Founded by IITians This Ed-Tech Startup Bringing Video Intelligence For Flipped Classrooms

A picture says a thousand words. Well, in the 21st century, videos says a million words. Considering the outreach of the medium of videos in today's world, a Bangalore based startup called Impartus Innovations is using this viral medium to impart knowledge and education to the youth.

The main aim of this unique startup is to do away with the boring and monotonous teaching methods being employed in schools and teaching centres since centuries and replace it with something which the youth can have instant connect with. The Impartus product suite helps educators by offering them easy and seamless integration to impart learning experiences outside the classroom and provide the student community all around the world content relevant to today's time.

Interstingly, startup is not restricted to jusst India but working on global innovations in the field of video intelligence and Flipped classrooms. The 'Flipped classroom', which is new to India, is a pedagogical model in which the typical lecture and homework elements of a course are reversed. Short video lectures are viewed by students at home before the class session, while in-class time is devoted to exercises, projects, or discussions.

The idea for Impartus Innovations stemmed from the co-founders realisation that as students they themselves preferred self-paced learning techniques over the monotonous classroom lectures. Further, considering each individual is unique, having their own attention span and learning space, they decided to come up with a tech based solution for making learning and education a fun process.

The startup's flagship product is 'Lecture Capture' that captures, records, edits and streams video lectures from the classroom so that the students can learn at a speed they're most comfortable with.

Currently focusing on emerging markets like India, Kenya, and Malaysia, the startup is focused on its mission to serve the post-secondary education market, rather than expanding into corporate training and other types of enterprise uses. They're known to provide a complete end-to-end solution to their users that includes hardware, software, and a highly efficient customer service.

Amit Mahensaria (Co-founder, Chief Strategy Officer), Manish Kumar (Co-founder, Chief Operating Officer), Alok Choudhary (Co-Founder, Head of Product Development & R&D) and Sandeep Aji (Co-founder, Chief Executive Officer, are the four geniuses trying hard to transform the learning process forever. All of them have a combined experience of 50+years in various sectors such as education, software, manufacturing etc.

It is a sad but a true scenario to acknowledge the fact that while we're advancing at an unprecedented pace in all sectors like technology, defence etc., education is one sphere in which most of the world is still employing that ages old pen and paper method. But, with Impartus Innovations, there is a ray of hope.

The startup, which has successfully raised $4.1mn in Series A funding from Kaizen Private Equity last year, has a glorious clientele of 50+ tier 1 and tier universities and colleges. The list includes names like Indian Institute of Management-Bangalore (IIM-B), Shiv Nadar School, Great Lakes Institute of Management, PES Univerty- Bangalore and IFIM Business School Bangalore, etc. The startup has already completed over 100,000 hours of recording till now and aims to add approximately 5000 classrooms by the end of year 2017.

Founded by IITians This Ed-Tech Startup Bringing Video Intelligence For Flipped Classrooms

A picture says a thousand words. Well, in the 21st century, videos says a million words. Considering the outreach of the medium of videos in today's world, a Bangalore based startup called Impartus Innovations is using this viral medium to impart knowledge and education to the youth.

The main aim of this unique startup is to do away with the boring and monotonous teaching methods being employed in schools and teaching centres since centuries and replace it with something which the youth can have instant connect with. The Impartus product suite helps educators by offering them easy and seamless integration to impart learning experiences outside the classroom and provide the student community all around the world content relevant to today's time.

Interstingly, startup is not restricted to jusst India but working on global innovations in the field of video intelligence and Flipped classrooms. The 'Flipped classroom', which is new to India, is a pedagogical model in which the typical lecture and homework elements of a course are reversed. Short video lectures are viewed by students at home before the class session, while in-class time is devoted to exercises, projects, or discussions.

The idea for Impartus Innovations stemmed from the co-founders realisation that as students they themselves preferred self-paced learning techniques over the monotonous classroom lectures. Further, considering each individual is unique, having their own attention span and learning space, they decided to come up with a tech based solution for making learning and education a fun process.

The startup's flagship product is 'Lecture Capture' that captures, records, edits and streams video lectures from the classroom so that the students can learn at a speed they're most comfortable with.

