Manoj Thandassery, Co-Founder, Curiositi, shares how his venture increasing the use of technology and innovation to make learning fun and impactful

What prompted you to start Curiositi?

Curiositi was founded by professionals who worked overseas for several years.On their return, they discovered that schooling in India had not changed much in the preceding decades. While the infrastructure of schools had improved significantly, the classroom experience was no different. The founders then brainstormed on how the class-room experience could be uplifted, to create a much more interesting and impactful environment.

What are the various difficulties and hurdles encountered in doing business on ground level ?

Selling to schools is difficult due to the multiple stakeholders that one needs to meet and convince. There is the School Principal, the concerned subject teachers, and the management. In some cases, one has to present and take approval from the PTA committee as well. How-ever, we received a boost in late 2014when Unit us Seed Fund (USF-an Impact Venture Capital Fund) invested in us along with high profile angel investors.USF investors include Bill Gates and the Michael and Susan Dell Foundation. In addition to the funding, we have benefited tremendously from the guidance provided by these experienced investors.

What is the market size of the services offered by you in India at present?

There are approximately 1.5 mil-lion schools in India, of which400,000 schools are approximately private schools. We offer solutions to these private schools.

What are the major benefits for organisations and Individuals adopting your solutions?

We offer educations solutions for Science and for Maths. For Sci ence we have created a portfolio of 100 science activity kits that are mapped to the various science concepts taught in school. We offer these as part of a customised programme to schools, to help transform their learning of science. Rather than just learning from text books, students now have the excitement of using these activity kits to actually explore concepts,perform experiments and build working models. Science therefore comes alive in these schools, and student and teacher response to the programme is overwhelming. The programme is also highly affordable.

Our Math product is the world’s first tablet based, text book mapped, personalised Math practice solution for schools.Students now get to practice Maths using the tablet, and it is like having a 1:1student teacher ratio during the class.The tablet asks questions based on the students ability, immediately corrects the problem if the student makes a mis-take and helps her do better by practice.The solution also provides teachers with a dashboard of student performance, so that they can observe if certain topics were not well understood and make corrections.

What is the vision of your company for the next two years?

We will continue to deliver compelling educational solutions, by increasing the use of technology and innovation. Our goal is to make learning fun and impactful.

How you can differentiate you services from your competitors?

Our products are clearly designed to be engaging to use and easy to administer.These aspects separate our product from the competition.

What is the vision of your company for the next two years?

Our operations started in July 2014, and in just three quarters we are now online payment partners for more than 100institutes located in 11 cities across the country. In this short span of time we have successfully done the gross trans-actions worth Rs 3 crore on Fee pal. At the current pace we believe in next two quarters we will successfully complete aggregated gross transactions worth Rs 10 crore on Fee pal. Once we reach this benchmark we will be actively looking for funding partners to scale up the business in different geographies. We would also like to have our footprint in the international markets beyond India.There are various international markets which are relatively less mature vis-à-vis India in term of automation in education. They will be our potential targets apart from the domestic market.

In terms of technology and product,we would like to move beyond the core fee aggregation and would also like to sell other education related products and services on our portal such as summer camps for students, school uniforms, on-line courses, online test series etc.

What are the various methods youare using to increase the visibility of your organisation?

Presently we have channelised all our limited resources for institute acquisition. We are using multiple sales channels for the same. For B2C visibility, we leverage upon the networks of educational institutes. We ensure our visibility in educational institutes on occasions like Parent Teacher Meet, Annual Days,College Fests etc.

How do you differentiate your services from your competitors?

Our competitors are banks and payment gateways. In the context of education sector, we have a clear edge over both these competitors. Bank and gateway shave online payment products but they are generic in nature. Fee pal as a product is designed keeping in mind the need of the educational institutes.

Fee pal is a plug and play kind of solution for the educational institutes. How-ever, in order to integrate payment gate-ways, institutes have to incur a cost in upgrading their websites and technical upgradation. We also have provisions for admission form selling and automating the book shops of the educational institutes. Fee pal Android App is the first payment App of its kind in India for the education sector. These are clear differentiators.

What are the major stake holders and sectors you are focusing on?

