Catering to the students from grade 4 to grade 10 of CBSE and ICSE boards, Open Door has designed a programme which helps student learn by understanding. Aneesh Bangia, Co-Founder, Open Door believes that the specially designed curriculum will aid in achieving the mastery of the concepts that students learn
What are the various reasons behind starting Open Door?
There are several problems with the school education that needs to be improved – firstly, most of the learning in schools is either superficial or rote-based. There is no concept of mastery. Teachers have to finish the syllabus and due to that they are unable to ensure that there is complete understanding of what she/he teaches. If we haven’t mastered a concept, we’d struggle to understand the other concepts based on it. Secondly, students do not question or dig deeper into the concepts taught to them. It is important that schools help students become self-learners and critical thinkers.
Open Door was started with the objective that students in schools learn by understanding. We have designed a programme called ‘Mastery Curriculum’ which achieves this objective. Teachers use our online portal actively to implement the mastery curriculum. The online portal helps teachers generate top quality question papers and assess them in almost no time.
We also think that the teachers should focus on asking questions in the classroom than explaining things in an interesting manner. Students learn better when they think themselves, than when they are spoon-fed. We have developed a teacher training course called ‘Teaching by questioning’ for this objective.
What are the various difficulties encountered in doing business on ground level?
The only difficulty is to be able to meet the school authorities. But, once we meet them it is not so difficult to convince them. They find it useful, easy to implement in their schools and cost-effective.
What is the market size of the services offered by you in India currently?
Our products and services cater to students from grade 4 to grade 10 studying in CBSE and ICSE schools.
What are the major benefits for organisations and individuals adopting your solutions?
Schools will find that their students will achieve mastery of the concepts that they learn. They will become more confident learners when they go to higher classes. Our solutions also empower teachers, saves their time and effort. The entire classroom learning experience will change for both students and teachers.
What is the Vision of your company for next two years?
We should be able to partner with every school in India that is interested in enhancing learning in their classrooms. We would also be adding many more new features to our online portal.
What are the various methods you are using to increase the visibility of your organisation?
Improving SEO, visiting exhibitions and having magazines publish articles about us.
How you can differentiate you services from your competitors?
Our curriculum is twice more effective and priced at less than one-third of the pricing of our competitors.
What are the ways of engaging the customers with you. Please share any special Case study?
We are trying everything – mailing school authorities, cold calling, setting up stalls at exhibitions, setting up a sales force, etc. to engage customers.
What are the major stakeholders and sectors you are focusing on?
CBSE and ICSE schools’ students of grade 4 to grade 10 are the focus. We are focused on reaching out and convincing the school authorities to implement our programme at their school.
What are the various initiatives taken by your organisation to emerge as a market leader?
The focus is to keep delivering good results and keep our customers satisfied by our product and services.