Currently focusing on emerging markets like India, Kenya, and Malaysia, the startup is focused on its mission to serve the post-secondary education market, rather than expanding into corporate training and other types of enterprise uses. They're known to provide a complete end-to-end solution to their users that includes hardware, software, and a highly efficient customer service.

Amit Mahensaria (Co-founder, Chief Strategy Officer), Manish Kumar (Co-founder, Chief Operating Officer), Alok Choudhary (Co-Founder, Head of Product Development & R&D) and Sandeep Aji (Co-founder, Chief Executive Officer, are the four geniuses trying hard to transform the learning process forever. All of them have a combined experience of 50+years in various sectors such as education, software, manufacturing etc.

It is a sad but a true scenario to acknowledge the fact that while we're advancing at an unprecedented pace in all sectors like technology, defence etc., education is one sphere in which most of the world is still employing that ages old pen and paper method. But, with Impartus Innovations, there is a ray of hope.

The startup, which has successfully raised $4.1mn in Series A funding from Kaizen Private Equity last year, has a glorious clientele of 50+ tier 1 and tier universities and colleges. The list includes names like Indian Institute of Management-Bangalore (IIM-B), Shiv Nadar School, Great Lakes Institute of Management, PES Univerty- Bangalore and IFIM Business School Bangalore, etc. The startup has already completed over 100,000 hours of recording till now and aims to add approximately 5000 classrooms by the end of year 2017.

EdTech Startup Spanedea Offers Live Online Tutoring With Two Way Interaction and No Recorded Videos

The world is a competitive place, there is a competition a race at every stage in life and us as individuals do whatever we can to get ahead.  Student life is one time where one has to face a lot of competition from your peers and in an attempt to be better, many resort to tuitions and outside coaching apart from regular school. Almost every child in middle school and above has outside help apart from the school. And this becomes serious when the 10th standard exams come into the picture and two years later when competitive exams also take place on a national level. This is where every student is expected to gear up and work as hard as they can and prove themselves. At this stage, children take up extra classes and coaching institutes.  Spandea works in the same sector and is here with a plan of its own, which is apparently more effective than the conventional classroom teaching.

THE IDEA

The idea behind Spanedea is simple, they want to transform the classrooms teaching and make it more effective by making an online platform that endeavours to deliver the best tutoring service available to students by connecting them with tutors and vice versa. They feel that though the conventional methods are effective but they can be better and  be more helpful to the children. They believe that one on one teaching is much better than a class with more kids than chairs and the teachers can't pay attention to everyone there. This is very frustrating thing for both students and teachers. Spandea is here to alleviate this and make teaching a better experience. They use technology to help them achieve this goal.

Spanedea enables a personalized tutoring experience to students - they can choose their tutors, chose which subjects they want help for, they can learn at their own pace, and in coordination with the tutor they can learn at convenient time slots. From school, college entrance to higher studies, they have tutors on subjects catering to a wide range of disciplines.

For tutors it offers a platform to build their own online business, comprising - flexibility and also time, a means to showcase expertise and feedback, a platform for reputation and of earning income through expertise.

MEET THE MAKERS

[caption id="attachment_103541" align="aligncenter" width="700"] Team Spanedea with Sanjay, Founder & CEO at right-most[/caption]

The company was founded by Mr. Sanjay Bhadra, Mr. Rajat Sharma and Mr. Nitin Bansal

Sanjay is currently the CEO of the venture. He has about 17 years of experience spanning a matrix of companies and leadership roles. Prior to becoming an entrepreneur, he worked for companies like Sun Microsystems (Oracle) and Infosys Technologies. He graduated in BE from Andhra University College of Engineering (1995) and completed PGDM from IIM Bangalore (1998). Spanedea currently has a team of five people. They are working out of Mumbai

TARGET MARKET

Their target market is divided into two sections, students and tutors.  They want to capture the market of home tutoring and coaching and help out not just the students but the teachers as well.

