Vedantu to Take Majority Stake in Deeksha for $40 Mn

Deeksha is one of the leading K-12 test prep players in Karnataka and this strategic partnership will further Vedantu’s hybrid strategy

Vedantu, a pioneer in LIVE online learning in India, today, announced that they have bought a majority stake in Deeksha (Ace Creative Learning Pvt. Ltd) - a leading test preparation platform in Karnataka for board and competitive exam coaching for students of grade 11th and 12th. With majority stake in the strategic investment, this partnership has been closed at a deal size of $40 million. Since 1998, Deeksha has created over 65,000 success stories through its 39 centers, across 3 states. This partnership seeks to leverage Vedantu`s technology and integrate it into offline centers to create a scalable hybrid model which provides access to quality teaching even in remote Tier 3 and Tier 4 towns at affordable cost.

This initiative will further support Deeksha’s pioneered learning model that specializes in competitive exam prep in sync with board exam prep through collaboration with schools and colleges. Leveraging Vedantu’s industry-best online learning innovation and Deeksha’s massive offline footprint, both partners envision digitizing classrooms in Tier 3 and Tier 4 cities where quality education is not accessible and bring forth immersive learning experiences to students. Together Vedantu and Deeksha will revolutionize the way education is imparted, improve the quality of the learning system as a whole, and help students to achieve their true potential with outstanding learning outcomes.

Vamsi Krishna, CEO, and Co-Founder, Vedantu said, "At Vedantu, we have always been committed to make quality education accessible and affordable to students from all corners of the country. With this acquisition, our mission is to empower and scale Deeksha’s current learning model by deploying our disruptive in-house hybrid technology to reach the masses in remote areas and create impact at scale. This culmination of online and offline capabilities will help us expand our hybrid learning initiatives. We endeavor to change India’s learning curve through definitive outcomes at the back of our strong passion for delivering quality learning. This impact will be possible because of the shared vision, mission, values, and culture of our two organizations.”

Dr. Sridhar, Co-Founder, Deeksha said, “Deeksha has always believed in Nurturing Success of Every Child through a Triple Integration Model that amalgamates Wellness, Academics and Technology. Through this partnership, we will leverage Vedantu’s LIVE Class platform for our students and provide a hybrid solution that maximizes learning outcomes through personalized learning algorithms. Vedantu’s hybrid learning model will also enable us to provide the same “Deeksha Experience” to millions of students in smaller towns and cities at an affordable cost.”

With this strategic investment, Deeksha will bring in close to 13K of its students to Vedantu's platform. In addition, Deeksha will leverage Vedantu's already existing strong credentials in LIVE Classes, educational technology, and strong pedagogical content.

About Vedantu:

Vedantu is a pioneer in LIVE online learning in India. It offers individual and group classes across K-12 and test preparation segments. Students can take individual or group classes on its APP or website online. Classes are delivered in a LIVE Real-time, interactive ONLINE learning environment. Students & parents can access free content, LIVE masterclasses across subjects, micro-courses, and daily assessments. 1 million+ students attend LIVE classes every month on the platform and more than 35 million users every month from 10,000+ cities and 50+ countries access free content, tests, doubts, videos on Vedantu's platform, and its channels on YouTube. Vedantu has recently been awarded the Best Edtech Company under Education Innovation Awards by Entrepreneur India, Best Customer Excellence Award organized by Quantic and Best Teacher Training Company of the year hosted by Corporate Vision. Vedantu has also been included in the GSV EdTech 150 for 2022, a globally coveted list that recognizes the most transformative companies leading to growth in the EdTech space. To know more about Vedantu log on to https://www.vedantu.com or download the application on your Android or iOS devices.

Vedantu Partners With Canva to Unleash Creativity in Students

Launches #GoingBackToSchool, a design challenge open to all students from 6 to 18 years old

With schools being shut, students have explored different ways to keep their creative juices flowing and used the available resources in order to stay engaged, inspired, and motivated. As part of its Children Day initiative, Vedantu- a pioneer in LIVE online learning has partnered with visual communications platform Canva, to launch a first-of-its-kind Design Challenge in India, with a design bootcamp to educate school students on the essentials of creativity and design thinking. The design bootcamp sessions will be conducted by experts from Canva and Vedantu Master Teachers. With this collaboration, Vedantu and Canva aspire to celebrate the creativity, curiosity and exploration of children and teachers across the country.

