Future of learning: Edtech start-ups' hybrid tilt to lure students

With the offline lure of greater teacher-student connect many such start-ups have forayed into brick-and-mortar centres to compete with existing offline institutions

The pandemic-induced success for edtech start-ups in India is slowly waning. As more and more students make their way back to traditional forms of offline learning, edtech firms have seen a fall in the number of students using their platforms.

Adding to the problem are the recent financial updates from Byju, which reported losses greater than what the company earns. This has raised questions on the high valuation that some edtech companies have received.

Byju’s FY21 loss was at Rs 4,588 crore and revenue for the financial year came in at Rs 2,428 crore.

With the offline lure of greater teacher-student connect, many such start-ups have started brick-and-mortar centres to compete with existing offline institutions.

Platforms like PhysicsWallah, Byju’s and Unacademy are also bringing students new offerings.  

PhysicsWallah, which recently entered the unicorn list, is trying to offer more personalised offerings to students.

“We launched our Doubt Engine 1.0 last year to help students resolve their queries. Upon requests for personalisation in this regard, we launched Doubt Engine 2.0 this year, a real-time doubt resolution system. While students are engaged in online classes, a set of teaching assistants in the background will resolve questions students might encounter during the class,” said Abhishek Mishra, chief strategy officer (CSO) of PhysicsWallah (PW).

PW has also unveiled its Khazana and Saarthi programmes.

While the former offers students a set of all previous lectures, the latter offers 24x7 doubt-solving support from three personal mentors.

“We have doubled down on giving more hand-holding support and guidance programmes to students. This is where we introduced the Saarthi programme, using which doubts can be resolved real-time,” said Mishra.

“Students wishing to be taught by specific teachers can gain access to their lectures using Khazana. This comes at a price of just Rs 1,000 over the full year offering of Rs 4,000. The courses are categorised based on topic, theme and difficulty,” he added.

The firm also plans to launch courses in nine vernacular languages and extend services to cater to students from grade 6 to grade 8, said Mishra.

Unacademy has also launched two Unacademy World centres in Delhi and Jaipur where students can experience the start-up’s offerings.

 “Recently, we announced the launch of 50 new educational channels that will help in increasing accessibility for millions of learners across academic and non-academic categories.

Moreover, to make the learning process more engaging, we have announced ‘Unacademy Compete’. It is a live competition among learners to evaluate their presentation in real time,” said an Unacademy spokesperson.

Byju’s has also launched avenues for hybrid learning in a bid to onboard new students.

“With hybrid learning defining the future of education in a post-pandemic world, we launched Byju’s Tuition Centre. It is a tutoring programme that brings together the best of offline and online learning experiences,” said a Byju’s spokesperson.

“Available for students in classes 4-10, Byju’s Tuition Centre is a network of tech-enabled physical tuition centres. It focuses on engagement and better learning outcomes through a two-teacher model,” the spokesperson added.

Meanwhile, Mishra said the offline centres have proven successful as well. They work in both a hybrid model Paathshala, and a purely offline model Vidyapeeth.

“Our Paathshala offering runs on a two-teacher system. We currently have 22 Paathshala centres operational for which admissions have been closed. We had a capacity of roughly 18,000-19,000 students for which seats are fully booked,” said Mishra.

He added, “In June, we launched our purely-online centre called Vidyapeeth. We started the first one at Kota, where we are currently teaching 30,000 students. We have seven other centres in Patna, Kalu Sarai, Janakpuri, Kolkata, Kanpur and Lucknow,” he said, adding, “We had an availability of 52,000 seats for our offline centres. We have already closed admissions at 51,000.”

To meet the growing demand from students for a hybrid model, Unacademy also launched its offline centres.

“We opened the first two Unacademy Centres in Kota, followed by Lucknow, Noida and now Patna,” said a company spokesperson.

“The infrastructure along with the best pedagogy is garnering tremendous support and positive response from our learners. Today, our learners are present in over 10,000 cities and we offer over 130 test-prep categories,” he added.

Byju’s also has over 200 operational tuition centres across the country.

“Currently, there are over 200 tuition centres operational across metros and tier 2 and 3 cities. These are setting new benchmarks in hybrid format with anytime doubt resolution support and regular tests, among others,” said the Byju’s spokesperson,

According to Mishra, PW’s online operations are not witnessing any slowdown with the platform recording 2.5x growth in online admissions this year.

“It is clear that online is here to stay. Online is enabling students, who cannot access offline institutes due to financial or geographical constraints. It is a permanent empowerment tool for the bottom of the pyramid,” he said.

According to a 2022 Inc42 report titled ‘The State of India’s Start-up Ecosystem’, the edtech sector will be the worst hit by the funding slowdown in FY23.

It said edtech start-ups raised $2 billion in H1 of 2022, a decline of 41 per cent from H2 of 2021.

Both seed stage and growth deals in this sector plunged 30 per cent and 29 per cent, respectively, from H1 in 2021 to H1 2022.

According to various reports, more than 4,200 employees have been laid off by edtech start-ups.

PhysicsWallah

• Launched courses in 9 vernacular languages
• Extended services to cater to students from classes 6-8 
• Launched 22 Paathshala centres (hybrid-involving both online and offline learning)
• Launched 7 Vidyapeeth centres (purely offline)

Unacademy

• Launched two Unacademy World centres in Delhi and Jaipur where students can experience the start-up’s offerings
• Launched 50 new educational channels
• Launched ‘Unacademy Compete’, a live competition among students to evaluate presentations in real-time
• Launched offline centres in four cities

Byju’s

• Launched 200 Byju's tuition centres available for classes 4-10, providing hybrid learning
• Plans to launch 500 offline centres in 200 cities by the end of 2022