We have our focus on the education sec-tor. Our target markets are pre schools,schools, colleges, universities and coaching classes. Apart from education, we are also trying to come up with similar online payment products for the health-care industry. We have already started a pilot project for revenue automation with three Bangaluru based hospitals.

What are the various initiatives taken by your organisation to emerge as a market leader?

We want to be a one stop online payment solution for educational institutes (both ecommerce and m-commerce). Our customer centric approach and ability to design customized solutions makes us different from the competitors. Our approach is to add value in the eco system at zero cost for educational institutes.

We are well ahead of the market curve in terms of technological products. For instance we have recently developed India’s first Android app for the education industry where all our partner institutes shall be aggregated on a single platform.

India’s education market is brimming with opportunities. With a market size ofUS$92.98 billion, the country is in dire need of education start-ups and supportingprivate capital to energise and innovate its education system.Elets News Network(ENN)in its survey of edupreneurs found a number of players who are taking strides and emerging successful in their ventures

These numbers present a story of underlying opportunity.There are approximately 1.5million schools in India, of which almost 400,000 schools are private schools. The education market in India is worth around US$ 92.98 billion and higher education contributes 59.7per cent of the market size. The market is expected to at 18per cent per year.With over 50 per cent of India’s population under 25 years old, giving India the advantage of the demographic dividend,skill development has attained utmost importance.

These figures are showing acceleration, and throw light on the growing Indian education market, and the in-numerable opportunities its offers; but more importantly, also highlight the gap between the educated population and employable population. Statistics reveal that less than 25 per cent of the graduates are actually employable. It is believed that based on the current and future manpower requirements of the various sectors, there is a huge demand-supply gap in the education space.

India is in dire need of such education entrepreneurs and supporting private capital to energise and innovate its education system. What most may see as a challenging scenario, an entrepreneur will see it as a right environment for coming-up with a start-up.

The need for edupreneurs

Abhinav Chaturvedi, founder, Gradians says:“Education is something Indian parents and students spend a lot of time and money on. In fact, after food and grocery, education accounts for the second high estdiscretionary spend in mid-income Indian families. So, the market potential is obvious.”

Shatru Naik, CEO, Maths9.com says:I believe in Steve Jobs quote, “Great things in business are not done by one person; they are done by a team of people. The main challenge I have is assembling the right “strategic core business management team. Also, differentiating between practice and learning products with parents and teachers. Making people to understand the need of practice tools initially is time taking.”

Education is a founding stone of any civilisation, pedagogy techniques have been evolving since ancient times and the trend will persist till the end of civilisation, hence education is one of those industries which will evolve with time. India is one of the global centers of education. India with school strength of 1.4 Million has huge potential. Indian ratings expect Indian education sector to increase to US $109.84 Billion, hence there is lot of opportunity in education sector in India

Speaking further about the importance of Entrepreneurship in the education sector, Gowdhaman Margabandu,CEO, Digital Future of Education says,“We want that an Indian product should gain prominence globally, and we are taking baby steps in this direction. The Indian market in education vertical alone is about US $90 billion. In other verticals we have a target market size of over US$ 200 billion.”
Ranu Kawatra, Co-Founder and CEO of Maxx English said, “India is at the cusp of huge growth and the all financial forecast from knowledgeable pundits bear that out. To do justice to this opportunity India is in dire need of an educated and skilled workforce and this need is felt by all stakeholders resulting in opening up a host of opportunities for the edupreneurs. The expansion of the rapidly growing internet footprint,accessible through both the large and small screen augurs really well for both the learner and the entrepreneur. How-ever along with this opportunity comes also responsibility to make a difference and people who keep this in mind will do well.

The development of human capital and economic capital in any country is in a large way related to Education.Considering the sheer demographics of the country, India is a very lucrative market. However, in addition to rich promises, it is also a land of contradictions and dichotomies. On one hand,we boast of the world class IITs and IIMs, while on the other we have schools existing without teachers and some maybe with just one student. Course birdie says that they have found out about the huge gap between student learning outcomes and market demand.

Statistics suggest that around 3-4 million students enrol for distance education programs every year and probably another 0.5-1 million students are pursuing online education courses. This market would currently be in range of $3-4Bn and growing continuously. Beyond this is the e-learning and digital content market where many course providers are interested to launch their courses in online modes.