Since the pandemic, LIVE online learning has seen massive adoption. Teachers have also gone above and beyond their duty to conduct classes through different mediums available. They have emerged as digital content creators and EdTech professionals who are experts in mentoring students in an online teaching space.

“We strive to provide the best-in-class education and opportunities to our students that are beyond academics. Through this partnership with Canva, we will further our vision of unleashing the potential in every child. This will enable us to provide our students access to a platform to fuel their creative minds and we are thrilled to explore this. We will continue to innovate to reach as many students as possible and create better experiences and outcomes for every child across the country”, says Pulkit Jain, Co-founder & Head of new initiatives, Vedantu.

“We’re excited to partner with Vedantu to inspire creativity, design, and visual thinking in students across a range of ages. Our mission is to democratise design and empower everyone to create and we look forward to seeing the Design Challenge unlock all types of creativity,” says Zach Kitschke, CMO, Canva.

The theme for the first edition of the Design Challenge is #GoingBackToSchool and is open to all students across the age group of 6-18 years. The challenge will ask students to create artwork on Canva that truly resonates with the theme. Students are required to submit a design which focuses on what is so special about #GoingBackToSchool for them, with the templates available on Canva for Education.

The artwork created by students will be judged in three categories -

1. Group 1: Junior School (Grades 2nd- 5th) - students to create a poster or invite
2. Group 2: Middle School (Grades 6th-8th) - students to create an infographic or a newsletter
3. Group 3: High School (Grades 9th-12th) - students to create a video or presentation

Competition Schedule to keep in mind:

Date	Activity
14th November	Registrations & submissions open
14 - 26th November	Registrations for Vedantu Masterclass
27th November	Commencement of Vedantu Masterclass on Creativity and Digital Art: Grades 2-5 - https://vdnt.in/superschool37 Grades 6-8 - https://vdnt.in/superschool38 Grades 9-12 - https://vdnt.in/superschool39
30th November	Deadline for Design Challenge submission
10th December	Announcement of winners

*Students under the age of 13 years must have their entries submitted by a teacher or a parent.

How can students participate in the Design Challenge?

• Students can visit Canva.com and create an account using their own or their parent's email address
• Choose from the multiple templates available for Posters, Infographics, Presentations, Cards, , and other suggested formats.
• Create their artwork on the theme #GoingBackToSchool
• If a student is under 13 years, we encourage them to share their Canva design link with a teacher or parent, and ask them to submit the design. Students 13 years and above can directly submit their design link in the Application Form.
• Students are reminded to write a few lines about their artwork, what it means to them and how it links back to the theme.

For further information, please click- https://www.canva.com/competitions/india-creativity-challenge/

About Vedantu:

Vedantu, a pioneer in LIVE online learning in India. It offers individual and group classes across K-12 and test preparation segments. Students can take individual or group classes on its APP or website online. Classes are delivered in a LIVE Real-time, interactive ONLINE learning environment. Students & parents can access free content, LIVE masterclasses across subjects, micro-courses, and daily assessments. 1 million+ students attend LIVE classes every month on the platform and more than 35 million users every month from 10,000+ cities and 50+ countries access free content, tests, doubts, videos on Vedantu's platform, and its channels on YouTube. To know more about Vedantu log on to https://www.vedantu.com or download the application on your Android or iOS devices.

About Canva:

Launched in 2013, Canva is a free online visual communications and collaboration platform with a mission to empower everyone in the world to design. Featuring a simple drag-and-drop user interface and a vast range of templates ranging from presentations, social media graphics, posters, apparel to videos, plus a huge library of fonts, stock photography, illustrations, video footage, and audio clips, anyone can take an idea and create something beautiful. Canva is available on desktop, web, iOS, and Android.