USP

The major difference that sets them apart is that they offer live online classes rather than just recorded videos, where the kids cannot interact. This way the classroom is more interactive in nature where students can get their doubts cleared  and have a discussion with the teachers.

Another advantage of this system is that distance does not become a constraint here. The teacher does not need to travel miles to go teach students and or vice-versa. This eliminates the travel time that is not put to good use. This gives the tutor the freedom to take more classes without having to waste time on travel and the students do not have to waste precious hours travelling across the city.

Also, their system is designed to provide the student with great convenience - in choosing the tutor with confidence, in providing feedback on the tutor, in finding a new tutor quickly, paying the fees in convenient instalments. So some students take only a few hours of doubt clearing sessions, some take a specific part. This gives students the flexibility of learning what they require without having to take a whole package or course.

Also, they cover a much wider spectrum of exams and subjects - JEE, CAT, GRE, SAT, et al.

FUNDING

Spandea is currently bootstrapped.

PLAN OF ACTION

Spandea has been doing a great job and they have their statistics to show for it. Spanedea has had approximately 650 paying students, who have taken approximately 16,000 hours of live online tutoring. They have over 450 tutors on board with them as well.

Their first and foremost plan of action is to make sure that the students and teachers can use their system efficicently and with ease. Also to make sure that their interaction with the platform is an ongoing project, for this they  will continue innovating and improving on this through improving our systems.

Secondly, they would like to broaden their tutor community to get more tutors from different segments and also, of course, add more tutors for already popular segments like JEE

Thirdly, they are focussed on growth.  So they are trying to build awareness among their target market. To achieve this, they rely on alliances. Of course, references is a great way to achieve growth as this extends the trust network - so this top priority as well.

EdTech Startup Spanedea Offers Live Online Tutoring With Two Way Interaction and No Recorded Videos

The world is a competitive place, there is a competition a race at every stage in life and us as individuals do whatever we can to get ahead.  Student life is one time where one has to face a lot of competition from your peers and in an attempt to be better, many resort to tuitions and outside coaching apart from regular school. Almost every child in middle school and above has outside help apart from the school. And this becomes serious when the 10th standard exams come into the picture and two years later when competitive exams also take place on a national level. This is where every student is expected to gear up and work as hard as they can and prove themselves. At this stage, children take up extra classes and coaching institutes.  Spandea works in the same sector and is here with a plan of its own, which is apparently more effective than the conventional classroom teaching.

THE IDEA

The idea behind Spanedea is simple, they want to transform the classrooms teaching and make it more effective by making an online platform that endeavours to deliver the best tutoring service available to students by connecting them with tutors and vice versa. They feel that though the conventional methods are effective but they can be better and  be more helpful to the children. They believe that one on one teaching is much better than a class with more kids than chairs and the teachers can't pay attention to everyone there. This is very frustrating thing for both students and teachers. Spandea is here to alleviate this and make teaching a better experience. They use technology to help them achieve this goal.

Spanedea enables a personalized tutoring experience to students - they can choose their tutors, chose which subjects they want help for, they can learn at their own pace, and in coordination with the tutor they can learn at convenient time slots. From school, college entrance to higher studies, they have tutors on subjects catering to a wide range of disciplines.

For tutors it offers a platform to build their own online business, comprising - flexibility and also time, a means to showcase expertise and feedback, a platform for reputation and of earning income through expertise.

MEET THE MAKERS

[caption id="attachment_103541" align="aligncenter" width="700"] Team Spanedea with Sanjay, Founder & CEO at right-most[/caption]

The company was founded by Mr. Sanjay Bhadra, Mr. Rajat Sharma and Mr. Nitin Bansal

Sanjay is currently the CEO of the venture. He has about 17 years of experience spanning a matrix of companies and leadership roles. Prior to becoming an entrepreneur, he worked for companies like Sun Microsystems (Oracle) and Infosys Technologies. He graduated in BE from Andhra University College of Engineering (1995) and completed PGDM from IIM Bangalore (1998). Spanedea currently has a team of five people. They are working out of Mumbai

TARGET MARKET

Their target market is divided into two sections, students and tutors.  They want to capture the market of home tutoring and coaching and help out not just the students but the teachers as well.

