BENGALURU: There’s one industry that is gaining from the
lockdown
which has thrown academic schedules out of gear and extended summer holidays for children: the edtech companies. With children and adults across the country turning to online classes, the
edtech space
is witnessing an unprecedented growth.
Several companies are giving free trials and sessions for students to experience their platform, which has also resulted in tremendous increase in internet traffic.
BYJU’S has made its
learning app
free for all students till April-end. “Since complete lockdown, we have witnessed 150% increase in traffic to our learning platform. The number of queries from students and parents for our home-learning programmes have more than doubled in the past week. Students are getting themselves ready for the coming year by using the video lessons to revise crucial concepts and learn new ones. This shows that online learning mediums are proving to be a great support system for the student community and for the education infrastructure everywhere,” said Divya Gokulnath, co-founder and director, BYJU’S.
Gaurav Munjal, founder, Unacademy tweeted: “Our educators have stepped up and started taking more free live classes. In the last three weeks Learners who are watching Free Live Classes have increased by 3x. 30 million minutes of watchtime is happening on Unacademy every single day.”
The Catalyst Group, an online learning platform, has seen a 45% jump in enrolments in the past one week. Of the total 67,649 registrations last week from India, around 6,000 are from Bengaluru and another 1,000 from the rest of Karnataka. The highest number of registrations was from Uttar Pradesh. In Bengaluru, the subjects most in demand are GATE-2021 and UPSC IES/IRMS. SSC-JE and JEE Mains were the other topics in demand on this platform.
flipClass.com, a Bangalore-based edtech company, said they have had 90 tutors registering to take classes in the past six days. “They are people from IITs, IIMs, NITs and also highly qualified people who want to contribute to society at this time through teaching. We decided to relax some of our norms for their registration so that we could get them on board faster. Of the tutors, 30% are from Bengaluru and another 30% from NCR,” said Col. Ashis Roy, head of academics and co-founder of flipClass.
Educational Initiatives that offers 60 days free access to Mindspark Maths (an AI powered specialised mathematics programme) has seen its enrolments double. STEMROBO Technologies, which is associated with over 700 schools, has received over a lakh queries for their online STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) and coding programmes.
— Deepti Ganapathy, faculty in the area of communications, NMIMS Bengaluru