Vedantu, the Pioneer in Live Online Tutoring, Announces $100 Mn Series E Funding at $1 Bn Valuation

Vedantu Founders

Vedantu, the pioneer in LIVE online tutoring, announces US$100 million in their Series E round, led by Singapore based impact investing fund ABC World Asia. The round also saw strong participation from existing investors – Coatue, Tiger Global, GGV Capital, Westbridge among others. With this round of funding, Vedantu’s valuation is at US$1 billion, and it underlines its status as the largest K-12 LIVE online tutoring company in India.

Challenging the status quo in India’s K-12 tutoring space, Vedantu was the first company to offer LIVE online classes in 2014 and is credited with creating the category. It has continued to be a pioneer in the space with several first-time innovations that include WAVE, its proprietary LIVE teaching platform, and the 2-teacher model. Both these innovations are playing a big role in improving student outcomes for the company. Some of the company's innovations have been granted patents in the US. Company looks to continue to innovate further on the LIVE teaching format and penetrate deeper in the K-12 segment by reaching more students. The funds will be primarily used to strengthen product engineering functions as well as expanding into newer categories through both organic and inorganic routes.

Today, Vedantu offers tutoring courses to young students from 3 years old to 18 years old, as well as preparation for competitive exams such as IIT-JEE, NEET, Commerce, CBSE, ICSE, and state exams such as Maharashtra boards. Through its newest offering and fastest growing vertical, SuperKids, it offers extracurricular classes like English Speaking, Reading, and Coding.

Vamsi Krishna, CEO, and Co-Founder, Vedantu said, "Back in 2014, when we held our first LIVE class, nobody believed this would work. It is super satisfying to see this format becoming mainstream and Vedantu leading the way in innovative online delivery experiences. Our vision is simple: Unleash the potential in every child. We will continue to innovate to reach as many students as possible and create 10x better experiences and outcomes for every child at Vedantu. Even though we have made quality teaching affordable and enabled it to reach masses since our inception, it's still very early, much more transformation is still to come which we wish to drive forth. Fundamentally, I believe education has a long cycle, and changes take time to manifest. Seeing any significant change requires patience and the tenacity to sustain long term. With that in mind, we want to create a company that outlasts our lives and continues to innovate for decades to come."

Sugandhi Matta, Chief Impact Officer, ABC World Asia, said, “Vedantu embodies our investment themes of providing better access to quality education and using digital technology to improve lives and livelihoods. In India, online education has the potential to extend the scope of ‘Right to Education’ to students in the underserved community and capture the ‘Next Half Billion’ income group, representing over half of the country’s student population. With EdTech experiencing meteoric growth in India, Vedantu as the pioneer and category creator in LIVE online tutoring is driving the tectonic shift towards online learning. Vedantu's innovative platform empowers teachers who have delivered excellent results to offer personalized education to many students at once, creating the potential for impact at scale. We are pleased to partner with Vamsi and the Vedantu team as they continue to scale and shape learning outcomes for students in India.”

Vedantu is the leader in K-12 LIVE tutoring space. Each month, over 35 million users’ access Vedantu through its app and web for free. Its YouTube channel gets 65 million views, the highest in the K-12 segment for any educational company in India. Students also access Vedantu through its dedicated Channels on Airtel TV and TATA Sky. Vedantu catered to over 200,000 paying students last year, a 300% growth over the previous year. This growth was accompanied by a revenue increase of 4.5x over the previous year, making it the fastest growing online education company in this space and the overall second-largest company in K-12 in terms of revenue and number of students.

Vedantu continues its run of successes by joining the $1 bn club with this latest round which will close over the next few weeks, with more investors joining in subsequent tranches. The Rainmaker Group acted as the exclusive financial advisor to Vedantu on their fundraising.

About Vedantu:

Vedantu, a pioneer in LIVE online learning in India. It offers individual and group classes across K-12 and test preparation segments. Students can take individual or group classes on its APP or website online. Classes are delivered in a LIVE Real-time, interactive ONLINE learning environment. Students & parents can access free content, LIVE masterclasses across subjects, micro-courses, and daily assessments. 1 million+ students attend LIVE classes every month on the platform and more than 35 million users every month from 10,000+ cities and 50+ countries access free content, tests, doubts, videos on Vedantu's platform, and its channels on YouTube. To know more about Vedantu log on to https://www.vedantu.com or download the application on your Android or iOS devices.

