OYO and EdTech Startup PlanetSpark to Set up 500 'New Age' Learning Centres for Kids

OYO Hotels & Homes, South Asia’s largest, China’s second largest, the world’s third largest and fastest-growing chain of leased anind franchised hotels, homes & living spaces and PlanetSpark, an EdTech startup, have entered into a partnership to bring education closer to children.

Under this partnership, OYO is offering space in OYO Townhouse across the country to PlanetSpark to set up more than 500 ‘new age’ learning centres for children across India. Under the “Learn At Your Nearest OYO” model, these spaces will cater to all the learning needs of neighborhood children studying from KG to Standard 8. Funded by FIITJEE, India’s largest test prep company, PlanetSpark is on a mission to organize and standardize after-school education across the country. With 400 learning centers across all the 7 Indian metros currently, PlanetSpark plans to scale-up and fulfill the demand that is being generated on its Mobile App and other digital platforms.

OYO’s mission is to upgrade all forms of real estate and thereby provide quality living spaces to travelers around the world. Since its launch back in 2013, OYO Hotels & Homes has brought about a change in the budget hotel franchising and leasing segment, giving Indian consumers an opportunity to experience standardized hospitality at affordable prices. Through this initiative, OYO is taking a step forward in its mission by offering these quality spaces to promote education.

“Through our interactions with OYO team we realized that OYO too had plans to scale up their supply over the next few months. We, therefore, felt that instead of putting in our efforts separately, it will be beneficial to join hands to have a force multiplier. Also, we only wanted to partner with a trusted brand where parents can send their children without any safety concern" said Kunal Malik, Co-Founder of PlanetSpark.

On this partnership, Ankit Tandon, Chief Operating Officer, Operated Business, OYO Hotels & Homes said, “We are happy to partner with PlanetSpark and bring education closer to children by offering quality spaces. We hope that our standardized and appealing interiors and modern amenities along with the quality education offered by PlanetSpark make for a great learning atmosphere and experience for the students.” 

The PlanetSpark learning platform has a publicly available App, where parents discover gamified learning content loaded with thousands of learning games, cartoons, videos, quests, and quizzes. The gamified

content stack is customizable and can be adapted to student learning patterns. PlanetSpark plans to use learning centres housed in OYO Townhouse as “A Student can learn anything” model by taking the immersive education experience under the expert guidance of teachers in every corner of India. The learning spaces inside the OYO Townhouse will have appealing interior design, child-friendly furniture, PlanetSpark’s engaging content and certified tutors, thus creating a truly standardised experience.

PlanetSpark Co-Founder Maneesh Dhooper says, "In K8 space, an inspiring learning space in the neighborhood is a ‘must have’ for the parent and currently no organized player exists that solves for this need. The new initiative with OYO is already a big hit with the parents and we are witnessing a major spike in enrollments”.

Founded in 2016, Gurgaon-based PlanetSpark is the brainchild of Maneesh Dhooper and Kunal Malik

which connect parents and qualified tutors through a full stack platform. Drawing its inspiration from child cognitive psychology, and learning pedagogy, PlanetSpark is making students fall in love with academics in an engaging and gamified fashion. With over 300 experience centres, PlanetSpark is revolutionising the K8 tuitions by leveraging the hyper-casual games to help children learn. PlanetSpark is funded by FIITJEE, India’s largest test prep company.

EdTech Startup PlanetSpark Receives Seed Funding 1.6 Crore from FIITJEE

PlanetSpark, a Gurugram-based EdTech startup on a mission to make traditional tuitions obsolete through powerful and gamified learn-tech products and certified teachers in K8 segment, has been infused with funds worth INR 1.6 crore by FIITJEE, India’s leading education company.

The startup plans to use the infused funds to rapidly grow its existing 200+ home based tech-enabled tuition centers by 350% to 750+ centers across Delhi NCR and for developing products based on VR and other cutting-edge technology in the K8 education market.

“At its core, PlanetSpark is a tech company aiming to organize the unorganized market of tuitions in India through scalable tech solutions. We firmly believe that the era of boring tuitions is over and the vast and unorganized tuitions market is ripe for getting organized through full stack tutoring model, following the trend in other markets like transportation, logistics, food delivery or ecommerce. Parents don’t want to send their children to unverified and uncertified tuition teachers any more and they are ready to prefer a professional brand which brings game-based learning models, instructional content, and technological backing and mobile apps," stated Kunal Malik, Co-founder, PlanetSpark.

With a 'Blended Learning' approach to teaching school subjects) to preteens, the startup combines Face to face Classroom learning and tech-based learning. The company develops gamified learning content such as mobile based learning games, educational cartoons, learning activity boxes, workbooks and board games and partners with qualified homemakers and helps them start their home based tech enabled tuition centers using PlanetSpark’s gamified teaching content, technology and training.

“We are clear that the future of early and primary education lies in a Blended Approach to learning where one combines face-to-face teaching with technology. It is a known fact that purely online “learning apps” don’t work as one cannot eliminate the human element of a teacher, especially for younger kids. At the same time, just face to face learning models are neither scalable nor make the learning process fun and gamified using Tech. Hence the sweet spot lies in Blended Learning,” said Maneesh Dhooper, Co-founder, PlanetSpark.

In order to create highly engaging games and learning cartoons for children, the company’s game development team has designed two product innovations that can create a learning game or a learning cartoon within a few hours. This would help the company exponentially scale its content offerings to more subjects and classes in the coming months.

Commenting on the development, Mr. D. K. Goel, Chairman Emeritus Fiitjee Group, said, "The home based blended learning model of Planet Spark is poised to empower teachers, students and parents in the learning process."

The team is now gearing-up for the release of its learning tablet which has been developed as a series of story-based learning adventures designed by Russian game design experts. The company plans to scale-up to 5 more cities in the next academic year to spread the joy of learning pan-India!
out Planet Spark-

PlanetSpark is making traditional tuitions obsolete through powerful and gamified learn-tech products and certified teachers. It partners with qualified and smart homemakers and opens tech-enabled tuition centres from their homes. It follows a blended learning approach of a combination of classroom teaching with gamified online learning. It offers a complete spectrum of learning products such as mobile based learning games, educational cartoons, learning activity boxes, workbooks and board games, especially designed for younger children. PlanetSpark was founded by Kunal Malik and Maneesh Dhooper, alumni of XLRI Jamshedpur with experience in global organizations such as Unilever, Novartis Switzerland and startups such as UrbanClap.

FIITJEE was created in 1992 by Mr. D. K. Goel, a Mechanical Engineering Graduate from IIT Delhi, with a vision to provide an ideal launch pad for serious JEE aspirants. Along the way to realization of this vision, FIITJEE went beyond merely coaching for IIT-JEE and actually started to make a difference in the way students think and approach problems. It was the urge, the compelling desire, to always aspire for perfection and in the process, continuously keep on setting newer benchmarks of excellence, which enabled FIITJEE to achieve what they have achieved.