In this background, Sasikanth Chemalamudi, CEO, Brainwave Edutainment said that the main motivation behind starting our venture is the scenario where more than 70 per cent high school graduates are not ready for college level science today. They either hate or fear the subjects.

Bala Bhaskar G T, Founder, Genius science academy says, “A major benefit and big Social Impact of edupreneurs introducing initiatives to use technology is penetration of learning at all levels. The inflation in economy is a resultant of low waged unskilled labour that is majorly high school drop-outs. The infra-structure and the teaching techniques in rural schools are the root cause for such a huge high school drop-out rate.”

One of the biggest challenges of online education is lack of trust for distance and online education. The situation is gradually becoming optimistic as more and more premium course providers are adopting online delivery mode. During the last few years there has also been a rise in the market acceptability of these courses but still there is a long way to go. Another challenge is to create more engaging models for delivery of education which can help attract more students and increase the level of interactions and completion rate. Many experiments are going on the education space to overcome these hurdles and we are optimistic as the constant evolution in technology will surely help in resolving these issues.We are sure that there would be increased trust for online and distance courses amongst aspirants and employers as more and more premium course providers come online.

 

For a startup, there are several hurdles to be crossed or questions to be answered on a daily basis let alone a period of two years. At an external level, we found it very difficult to get good quality educational content in a structured format for us to grow quickly. We had not anticipated that. While we knew this would be difficult, it was also much harder to convince students, in our earlier days, to adopt a newer concept from the traditional brands that have been around for years. Hiring, onlinepayments are other challenges that most startups face.

This becomes important in India where only 12 per cent of the address-able population goes to college and nearly 70 per cent of the population is in rural areas, education is considered a very important channel for socioeconomic mobility. Unfortunately, despite huge demand and need of education,policy framework in India has stifled access, quality and innovation in education.Even the traditional education companies are gaining an entrepreneurial mindset and are seeking a share of the growing and evolving education market.

A recent survey on Linkedin regarding ‘what is the biggest constraint insetting up a ‘high quality’ academic institution in India’ revealed that regulatory mechanism is the biggest constraint, followed by investments/funding. Some Indian education entrepreneurs are sensing the opportunity and are aggressively finding niches,models and structures that fall outside the regulatory mechanism.

Puranam Pradeep Picasso, Founder,Imbue desk says, “This is very common hurdle in young startups who got a team of all talented youth to make them sit together, plan together and then make them work together without disturbing their individual thoughts, freedom and actions. It took us a lot of time, around five months, to finalize a particular action plan of how to implement in as equential manner for overall development of students.”

Stud Bud says, “Being a B2B company is always difficult, especially in the education sector. Tying up with colleges has huge acquisition costs. Moreover,with the annual semester cycle being dispersed with multiple holidays, examinations and festivals, it is always more challenging to maintain a continuous stream of business and growth. In addition, since a large number of educational institutions are managed and owned by industrialists or businessmen, and not academicians, convincing them of the product is always driven by negotiations on pricing.”

 

When we talk about reason behind starting a new venture, it’s always something that you have seen happening around you. For me the reason was educating students in a way, which is simple and easy for them. When you start (Internet Startup or any other business), the biggest challenge is to make people use what you have created. Internet is a vast sea, and you must know where to put down your net to catch fi sh. Targeting the right audience is the key, and offering them something useful is a requisite.

“India has a huge market in the education domain. Especially in the higher education segment, where there are more than 5,000 engineering and management colleges, with nearly 800-1,000added every year, the market is close to 6+ million students going for either higher education or campus placements annually. This translates to at least $600million opportunity. There are specific education hubs in the country, with large number of institutions and universities,which are our primary focus.”

Moving beyond the‘Comfort Zone’

Another major issue is the adoption of new technology by institutions and the know-how to use it.