About ABC World Asia:

ABC World Asia is a Singapore-headquartered and Asia-focused private equity fund dedicated to impact investing. We invest in companies that drive positive change by addressing the world’s most pressing challenges such as climate change, resource scarcity, and deepening inequality. Our investment themes include financial and digital inclusion, better health and education, climate and water solutions, sustainable food and agriculture, and smart and liveable cities.

We believe that investing with an impact lens demonstrates the positive power of private capital and can help to foster more innovative and resilient companies that deliver societal and environmental benefits. We are a disciplined investor with a rigorous and evidence-based impact assessment approach that aims to generate positive and measurable social or environmental outcomes, alongside a compelling risk-adjusted return for our investors.

Our investment themes are aligned with the ABC Framework for an Active Economy, a Beautiful Society, and a Clean Earth. The ABC Framework was established by Singapore investment company Temasek and builds on the ideals of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals set by the United Nations.

Our inaugural S$405 million fund includes investors such as Temasek Trust, Temasek, Pavilion Capital, Mapletree Investments, Seatown Holdings, Sembcorp Industries, and Singapore Power.

Vedantu Invests in Pedagogy, India’s Largest Interactive Digital Books Platform for Competitive Exams in India

To acquire majority stake in the company and will continue investing in Pedagogy in the future

India, 15th July 2021: Vedantu, a pioneer in LIVE online learning, today announced a strategic investment in Pedagogy, an AI-enabled personalized learning platform that provides online courses and interactive digital books for students preparing for competitive examinations. Pedagogy works on a subscription-based model to provide trusted content to its students, from India’s best publishers and content creators. Pedagogy transforms physical books into interactive content and students can access books, courses, practice questions and tests on the go through Pedagogy App and Web platforms. Through this strategic partnership, Vedantu intends to make Pedagogy’s unique product accessible to Vedantu’s 30 mn+ students at an affordable price.

Vamsi Krishna, CEO & Co-founder, Vedantu said, "In line with Vedantu's core mission of ensuring the best learning outcomes for our students, this partnership will provide our students with access to the best, highly interactive books & courses. Pedagogy has tremendous potential and aligns with our vision of making quality learning accessible & affordable to all students across the country. Delivery and distribution are two significant areas of investment for us, and we will continue to look for inorganic acquisitions or investment opportunities in these areas."

Founded by Archin Shah in 2016, Pedagogy is transforming the way students purchase and access books and courses while preparing for engineering, medical and other entrance exams. It offers a Netflix-like subscription allowing its users access to popular books and digital courses from leading publishers and coaching centers across the country and help aspirants ace their entrance examinations.

“We are pleased to have Vedantu as a strategic partner. We share the same core vision and our deep ties with Vedantu will ensure students around the world get access to high quality content at an affordable price. This is a huge win for students on Vedantu, Pedagogy and our Partners. It will also help battle piracy and help propagate consumption of official content. This is the first step in creating a legitimate and new age distribution network. Pedagogy aims to be the largest platform to access digital books and is targeting onboard content creators across multiple segments.” said Archin Shah, Founder & CEO, Pedagogy.

With this investment, Vedantu will further strengthen its personalized learning experience for its students. Content consumption using trusted books is an integral part of every student’s academic journey and Pedagogy will help Vedantu disrupt this space.

Students can purchase a single subscription to get access to a range of preparatory books and courses for their exam along with a personalized study and a practice platform. Giving priority to engineering and medical exams, Pedagogy allows aspirants to consume content from more than 175 popular books & courses available for JEE and NEET at an affordable price.

About Vedantu:

Vedantu, a pioneer in LIVE online learning in India. It offers individual and group classes across K-12 and test preparation segments. Students can take individual or group classes on its APP or website online. Classes are delivered in a LIVE Real-time, interactive ONLINE learning environment. Students & parents can access free content, LIVE masterclasses across subjects, micro-courses, and daily assessments. 150,000 students study LIVE every month on the platform and more than 40 million users every month from 1000+ cities and 40+ countries access free content, tests, doubts, videos on Vedantu’s platform and its channels on YouTube. To know more about Vedantu log on to https://www.vedantu.com or download the Application on your Android or iOS devices.

