The pandemic of 2020 showed us that it was possible to move education both teaching and learning online. A pragmatic decision by the government to announce lockdown and isolation changed university teaching almost overnight bringing in a revolutionary change to the traditional system of education ever known to mankind.
As schools shuttered and students began to learn remotely it gave us an opportunity to think about the prevalent education system of the country – what’s working in it and what is not and thereby giving us i.e. the policymakers, educators, tech millennials a chance to improve the existing system by bringing in advanced technology to the forefront.
A generous inflow of funds from the government, domestic and international investors supporting growth funding along with experienced teachers working overtime and new millennials equipped with the best technology are all working together and laying the groundwork for an improved system of education that could last for years only if it shows a decline in drop out ratio and overall improvement in quality education.
As per the recent studies and report published by Google – KPMG, India’s online education market is projected to grow to the US $ 1.96 Billion. The current statistics tell us that the Indian online education industry is worth the US $ 247 million at present and is all set to grow 8 x times over the next 5 years.
This growth will be backed by a phenomenal increase in the paid user base for online education in India which is expected to grow from the current base of 1.57 million users to 9.5 million users in 2021 at a CAGR of 44%. The industry is set to touch the US $ 3.2 Billion by 2022.
Some of the key Edtech players that are reshaping the future of tomorrow of Zillennials( Gen Z ) are listed below.
List of Top 10 Edtech Companies in India: {Updated 2021}
Table of Contents
BYJU’s – India’s first and largestEdTech Unicorn
Founder – Byju Raveendran, Co-founder – Divya Gokulnath
It first started as a coaching class by the name Think and Learn in Bangalore in the year 2011. BYJU has grown into one of the top EdTech companies in the world. It has received investments from most prestigious investors like Bond Capital, Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, Sequoia Capital, Qatar Investment Authority, Sofina, General Atlantic amongst others.
Byju’s is the first edtech startup to join the billion-dollar club. It has acquired Vidyartha, tutor vista, edurite, a lab in-app, and most recently Aakash Educational services. Till date, the startup has garnered over 40 million subscribers with 2.8 million paid subscribers.
Unacademy: A New ( Digital Education) Academy
Founders: Roman Saini, Gaurav Munjal, Hemesh Singh
Unacademy was started as a YouTube channel by Gaurav Munjal in 2010, which has evolved into India’s leading ed-tech platform with the help of his co-founders Roman Saini, Hemesh Singh, and Sachin Gupta.
The startup has raised nearly $200 million from its investors. Its acquisitions include wifistudy, Code Chef, Prepladder, Mastree, Coursavy, Neostencil, Kreatryx, TapChief and HandaKaFunda.
The company has received investments from General Atlantic, Facebook, Nexus Ventures, Blume Ventures, and Flipkart CEO Kalyan Krishnamurthy. It has tied up with some of the most experienced teachers to tutor its students. It offers courses and tutored learning in numerous fields such as Banking, CA, CAPF, UPSC, CLAT, CAT, JEE, pre-medical.
Embibe
Founder & CEO– Aditi Avasthi
Embibe is an Artificial Intelligence company that is a brainchild of Aditi Avasthi who founded it in the year 2012. Her platform uses data analysis techniques to identify weak subjects and knowledge gaps and thereby helping improve the child’s performance and test-taking skills.
They extensively study the impact of student behavior on learning outcomes and also propose methods to improve student behavior and learning outcomes. Embibe helps students prepare for competitive exams including JEE Main, JEE Advanced, NEET, AIIMS, TS – EAMCET, and BITSAT among others.
Its acquisitions include an online test preparation startup Mockbank and the other is 100 Marks to boost its operations and improve its efficacy. Seeing its tremendous potential, the startup was soon acquired by Reliance Industries in 2018. Till date, Reliance has invested nearly $200 million in Embibe and it plans to leverage its capabilities to connect over 1.9 million schools and 58,000 universities across India.
UpGrad
Founders: Mayank Kumar, Phalgun Kompalli, Ronnie Screwala, Ravijot Chugh
Focusing on Indian higher education, UpGrad was founded by Mayank Kumar, PhalgunKompalli, and RavijotChugh in 2015. This edtech startup has partnered with prestigious international universities to offer courses in emerging technologies like Data Science, Machine Learning, Blockchain, and Digital Marketing which are the most sought-after skills for the future workforce. They are also helping students to get their online degrees from the top universities in the world.
Unlike BYJU’s or Vedantu, UpGrad never targeted school or college students as their potential audience. Their target audience was working professionals and not K12 segment.
The company followed aggressive conventional and digital marketing strategies to make Indian professionals understand the dire need to be industry-relevant.
Till date, UpGrad has managed to help more than 350,000 students and professionals and currently has more than 18000 active paid subscribers on its platform. Some of its acquisitions include Pyoopil Education Technologies, Acadview Software, CohortPlus. UpGrad Investors include Unilazer Ventures, Ronnie Screwvala, IIFL Asset Management.
OdinSchool
Founder: Vijay Pasupulati and Sarath Sura
OdinSchool is an Indian brand owned by GreyCampus Edutech Private Limited, founded by
Vijay Pasupulati. OdinSchool is an upskilling platform that helps people launch, transform, and propel their careers in high-growth domains such as Data Science and Software Engineering.
They offer a Data Science Bootcamp and Software Engineering Bootcamp, which helps
people launch, re-launch, and grow their careers through industry-aligned Bootcamp.
It offers an up-to-date industry-vetted curriculum, mentorship with SMEs and Tech leaders
along with Job Assistance. They have partnered with 250+ companies who hire from them,
such as Pepsico, Deloitte, Capgemini, Dell, Genpact, Kellogg’s, and so on.
