After experimenting with it during the last couple of months, edtech company Byju’s is now foraying into the live online tutoring market with a comprehensive suite of offerings. The Bengaluru-based firm has launched ‘Byju’s Classes’ - a programme that aims at providing the students all the benefits of personalised after-school tuition classes from some of the country’s best teachers.
“We strongly believe that a personalised and tech-enabled learning offering like ‘Byju’s Classes’ can truly stand out in an otherwise fragmented after-school tutoring market and offer students a viable solution to strengthen the ideas and concepts taught in school,” said Divya Gokulnath, co-founder, Byju’s.
The development comes as the company last week achieved another feat by becoming India’s newest decacorn at a valuation of around $10.5 billion, when it received funding from Mary Meeker’s Bond Capital.
After India announced lockdown to contain the spread of Covid-19 pandemic, apart from making access to its learning app free, Byju’s had also introduced ‘Live Classes,’ targeting the after-school segment. However, since the classes were being attended by lakhs of students, it did offer the two-way interaction feature.
With ‘Byju’s Classes’, students will now be assigned a dedicated mentor who will offer one-on-one attention, comprehensive progress reports and also suggest personalised classes to work on topics that they need to focus on. The programme includes regular subjective and objective tests to help evaluate a student’s performance.
Presently, the programme is available for students from classes 4 - 12 as well as for those preparing for competitive exams like JEE and NEET. Students can choose from weekday and weekend batches and attend scheduled online Math and Science classes as per their school curriculum.
According to the company, specially assigned Byju’s teachers will help students with live doubt resolution during the class.
They can opt for personalised extra classes for topics where they need extra support. Regular home assignments and monthly tests will help students with conceptual understanding and help build their foundation in Maths and Science. A dedicated mentor and counsellor will look after the learning requirements of students and will be in touch with the parent or guardian and child regularly. They will interact with students regularly to understand their progress and requirements and counsel them on their learning approach and other concerns.
With this new programme, Byju’s would be competing with various edtech players including Vedantu, a live online tutoring company.
Experts said at a time when India is fighting the coronavirus pandemic, much of the country’s $180 billion education sector is going online to adapt to the new reality, throwing opportunities for edtech players including Byju’s and Vedantu.
In India Byju’s, through its app, offers learning programs for students in classes K-12 and competitive exams like JEE, NEET and IAS. With an average time of 71 minutes being spent by a student on the app every day from over 1700 cities, the app is creating a new way of learning through visual lessons, live classes by Byju’s teachers and is encouraging students to become self-initiated learners.