About Pedagogy

Pedagogy enables students to access content from the most trusted and popular sources at an affordable rate. The vision is to build a Spotify for education where content creators are able to get their content consumed in a legal and official way and consumers get to choose their content. Pedagogy has built technology that will enable them to serve the right content to the students at the right time. To Know more about Pedagogy, log on to https://www.pedagogy.study/home

TikTok ties with Vedantu, Vidya Guru, other Indian eLearning Platforms to Encourage Digital Learning

TikTok, the world's leading short video platform, has partnered with key educational technology companies - Vedantu, Vidya Guru, Hello English, CETKing and Testbook in an effort to encourage subject focussed content creation and learning as part of its ongoing knowledge based campaign #EduTok. The aim of the partnership is to give over 200 million TikTok users an opportunity to learn and grow as individuals by partnering with industry leaders to create educational content in various formats and languages.

As part of the partnership, the EdTech companies have joined the platform and are creating content videos on various subjects that can enable personalized learning for TikTok users. Apart from subjects such as Social Sciences, English, Mathematics, Hindi, Biology, Chemistry, the online learning platforms are also creating videos that will share information about Current Affairs, Vocabulary and post-graduate programs such as MBA, under #EduTok.

Sachin Sharma, Director, Sales and Partnerships, TikTok India said, “Digital evolution and the boom in smartphone adoption is redefining the learning patterns of the digital community at large. With these partnerships, we are building an education ecosystem that gives learners the opportunities to thrive in their respective careers and subjects and help solve their challenges with ease, while using a platform that they love. We are very happy to have established education partners joining us in our mission, and we look forward to seeing our audience benefit from the content.”

Anand Prakash, Co-Founder, Vedantu said, “At Vedantu, we aim to bridge the gap and ensure quality education across rural and urban India is available, resulting in equal opportunity. Collaborating with TikTok has supplemented our mission as it allows us to reach the farthest corners in India and share knowledge and information with users from Tier 2 and 3 cities, while making learning fun and engaging. Campaigns such as #EduTok equip us with additional tools to significantly increase the quality of learning experience and provide access to education across the country.”

Sonia Grover Kalra, Director, Vidya Guru Institute said, “Technological innovation in Education has allowed us to scale individualized learning to an effective level. We at Vidya Guru are always looking out for innovative models that allow us to deliver subject knowledge in interesting formats. TikTok empowers us to do so and we are thrilled to be a part of its #EduTok campaign that is inspiring, engaging, and motivating the student community.”

Jinisha Jain, Business Development-Strategic Partnerships Manager, Hello English said, “TikTok with its campaigns has brought forward innovative methods to teach as well as consume educational content. We have seen phenomenal user appetite with individuals coming forward and showing enthusiasm to learn different languages. #EduTok is playing the role of empowering individuals; creators for sharing their knowledge and building an identity while individuals being encouraged to never give up the quest for learning. Partnering with TikTok has enabled us to contribute to the larger purpose of building the knowledge economy of the country.”

#EduTok is an effort to further highlight TikTok’s commitment to propel India’s creative economy and its contribution in the lives of digital natives. The videos created as part of the campaign, which has garnered over 37 billion views, showcases the spirit of TikTok creators and partners who use the platform to bring a change in the society by sharing their knowledge with the larger community.

Asia's 1st Blockchain Digital Commercial Paper Issuance by Yes Bank, Vedanta and MonetaGo

Financial technology solutions provider MonetaGo has today announced that a commercial paper has been digitally issued in Asia for the first time using blockchain technology. MonetaGo completed this transaction through a partnership with banking services provided by YES Bank and the issuer Vedanta, a natural resources conglomerate.

India’s highly-regulated commercial paper market involves huge amount of paperwork to be prepared by the Issuer for every transaction.

Issuances are on the increase as more businesses manage their short term cash needs through this products however absence of a streamlined digital process makes this entire process cumbersome resulting in many man hours being wasted.

