“Change is the only constant in life.”, said a Greek philosopher, Heraclitus, stands very relevant during the corona outbreak in the world. Every industry and sector is adapting to changes that can help them continue to function despite being in their homes’ confines. About 1.5 billion students in the post-COVID era are affected, according to a UNESCO survey. Nearly 90 percent of the global student population accounts for this number. Education does, however, not come to a standstill. Post-COVID, there has been a dramatic 33 percent growth in online education courses. Students have taken to the online education system rapidly. With its dire implications, the dangerous virus has proven to be quite fruitful for EdTech start-ups. In the last few lockdown months, many start-ups have witnessed massive revolutionary progress, especially in the Indian education sector. At the epicenter of that revolution, stands Vedantu App.
How and When Vedantu Started
Vedantu, where Veda means “Knowledge” and Tantu is “Network”. This makes the platform a knowledge-sharing network in which any student can access a teacher directly and enable personalized learning to occur at any place and any time.
Vedantu’s journey started in Barnala, a small town in Punjab. It was 2005, a time when access to quality education was a challenge in remote cities.
Three fresh graduates from IIT-Roorkee and IIT-Bombay, Vamsi Krishna, Pulkit Jain, and Anand Prakash, were eager to bridge this gap and hence launched in 2006, their first venture Lakshya, a test prep company. The venture targeted the training of students for a variety of tests. They finally noted that India’s educational sector needs a plethora of committed and trained teachers. Hence, through Lakshya, they focused on creating such a forum. In 2012, a listed firm, MT Educare (Mahesh Tutorials), acquired Lakshya.
Of the 35 children they taught, 11 were able to clear the IIT entrance. Motivated by that success, the trio decided to help students around the nation.
“However, if we confined ourselves to offline coaching, creating a scale of this magnitude would have been a massive challenge. We realized that the only way to meet students in India was online,” says Vamsi Krishna, CEO, and Co-founder, Vedantu.
Their next step was to create a single platform to reach a large audience. In 2014, the trio launched their second venture, Vedantu, to solve the offline learning model’s problems and challenges through a holistic online platform. Presently the platform aimed to enhance the education structure through its exceptional online EdTech platform.
Today, Vedantu claims to be the first company to start live interactive online learning in India and is a market leader in the K-12 online tutoring range. It offers live classes to students across Classes K-12, for all significant boards and top competitive exams like JEE and NEET.
Company’s Teaching Model
In Vedantu’s LIVE Class, the participants are continuously engaged through Quizzes, Leader boards, Hotspots. The teachers teach the concepts through attractive visualizations, making the class more fun & engaging. Parents are also able to see the continuous progress of their children. Interactivity has enabled education to be more fun and effective.
Vedantu has pioneered the 2-teacher model in India. Under the model, the primary teacher conducts the class on screen with all the interactive content and visualizations, and there is a secondary teacher who attends the cohorts of students within the class. The secondary teacher acts as a medium between the students and the primary teacher and clear doubts through LIVE chat. A student can get unlimited doubts asked through this model.
The teachers at Vedantu have also been compassionate about new students towards learning through the online mode of education delivery. Looking at the impressive outcomes that Vedantu has achieved, parents have adapted to the scope of online education.
To make the student’s learning journey enriching, Vedantu begins its process right from the benchmarking test required for enrolling, followed by parent counseling. There is much intervention to understand the pace of the student and his strengths and weaknesses.
“When I joined the online platform, what differed from offline coaching was the quality of teachers. Here, teachers are easily able to understand my doubts. They act like friends and also help in non-academic aspects.” – Sumit Jain, Student
Overcoming the Challenges
The trio then started working to address the two main problems: Affordability and Accessibility to quality learning in even the country’s remotest parts.
“After years of deep R&D, we launched W.A.V.E. to personalize teaching and learning for each student. It was designed to make live classes engaging and fun on one-to-many models. W.A.V.E. has the latent to engage with many students through a single live online tutorial using ML and AI,” Vamsi said.
The measurability report guides students and teachers to understand the problem and resolve it. This translates into 1000 students learning from one highly trained teacher on the W.A.V.E. platform and makes the classes extraordinarily engaging, interactive, and fun.
Vamsi says: “We believe that the education cannot be molded on the concept of one-size-fits-all; rather, it needs to be more personalized, and this is our core Selling Point.”
Company’s Progress
Vedantu has been educating 25 million students each month. As reported by Hindustan Times, the platform has stated that it has registered a 220% growth in users to 2.5 million unique students who have participated in their live classes during the recent lockdown and teachers delivering over eight million hours of classes.
The number of subscribers to Vedantu’s platform has been grown to over two million with collections, while revenue soared 80 percent.
As reported by Live mint, recently, in late June of this year, Vedantu invested $2 million in an EdTech organization, Instasolv, a doubt-solving app for high school students and IITJEE NEET aspirants, as a step to enhance their role in doubt solving.
The adoption from parents and students has gone up tremendously, and the shift towards online is here to stay. We are confident that Vedantu’s offering will see much more robust growth and higher adoption, during the pandemic and beyond,” Vamsi says.
Recent Funding History
“In live online tutoring, Vedantu’s rapid growth and segment leadership — these were the key factors for us to build attention from investors. It was a decent chance to earn more funds and build a war fund.” – Vamsi Krishna, co-founder, and CEO of Vedantu.
Vedantu has raised about $210 m in total funding across all its funding rounds for a valuation of $600m. In February of this year, Vedantu has raised $24 million in a funding round through the investors headed by GGV Capital, along with the existing shareholders.
In the second week of April, Vedantu has raised Rs 96 crore (around $12.5 million) during its Series C1 round, led by the Chinese venture capital organization Legend Capital and participation from Omidyar’s Ohana Holdings LLC. On April 20, Vedantu also raised $6.8 million in a new funding round from a South Korea-based firm KB Global Platform.
In its latest funding round in mid-June, Vedantu raised $100 million in Series D funding, led by US-based Coatue Management.
Also Read: Unschool – Redesigning The Education Ecosystem
The Road Ahead
Vedantu entered the early learner segment during the pandemic with its coding program’s launch targeting students in the 6-12 years age group. It plans to launch more programs in this category.
With India’s EdTech industry’s endless potential to improve and grow, Vedantu shows immense hope for a thriving and glorious future. Vedantu is ready to become one of the most renowned companies dominating the Indian education market as we head into an educational structure dominated by educational technology.
“Virtual is becoming new normal in the learning. We will continue our focus on technology and keep student interaction and engagement at the core. We believe this is surely the key to driving category and business growth. We also have plans to enter into the regional and international markets,” Vamsi said.
