Eckovation to build a full-blown social learning platform

The mobile-based social learning platform Eckovation, co-founded by two IIT-Delhi grads Ritesh Singh and Akshat Goel in 2015, is building a full-blown social learning platform to address the common challenge of effective communication among parents, students and teachers across metros and Tier-II and Tier-III cities. The app uses technology to bridge the gap and run a feedback and conversation channel. 

In a span of one year, the start-up firm has so far catalysed the reach of quality education by bringing educators and learners to a shared virtual classroom. It has empowered teachers by enabling them to run classrooms beyond the confines of their geographical constraints. It has taken initiatives across three major areas — forging new partnerships, extending the depth and reach of open school and continued technological innovation.

Recently, the start-up firm has received the 'Aryabhatta Award' by Bihar government for spreading the use of technology and new methodologies to create modern and effective tools for teachers, students and parents.

Ritesh Singh, chief executive officer, Eckovation said: "It has led to a 5-fold increase in the reach of teachers, from 150 students per year to more than 800 students per year. True to our founding goals, we made teacher’s capacity building a focus by running programmes to launch open-source resources by MHRD across India."

Singh said that the existing methods for taking test and suggesting learning outcomes of the students are limited in depth and breadth of assessment. Furthermore, there is a lag time between tests and results. "So we turned to technology to solve the long ailing problems in the education sector. Through real-time measurement of video lecture consumption rate and quiz performance, and deployment of Artificial Intelligence toolkit, we provide a smart platform that adjusts to the learners’ capability and guides the user to successful completion of study materials," Singh said.

Sarita Kumari, principal of a Patna-based DAV school that uses Eckovation told Business Standard: "The Eckovation App has given us and the parents an unprecedented chance to stay connected. It is rousing and feisty than any other platform that we have used and has made our lives hassle free.”

Commenting on the potential and magnified quickening penetration of inexpensive internet broadband, Akshat Goel, Chief technology officer, Eckovation said: "The introduction of new player like Reliance Jio, is a promising step towards the Digital India initiative and will help hasten access to quality education regardless of socio-economic background. Today, we are ranked 150 in the mobile internet access rankings among 230 countries. We can only imagine what future holds for us when 90 per cent of the people will be connected through the internet."

Commenting on their number of users, Goel said: "In the last nine months, Eckovation has been used by 125,000 users, comprising of 6000+ teachers. Out of this 65 per cent are monthly active and spend more than 10 minutes a day on the platform. In last four months, we have grown to 40 per cent month-on-month. By end of year 2016, we expect to have one million users, enabling large-scale quality education through the platform."