The transaction was delivered using Corda Enterprise technology from R3, along with a robust set of standardized workflows to deliver a solution that will rapidly scale across markets and geographies.

MonetaGo moved to Corda Enterprise in February 2019, joining R3’s growing ecosystem of over 300 diverse companies utilising Corda to build applications for a range of uses across different industries.

Speaking on the implementation, Asit Oberoi, Senior Group President and Global Head Transaction Banking Group and Chief Experience Officer, YES BANK, said,” YES BANK is proud to implement Asia’s first Commercial Paper issuance over Blockchain technology for the Vedanta Limited. This solution is a yet another milestone in YES BANK’s endeavor to remain ahead of the innovation curve & enhance end client experience. Apart from reducing operational risk and costs, this technology solution lays the foundation for a more transparent and efficient process to cater to India’s growing Commercial Paper market.”

GR Arun Kumar, Group CFO, Vedanta, notes that “Vedanta will benefit from the digitized and simplified workflow which shortens the laborious process running into hours to just few minutes and complete transparency that this platform offers to all stakeholders.”

MonetaGo CEO Jesse Chenard, said: “This is a real milestone for our company, for the technology, and for the Indian Banking Community.”

“We’ve been working with YES BANK and Vedanta very closely and have been continuously impressed with their ability to leverage technology to bring about large scale change. These are big corporations with the ability to move like start-ups, something very rare indeed especially when dealing with a market this size.”

David E. Rutter, CEO of R3, comments: “The issuance of these instruments is a complex process and current models have long been recognized as being inefficient. Enabling parties to collaborate and maintain accurate shared records of the underlying agreements is precisely what Corda is great at doing. This marks a big step forward for the industry and demonstrates clear advantages of over existing processes.”

MonetaGo provides enterprise solutions for financial operations. The MonetaGo product suite is compliant with existing regulations and designed to improve the efficiency and security of financial products.

Built to support multiple technologies and interoperate seamlessly with existing financial infrastructure, institutions can integrate MonetaGo's products with minimal disruption and cost. MonetaGo is involved in a number of distributed ledger technology consortia and alliances including the R3 Partnership Network and the Hyperledger project.

Vedantu launches India's 1st Online LIVE Interactive Learning Platform 'WAVE'

Vedantu, a pioneer in LIVE interactive online tutoring is helping India take new strides through the launch of an exciting new initiative in the e-learning space – WAVE (a revolutionary new LIVE learning platform).

This platform has been created after years of deep research and experimentation in the field of LIVE Online Teaching and Learning. WAVE uses AI (Artificial Intelligence) and ML (Machine Learning) to personalize teaching and learning for each child and is designed to make LIVE classes extremely engaging and fun. A major challenge with online education is the low completion rate, globally, owing to less engaging content. Vedantu focuses on LIVE interactive classes specifically to solve this challenge and make classes extremely interactive and engaging for students. As a result, Vedantu’s engagement rate is one of the highest in the industry.

[caption id="attachment_131311" align="aligncenter" width="410"] Left to Right Pulkit Jain, Co-Founder and Head Product, Vedantu & Vamsi Krishna, CEO & Co-Founder, Vedantu[/caption]

Commenting on the launch, Vamsi Krishna, CEO & Co-Founder, Vedantu said, “This development is an important milestone for Vedantu and the shift towards online, LIVE tutoring. For the first time, we can mathematically measure the effectiveness of each teaching-learning engagement and the level of improvement in learning outcomes. We believe this is our biggest differentiator and will help us teach at scale with highest predictability and effectiveness."

Following are the features of WAVE LIVE Platform that enhance student interactions and take them to a new level:

1. It enables Teachers to run Live Quizzes in a gamified manner. Live Leaderboard based on students’ attempt, pushes them to do better.



2. The innovation, HotSpot makes concept teaching also extremely interactive. Using the HotSpot feature, a Teacher can make any part of the teaching screen clickable for students and thereby capture their feedback and response during the concept teaching process.




3. The biggest difference between a recorded video and a LIVE real time class is a student's ability to interact and ask doubts. WAVE enables multiple Teacher Assistants (TAs) to be LIVE in a class to support the Main Teacher in answering students’ doubts - they all teach as a team. A first of its kind Teacher Assistant’s Live Doubt Resolution Concept in LIVE classes has been developed. Selective doubts are pushed to the Main Teacher, which are broadcasted to the entire class and discussed.