USP

The major difference that sets them apart is that they offer live online classes rather than just recorded videos, where the kids cannot interact. This way the classroom is more interactive in nature where students can get their doubts cleared  and have a discussion with the teachers.

Another advantage of this system is that distance does not become a constraint here. The teacher does not need to travel miles to go teach students and or vice-versa. This eliminates the travel time that is not put to good use. This gives the tutor the freedom to take more classes without having to waste time on travel and the students do not have to waste precious hours travelling across the city.

Also, their system is designed to provide the student with great convenience - in choosing the tutor with confidence, in providing feedback on the tutor, in finding a new tutor quickly, paying the fees in convenient instalments. So some students take only a few hours of doubt clearing sessions, some take a specific part. This gives students the flexibility of learning what they require without having to take a whole package or course.

Also, they cover a much wider spectrum of exams and subjects - JEE, CAT, GRE, SAT, et al.

FUNDING

Spandea is currently bootstrapped.

PLAN OF ACTION

Spandea has been doing a great job and they have their statistics to show for it. Spanedea has had approximately 650 paying students, who have taken approximately 16,000 hours of live online tutoring. They have over 450 tutors on board with them as well.

Their first and foremost plan of action is to make sure that the students and teachers can use their system efficicently and with ease. Also to make sure that their interaction with the platform is an ongoing project, for this they  will continue innovating and improving on this through improving our systems.

Secondly, they would like to broaden their tutor community to get more tutors from different segments and also, of course, add more tutors for already popular segments like JEE

Thirdly, they are focussed on growth.  So they are trying to build awareness among their target market. To achieve this, they rely on alliances. Of course, references is a great way to achieve growth as this extends the trust network - so this top priority as well.

Ed-Tech Startup Admito Poised To Streamline India's MBA Admission Process

Too many options are more of a bad news than good news in the 21st century. And, when it comes to education, this bad news becomes worst. Students are nowadays bombarded with options when it comes to choosing their perfect college. Understanding the mental state that a student goes through while choosing their dream college, a Ghaziabad based startup called Admito has come up with a unique solution.

Focussing on MBA aspirants, Admito isn't just a tool but more of a friend who understands a student and his/her needs. Its algorithm gives the student the most corrective and accurate information about the choices available to him while shortlisting colleges.

Claiming to be an expert in profiling, a master in information processing and an ace in counseling, Admito aims to deliver trustworthy intelligence at the fingertips, absolutely free of cost.

Admito is the result of the cumulative effort of 5 like- minded individuals, Manu Jain, Sahil Garg, Suprabhat Sen, Himanshu Mendiratta and Mukesh Kumar. According to the founders, Admito isn't an overnight dream, it is actually a result of cumulative frustration acquired during their own college selection process. Before getting into IMT Ghaziabad(where four of the founders have studied), they had to undergo a very stressful period of 8 months, where they were highly confused since the options were plenty but the decision that needed to be made was one.

MBA is one of the most important decisions of a person's life. It is a decision on which his whole life depends. Decisions from college application to be filled to selection the final college, a lot of other crucial decisions have to be made. College Selection is not just based on a single parameter, there are a plenty of things that need to be considered. Placements, Brand Value, Specialization, Location, Fee, Alumni Base, Entrepreneurship activity and many such parameters works simultaneously.

According to a survey done by Admito, 5 out of 8 students are not satisfied with their choice of MBA college. The startup aims to change this scenario by streamlining the entire admission process. x

Launched on 23rd Sept this year, the self-funded startup has already been receiving 10k monthly visits and has more than 700 users to its credit. With a current database of 50 college of MBA, Admito plans to achieve the target of 250 colleges by December this year and 1000 colleges by June next year. Admito is currently incubating in IMT Ghaziabad

Still confused about MBA, you know now where to head to.

IIM Graduates’ ChalkStreet Is Gamifying Learning Experience Of Online Courses

A Bangalore based startup has set out on its startup journey with a mission of making learning a habit. ChalkStreet boasts of being first India-centric marketplace for online courses.