Vedantu – Live Online Tutoring
Founders: Vamsi Krishna, Anand Prakash, Pulkit Jain, and Saurabh Saxena
Vedantu is a live online education platform offering personalized courses to its students. The company was founded in the year 2011 in Bengaluru. It is an online tutoring platform where teachers provide tuitions to students over the internet using a real–time virtual learning environment named WAVE ( Whiteboard Audio Video Environment) a technology that was built in-house.
Vedantu has acquired an IP Patent for ‘Measuring the Effectiveness of An Interactive Online Learning System that helps teachers in identifying a student’s attention level, increases student-teacher interaction time, doubt solving, participation in gamified quizzes, and customization of teaching patterns owing to constant feedback.
Vedantu has empowered more than 9,50,000 students across 500 cities worldwide and has raised over $80 million from Omidyar Network, Accel, Tiger Global, and GGV Capital. The company has acquired Instasolv, a doubt-solving app for students from grades 6 to 12. The company plans to increase its presence in tier 2 and tier 3 states.
Simplilearn
Founder – Krishna Kumar
Started as a blog by Krishna Kumar, Simplilearn soon became a full-fledged online learning platform in 2010 owing to its popularity amongst working professionals. During the early days of Simplilearn, Krishna Kumar self-funded the startup.
Today, the startup offers more than 400 online certified courses and training in the IT domain such as Artificial Intelligence, cybersecurity, cloud computing, Six Sigma, project management, digital marketing, and data science. Its one-time acquisition was Market Motive which was an Internet marketing training portal.
It has raised more than $30 million from investors like Kalaari Capital, Helion Venture Partners, and InnoVen Capital to speed up the process of scaling their business globally. At present, they have spread their roots in 150 countries.
Toppr
Founders: Zishaan Hayath, Hemant Goteti
Founded by Zishaan Hayath and Hemanth Goteti in 2013 in Mumbai, Toppr offers an online learning platform for K to K12 segment. It works on a subscription-based model and offers after-school online classes, live lectures with flexible timings, 24×7 doubt clearing chat sessions for teachers, and mock tests to practice and to measure the learning outcome.
Toppr recorded 100% growth in the paid subscribers category in Q3 ( 2020 ) out of which 72 % of new subscriptions came specifically from Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities post lockdown. Toppr had 1 million students on its platform, which has grown 20x in the last three years to reach over 20 million.
The company uses machine learning and Artificial Intelligence to develop an adaptive learning platform. Its acquisitions were Manch and EasyPrep in the year 2015. Toppr’s growth has been fueled by its investors like Helion Venture Partners, Eight Roads Ventures, and SAIF Partners, who have injected $65 million.
Gradeup
Founders: Shobhit Bhatnagar, Sanjeev Kumar, and Vibhu Bhushan
Gradeup was founded by Shobhit Bhatnagar, Sanjeev Kumar, and VibhuBhushan in 2015 to help the students to crack competitive examinations in areas such as banking, railways, defense, UPSC, teaching, and other government job exams. More than 13 million students are using its website and app to access live sessions, doubt clearing sessions, and detailed solutions to problems all offered in a virtual classroom.
The company offers mobile-friendly exam preparations which include assessments, flashcards, and discussions. The student or aspirant can take up a mobile quiz while travelling or in between their work.
It lets its users analyze their performance and compare their rank against lakhs of other aspirants.
To enhance the learning experience further, a comprehensive ecosystem has been built which includes, but not restricted to one –to – one mentoring, peer-to-peer learning, industry networking, and expert career guidance. This ensures a holistic approach to gain the maximum out of the programs offered. Gradeup receives funding primarily from Times Internet.
Doubtnut
Founders: Tanushree Nagori, Aditya Shankar
Doubtnut was founded in the year 2016 by Tanushree and Aditya Shankar in Gurugram, Haryana. Doubtnut helps students from 6th to 12th grade to clear their doubts by providing quick and easy solutions to their science and math problems. Their app is multilingual and questions could be asked in any local dialect.
Doubtnut makes use of NLP and Image recognition in the field of Artificial Intelligence. While studying if you find yourself stuck in a problem and can’t think of a way ahead then all you have to do is take a picture of your query and post it following which Doubtnut will present a video solution within seconds. They assure ease and user-friendliness to all its users.
They have increased their base in tier 2 and tier 3 cities because of their multilingual approach and their ability to answer queries in 11 different languages.
Thanks to which they have garnered popularity in smaller states. At present, they have 2.5 million users learning through their app. Their investors are Sequoia Capital, Waterbridge, Tencent Holdings, and Omidyar Network India.
Scalar Academy by InterviewBit
Founders: Anshuman Singh and Abhimanyu Saxena
Founded by Anshuman Singh and Abhimanyu Saxena in 2015, InterviewBit offers an e-learning platform to software developers to further advance their coding and tech skills to secure jobs with tech giants like Google, Amazon, and Facebook.
The startup works on an income sharing model, wherein the students do not have to pay a single dime until they have secured a job and they can start paying them back by sharing a part of their income over a period of time. Till date, over 4,000 students have benefitted from InterviewBit’s Scalar Program which is a 6 months learning program.
Scaler programs are aimed at developing an elite ecosystem of engineers and mentors o help talent scale and build the next generation of global tech leaders. The students are mentored by tech leaders and SME’s working with leading organizations including Google, Facebook, Twitter, Netflix among others. These mentors help them to crack recruitment processes as well as providing referrals to opportunities in the software industry across the globe.
The company has over 10 lakh registered software developers with over three lakh monthly active users. It has raised over the US $ 20 million from investors like Sequoia India, Tiger Global, and Global Founders Capital among others.