ALL Spark Learning, which started out to fill key lacuna in today’s learning environment says that there are various difficulties and hurdles en-countered in doing business on Ground level. These comprise lack of Management’s focus on raising the quality of education and its benefits on long run for the learners and institute, a new approach and product faces reluctance in adoption, lack of awareness over avail-ability of such tools which can enhance the process and the lack of infrastructure particularly internet penetration and its adoption in classrooms

Abhinav Chaturvedi, Founder, Gradians says: “Education is a high-stakes game for all concerned – students, parents and schools. More so, perhaps in India, where what a student can do next is determined (fairly or unfairly) by their performance on an exam. Because of this, there is also a lot of inertia and trepidation about trying something new concerning education. Hence, any education startup should be ready to give their idea time to take root. Learning to be patient will be your first challenge – and a constant one thereafter.The other challenges will depend on whom you are targeting – institutions or individual students. Each brings its own set of challenges. Institutions are easier to identify and c an get you many users in one go. But the sales cycles are typically longer. Individuals, on the other hand,make a quick go / no-go decision. Hence,with them, it is a question of putting the product out there and constantly looking for ways to improve uptake and/or improve engagement.

Archanalal, CEO, Book Street, who believes that students deserve a much more efficient way to study for their exams says that internet connection is still poor/ slow in tier two cities. However,this may not remain a concern over a period as the government is taking steps in this front.

Anirudh Motwani, Founder and CEO,Indiacollegesearch.com says: “Changing the mindset of decision makers at the institute level is always a challenge and a lot of people within academia are sceptical of technology. So the problems are similar to what any other industry(from travel to banking) faced while adopting technology and building dependency on software solutions, but change is inevitable.”

Subhash Chanda, Founder, Creatist in formed that one of the biggest hurdles they faced while conducting pilot trials in renowned universities was that there was no margin for error. “Another challenge that we faced in the first year was huge adoption inertia in educational institutes and that resulted in long sales cycles. This problem was almost non-existent in corporate organisations. But,we believe, that has happened because we were able to tune the product into something valuable through feedback from the early adopters” he said.

 

The service and education space is at a very dynamic space in terms of offline entities; however its online counterpart can still be termed as a virgin territory. This has resulted in both pros and cons for us. The biggest benefit has been gaining first mover advantage, but we at Urban Pro have constantly faced hurdles as well. Since the category is in its nascent stage, bringing affiliates on board in the beginning did prove troublesome.

For more stories on some of the best start-ups in education, log on to digital..digitallearning.eletsonline.com.

AISECT University strives to promote a culture of innovation and entrepreneurial skills among its students

AISECT University is established by the renowned Educational Group AISECT– India’s leading group with over 30 years of experience, having13,000 centers in the field nationwide and raised as the first Private University of Madhya Pradesh. First and above all the university is a sacred place nestled in the green and serene surroundings of Bhopal, for not only teaching learnng process but to cultivate responsible citizen with complete personality; AISECT University is an ideal destination for young learners. The University is equipped with world-class infrastructure facilities supported by eminent faculties. AISECT University strives to promote a culture of innovation and entrepreneurial skills among its students in order to ensure effective application of knowledge for a secure career.

With the strong Industry linkages of the parent organisation, AISECT University aims to transform its students into competent, inspired and successful professionals. AISECT has been awarded by World Bank, NASSCOM, Best Private University of Madhya Pradesh 2012, ASSOCHAM Excellence in Education Award 2014, the university has been felicitated in 2014 for the pioneering initiative of accepting NIELIT qualifiers for higher courses and from several other institutions. Along with recognition under section 2(f) of the UGC act, approved by AICTE, NCTE, BCI, PCMP the University is also an esteemed member of AIU.

VISION & MISSION

To establish AISECT University as a platform that stands for imparting quality education and to provide a research driven environment to the students that would help them to inculcate necessary skills and knowledge required to make their mark in the challenging and ever changing professional world.

• To create a research driven environment
• To spark imaginative approach and offer proper guidance to prepare industry ready professionals
• To strengthen ties with leading academic and corporate bodies across the world
• To be regarded as an avantgarde institution
• To contribute towards the social and economic development of the country.

COLLABORATION/MOU/RESEARCH PARTNERSHIP AISECT

University focuses on providing employment to students for which we have effective collaboration for research skilling and education with:

International Partners

Microsoft – Cloud Computing, RPI, USA(Smart Lighting Experts), ICE wARM,Australia (International Center for Water management), KAIST, Korea (Nano-technology Engineering Excellence),

PROGRAMMES AND COURSES

? Engineering – BE, M.Tech.