The platform brings together unique and relevant content from Indian teachers. It aims to be a revolutionary platform for learning that encourages engagement with other learners and ensures continued interest of the learners.

Chalkstreet was envisioned as a solution to the problems for young learners across the country that were seen while scaling up FACE (previous successful venture of the two other co-founders). There were three key problems: 1. No relevant content targeted at Indian learners, 2. Affordability of good online courses and 3. High dropouts due to duration and lack of engagement online to sustain.

As a product, Chalkstreet solves this by bringing in high-quality content from Indian teachers. We have an in-house production team that helps authors shoot these videos as well as an internal course review team that maintains a high bar. Our courses are focused on specific topics and affordable. Our learning platform is social encouraging interaction between learners as well as using Gamification to motivate course completions and engagements.

ChalkStreet was founded by Tyagarajan S (CEO), Venkat V, Rajesh Kumar and Raj Karthik (CTO). All of them are IIM alumnus and have diverse experience across diverse fields. In fact, Venkat V, Rajesh Kumar and Raj Karthik have also co-founded another venture called FACE (Focus Academy for Career Enhancement ) together. FACE is associated with over 600+ educational institutions across India and has trained over 10,00,000+ students since inception.



ChalkStreet offers varied courses like popular programming and arts courses, to unique Indian centric courses like CSS, Tamil 101, 'Sanskrit','Learning Guitar,' and 'Aptitude for placements'. Further, the learners also have an option to learn courses in their favorite regional languages (Hindi, Tamil and Telugu supported currently).

The Bangalore based startup is currently bootstrapped from the successful venture of two co-founders (FACE). They plans to grow exponentially in the next one year with more funding support.

ChalkStreet is the only India-centric marketplace for online courses that aims to make learning a habit. The key USP of the startup is that it is offering relevant India-focused content and a unique learning experience (mobile app) through an engaging social platform with 'Gamification' of the experience.

The content on the platform (from hundreds of teachers across the country) is relevant to the Indian learner. We do this by enabling authors across India to teach both popular and unique topics. In addition to popular courses ranging from programming to arts, we have courses that are unique to India like ‘Tamil 101’, 'Sanskrit', 'Aptitude for placements', etc.

"More than 50% of the jobs in the country today did not exist 20 years ago. Yet we still have an education system whose teaching methodologies and curriculum remain largely unchanged for decades. Employed professionals seek out new avenues to up skill themselves or train themselves in specialized skills. In the last 2-3 years, more and more Indians have looked to the internet for more current and accessible learning. However there is a dire need for one that satisfy all these needs and be affordable", said Tyagarajan, co-founder & CEO of Chalkstreet.

"At ChalkStreet we plan to address these problems by making learning choice-based, relevant, affordable and accessible. The growing online access in the country offers us a great opportunity to enable access to learning through this medium. While the internet is a great place to learn on its own (as Idea Internet Network has so efficiently branded as their own making) it is difficult to find targeted, high-quality learning experiences today. We will start seeing a shift towards curated, high-quality learning content that addresses need-based learning", he added.

Chalkstreet claims to be the only online learning marketplace mobile app that offers an engaging social platform around learning with gamification and social networking elements built in to drive user engagement.

The startup plans to grow aggressively in the next 12 months with more funding support and confidently aims to be India's largest marketplace for online learning.

Kolkata Ed-Tech Startup Arch Is A Safer Networking Of Teachers, Students & Parents

The primitive years of a child are the foundation of what he/she will grow up to become in future. These are the years when they need extra attention, guidance and care to grow up to become a successful individual. In order to help parents and teachers achieve this for their children and students respectively, a Kolkata based startup has developed an app called Arch-The Way.

Arch is a safe and free way for teachers to connect with their students & parents on their smartphones. Not only will the teachers be able to maintain a constant contact with the students and their parents but they will also be able to share files and broadcasts messages to the entire class. Further, the students, teachers and parents will also be able to share feedbacks privately with each other.

With Arch, Teachers can broadcast messages & files to the entire class or receive feedback from the student parents privately. Some of the other feature of Arch are:

• Messaging: Teachers can send messages like major class updates homework reminder, exam updates, emergency messages etc to their students or parents. They can also send messages to individual Student/Parent for sensitive issues like fees reminders or complains.