4. WAVE enables all this data to be captured and insights are shown to the Teacher. Basis the insights, a Teacher can go back to a concept and do it more thoroughly or give a few more examples to the class, if he/she finds that students didn't understand a concept correctly in the Quiz. All these features of the platform make teaching more effective.

At the heart of WAVE LIVE Platform are algorithms for which Vedantu has been granted an extremely powerful and comprehensive IP Patent in the US. With the power of Vedantu’s patented algorithms, one can precisely measure how engaged a child was during the learning process in a LIVE Class (Engagement Score) as well as the learning outcome. This also measures Teaching Effectiveness and generates an automated Teaching Effectiveness Score after every Live Class, thereby identifying areas of improvement,” said Pulkit Jain, Co-Founder and Head Product, Vedantu.

Vedantu’s new LIVE Platform is built on the paradigm of capturing deep learning patterns of each individual student. It captures every click and interaction of each student in a LIVE Class - including facial emotions. It also records Teacher side data including tone/pitch analysis of a Teacher’s voice, handwriting analysis, amongst multiple parameters. In total, 70+ parameters in a LIVE Class are captured.

This data is converted into actionable insights through Vedantu’s patented algorithms and custom-built AI/ML models. It measures the engagement level of each student at different points in the class and his/her learning outcomes. It also measures the effectiveness of content and teaching - making the entire teaching-learning engagement as well as content, measurable.

The name Vedantu is formed by two Sanskrit words Veda (Knowledge) + Tantu (Network), signifying a 'Knowledge Network' where any student can tap into and learn from a Teacher, anytime-anywhere. Vedantu was formed by Vamsi Krishna, Anand Prakash and Pulkit Jain after their first venture- Lakshya (formed in 2006), which was later acquired by MT Educare in 2012. Vedantu believes that one size doesn't fit all and has more than 500 Teachers who have personalised learning to 40,000+ students spanning 1 Million hours, spread across 1000+ cities from 30+ countries.

E-Learning Startup Vedantu Raises $5 Mn from China's TAL Education Group

Bengaluru-based e-learning startup Vedantu, a platform for online and live one-on-one tutoring, has raised $5 million from China-based TAL Education Group, an education and technology enterprise based out of Beijing.

The latest funding is part of $11-million round that Vedantu raised last November in a Series B funding, which was led by Omidyar Network and Accel Partners.

According to IndianWeb2 estimates, Vedantu has so far raised a total of about $16 million in funding over four rounds. Besides Omidyar and Accel, New York-based Tiger Global Management is also investor in the startup and has contributed in Vedantu's Series A round.

Luo Rong, chief financial officer, TAL Education Group,said, "India is a huge market and we are excited about its potential. In a market like China where the distribution of educational resources is uneven among urban and rural areas."

Notably, Vedantu is the first Indian education company that TAL has chosen to invest in. The group spent a lot of time analysing the Indian ed-tech companies, and decided to back Vedantu because of the founders' background, their obsession with learning outcomes and singular vision to provide full-stack service to students, which include live interactive classes.

Foounded in 2011, by IIT alumni - Vamsi Krishna, Saurabh Saxena, Pulkit Jain and Anand Prakash, Vedantu is a live online tutoring platform that enables personalized learning using technology to bring together teachers and students on a single platform to enable live learning between them.

Vedantu has technology tools which enables teachers to provide LIVE teaching to students in an interactive manner using whiteboard, audio and video technology. The company is very focused on technology and has created in-house product which is very optimized for low bandwidth conditions.

On Vedantu student can select from a huge pool of quality teachers. Vedantu has technology tools which enables teachers to provide LIVE teaching to students in an interactive manner using whiteboard, audio and video technology. The company is very focused on technology and has created in-house product which is very optimized for low bandwidth conditions.