? Diploma Courses

? IT Courses

? Management Courses

? Information Technology Courses

? Science

? Commerce

? Arts

? Education

? Law

? Paramedical Courses

? M.Phill Program

? Journalism & Mass Communication

KYIV, Ukraine (Environmental Engineering Experts),

National Partners:

BSNL – Joint courses at PG, CIAE – Re-search Partners, CRISP – Industrial Association, IIT New Delhi – IISC Bangalore – Research Projects, Reliance – Skill Partner, IT Power – Renewable Energy partner.

FACULTIES

All facilities at the AISECT University are well equipped with state-of-the-art infrastructure and technologies to provide quality education with practical hands-on training. AISECT University has developed its faculties and facilities based on students and industry demands with a complete focus to reduce employability gap. The management reviewed the demand of economical striation and ultimately manifested the traditional education curriculum into extreme updated one.

PLACEMENT SUPPORT

It is our vision that every graduate from the AISECT University is equipped with the necessary skills and knowledge for a bright professional career. For this, a very strong focus has been conceptualized on providing training in soft skills and enhancing the student’s employ-ability. Special training is provided in the- Communication Skills, Group Discussions and Training on Software Development. In 2014-15 academic year 15company come for campus recruitment and shortlisted more than 60 students for placement.

HOUSE OF INTELLECT LIBRARY

Housing more than 36,900 books,9,566 titles and thousands of CDs, journals and reports that cover wide range of subjects, the library at AISECT University is nothing less than a knowledge paradise for students. With access to a range of databases with traditional printed materials, the library proves to be an impeccable knowledge resource.

HOSTEL FACILITY

Both girls and boys are offered accommodation facility within close radius of the main campus. All the basic facilities are made available at the hostel and it is made sure that the students have a pleasant stay.

CULTURAL & SPORTS

We encourage students to indulge in sports and extracurricular activities,which contributes in the overall development and sows the seeds of team spirit among students. Large number of international, national and regional events like conferences, workshops,seminars etc organised round the year to provide wide exposure and vibrant platform for interaction and exchange.A phenomenal central auditorium, Sharda Auditorium facilitates extra-curricular activities.

KINSHIP WITH SOCIETY

Centre for Renewable Energy Alternate sources of energy are the only hope on which survival of our future generation depends. AISECT University has therefore made Renewable Energy its key area of focus. An independent Centre for Renewable Energy has been established with multi fold objectives.It has an Energy park for generating awareness amongst students & faculty showing various models and options of energy generation & distribution. It has a Resource Section which is convert in gentire university in to ‘Green Campus ’through self generated Renewable Energy Hybrid System (Wind and Solar Energy) in a phased manner.

CENTRE FOR SCIENCE COMMUNICATION

AISECT University realises its responsibility to popularize science not only among the students within the university but also among people outside. A Centre for Science Communication in the university has a Publication Section which is publishing popular science books in Hindi language under project‘Anusrijan’. A science Communication Corner in Central Library has lots of popular books, computer games and other resources for Science Communication. CSE also organises various events in and outside university for Science Communication cause.

Western India is one of the most popular education cluster in India with cities like Pune and Maharshtra in the region. The zone offers excellent infrastructure, advanced industrialisation and is a preferred destination among Indian and foreign students.

Maharashtra, Goa and Gujarat

Government Institutes

 Private Institutes

 Promising Institutes

 Private Institutes

 Rajasthan

Private Institutes

 Promising Institutes

North India is an educational hub comprising of several universities and centres of excellence. With IIT Delhi and IIT Rourkee taking the top spots in the region, students, who wish to make their career in engineering,would look forward to get admitted in these institutions.

New Delhi

Government Institutes

Promising Institutes

Himachal Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir, Uttarakhand

Government Institutes

Private Institutes

Punjab and Haryana

Government Institutes

 Private Institutes

 Promising Institutes

 Uttar Pradesh

 Government Institutes

Private Institutes

Known for rich cultural heritage, South India is also a popular engineering education hub, which attracts students from all over the country and abroad.

Kerala and Tamil Nadu Private Institutes

 Government Institutes

Promising Institutes

Karnataka Government Institutes

Promising Institutes

Private Institutes

Andhra Pradesh and Telangana Government Institutes
Government Institutes

Government Institutes

Government Institutes