• Files: Teachers have ability to send Images, audios, video, along with Ppt, Doc & Pdf up to 100 mb. This makes sharing study resources very easy for them.




• Future Scheduling: Teachers can plan their week ahead. All future updates will be sent automatically as scheduled.




• Feedback: Teachers can receive feedback privately from the students & parents & respond to them, if necessary, at their convenience

The app is based on the principle of simplicity, safety & privacy. Therefore in keeping line with this principle, parents/students and teachers aren't required to exchange phone numbers in order to connect on the app. Every teacher is assigned an unique class code to which the student/parents can subscribe via the app.

The app which is available on Android, Windows & iOS helps teachers to send major message updates regarding some important project work, assignments, class tests or emergency messages like extension of holidays and rescheduling of a major school event etc.

Arch-the way is a product of hard labour of Rudresh Chowdhary, Nikhil Bajoria, Soumya Malani, Abinash Biswal & Nitesh Agarwal. The comfortably bootstrapped startup isn't looking to raise funds for now as currently they just want to stay completely focused on their product.

"We cater to the problem of communication between teachers and their students or parents. There is a disconnect between them due to limited time and communication. We are trying to bridge the 'Gap' and increase the engagement. Our 'Feedback' feature actually helps an Educator to grow," said Rudresh Chowdhary, Arch.

Ed-Tech Startup TutrApp Wants To Democratize The Learning For Students In India

Social Media is the language of the new generation. They are practically 24x7 online, chatting with friends, browsing through websites and apps or playing their favourite hi-tech games. A Bangalore based startup called TutrApp understood this quality of the current generation and integrated it within their app in order to combine their two most important essentials, education and social media.

A strict follower of the philosophy “A mind is a terrible thing to waste but a beautiful thing to invest in," the startup aims to democratize the learning for students even in the most far flung of corners of India. Every child in India has a fundamental right to education and people at TutrApp believe that every child should not only have a right to education but every child should have a right to quality education.

TutrApp is basically a mobile application that helps school going children, aged between 12 and 17, engage in a one on one learning session with educators on chat. It is first educational app in the country that provides chat based live interaction and works on GPRS connection.

TutrApp essentially wants to change the entire concept of 'Tution Classes' by digitizing & democratizing it for all irrespective of their locations and economic status. As, not every one in developing country like India afford tution classes and even if they could there are demerits and pros. for a typical tution classes, such as - a student, while sitting in a typical brick-and-mortor class with bunch of other students might feel overshadowed by loud students or may feel hesitant asking questions or might not ask questions frequently because of language barriers or compulsion.

With TutrApp, however, any student can chat with tutors/experts in Hindi, English or Hinglish and the discussion will be confidential. Moreover, students using Tutrapp get more time to discuss their questions and doubts without worrying about time and enjoy noise free interaction. And above all, Free!.

TutrApp claims to be first educational app in India that provides chat based live interaction and works on GPRS connection also.

The app is currently available for Android and iOS devices.

This self funded startup aims to solve the queries and curiosity of students regarding a particular topic then and there by chatting with an educator rather than have to wait for an entire day to go to school the next day and solve it.

Founded by IIT-Varanasi (BHU) alumnus Abhishek Gupta, Manoj Kumar and Kumar Deepak, the startup wishes to help students even from the rural of the rural villages to get access to quality educators on their side. The startup also wishes to empower thousands and thousands of those girls and women who are educated but remain out of the ambit of formal workforce. It also acts as a platform for young adults to add to their incomes by answering queries of the children on the chat.

"we want to help students even from villages to get access to quality educators on other side, we wish to empower thousands of girls and women who are educated but remain out of the ambit of formal workforce. Beyond the gender diversity it becomes an open platform for young adults to augment their income by investing time in answering queries of children.," said co-founder Manoj Kumar.

The startup's future plans includes adding more classes and subjects in the coming months and enable educators to work from anywhere in the country. They will also provide career counselling services to students through their app very soon.