Vedantu, Mayank Kumar of upGrad, Gaurav Munjal, Roman Saini and Sumit Jain of Unacademy, Tanushree Nagori, Aditya Shankar and Ravi Sekhar of DoubtNut, Akshay Saxena of Avanti, and other prominent investors including Pankaj Chaddah (ex-Zomato), Suhail Sameer & Dhruv Dhanraj Bahl of BharatPe ,Vijay Arisetty (MyGate), Anand Chandrasekaran (ex-Snapdeal, Facebook), Sameer Guglani of Morpheus Gang, BCG Partners, MD of JPMorgan and others. 

Stay Qrious, established in October 2020, focuses on STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) foundations, starting with coding literacy. 

Aiming to break the shackles of regular classroom teaching, this startup is focusing on skilling students in the age group 8-14, with an initial focus on metropolitan cities, tier-1 and select tier-2 cities.

Scrapping the age-old time-table based approach that primarily focuses on completion of syllabus, within a stipulated time period, Stay Qrious boasts of a mastery based approach that measures learning and moves students ahead based on their mastery of concepts.

Aanand Srinivas, founder and CEO at StayQrious feels that while the big players are solving the problems at a classroom level, there is a section of people who want their children to develop skills that last longer than classroom time. "We're looking for an experiential learning environment where children are actively learning, they're learning in a mastery based way where their new learning is measured, and then they are moving forward after they actually feel confident, not just because the timetable is up. And they're also looking for a place where the students can get access to a coach who guides them rather than just lectures at them," says Srinivas. 

The startup has a 1:6 teacher-student ratio, in virtual classroom format, and also introduces teachers as  ‘Learning coaches,’ who create a team sport-like learning environment that keeps the children motivated throughout the course and they develop a lifelong love for the subject.

"While we cannot deny that edtech giants have created more awareness around the whole idea of availing education online, although a major push was given by the lockdown wherein people were restricted indoors and were spending decent time exploring productive activities online," says AdmitKard's Agrawal. The firm saw a 1100 per cent increase in the number of queries due to lockdown, as students were facing uncertainties and required counselling and guidance.