These four co-founders have an extremely deep domain expertise in education. They did their first venture in education, Lakshya, in 2006 which later got acquired by a listed company called MT Educare (Mahesh Tutorials) in 2012. As part of Lakshya the founders taught and mentored more than 10,000 students and trained more than 200 teachers between them.

Vedantu's live tutoring patform is being used by 70,000 students in the past 10 months and these students are from both India and abroad from over 15 countries.

Vedantu, which has about 500 teachers, said the top salary of a tutor goes up to Rs 60 lakh-Rs 80 lakh per annum. With more than 1 million hours of live learning that has happened on the platform, Vedantu said it had been granted a comprehensive patent in the US in the field of live online teaching-learning.

About TAL Education Group (formerly known as Xueersi), it is a leading education and technology enterprise in China, with core business in K-12, English learning and STEAM. Started off as an after-school tutoring services provider in China, TAL group is now the largest public listed education company by market cap in the world.

The group operates jzb.com, an online education platform that serves as a gateway for online courses offered through xueersi.com; and other Websites for specific topics and offerings, such as college entrance examinations, high school entrance examinations, graduate school entrance examinations, preschool education, and raising infants and toddlers, as well as mathematics, English, and Chinese composition.

TAL group also provides educational content through mobile applications like the Mama Bang app, an online platform focusing on children, baby, and maternity market; and provides consulting services for overseas studies under the Shunshun Liuxue name.

Source - Business Standrard

[Top Image - EdTechReview.in]

E-Learning Startup Vedantu Raises $11 Mn from Omidyar Network and Accel

Bangalore-based e-learning Vedantu has raised $11 million in a Series B funding round led by Silicon Valley impact investment firm Omidyar Network and also contributed by its existing investor Accel Partners, announced Vamsi Krishna, CEO & co-founder of Vedantu, in an interview to LiveMint.

The freshly raised funds will be used the startup for technology expansion and deeper penetration in tier 2 and 3 cities.

Founded in 2011, by four friends from Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) -- Vamsi Krishna, Pulkit Jain, Saurabh Saxena and Anand Prakash, Vedantu is a live online tutoring platform that enables personalized learningby using technology to bring together teachers and students on a single platform to enable live learning between them.

The startup had raised its first round of funding after six months of current operational format. It then raised $5 million from Accel Partners and Tiger Global Management in its Series A funding in May 2015.

TDerived from two Sanskrit words Veda (Knowledge) + Tantu (Network), Vedantu signifies a 'Knowledge Network'​ where any student can tap into a teacher of his choice directly and the learning can happen, anytime-anywhere. Vedantu has an online portal, where teachers tutor students in group and one-on-one sessions. An hour’s group session costs Rs 50-150 and a private session costs Rs300-600. “Our group sessions are doing very well in tier 2 and tier 3 cities. That is why a major amount of this funding will go into expanding in that market,” said Krishna.

The technological development will aim to make the sessions more personalized. The platform will track aspects like a student’s attention span and concept understanding using machine learning, facial recognition and others.

Prior to launching Vedantu, the co-founders previously co-founded Lakshya, a test preparation coaching company, in 2006 which later got acquired by MT Educare (Mahesh Tutorials) in 2012. As part of Lakshya the founders taught and mentored more than 10,000 students and trained more than 200 teachers between them.

Currently tutoring students from 6th to 12th grade, Vedantu plans to enter into exams categories like GMAT and GRE. The Vedantu app is operational in 80 cities including Bengaluru, Mumbai and Delhi with students from 36 countries and 1,200 cities.

The online education sector in India is estimated to grow at a compounded annual growth rate (CAGR) of 52% to $1.96 billion by 2021, according a joint study by Google and KPMG.

Vedantu competes with online education startups including Byjus, Unacademy , Meritnation, Cuemath and Toppr, among others.

In May this year, Omidyar Network had announced six new investments in the first four months of 2018 -- Doubtnut, Pratilipi, Healofy, Vedantu, Kaleidofin, and Affordplan–all of which align with the firm’s goal of supporting entrepreneurs that serve the Next Half Billion.

Founded by eBay founder Pierre Omidyar and his wife, Omidyar Network has recently announced about its plan to invest close to $250 million in Indian startup ventures and organizations over the next 4-5 years.

[Top Image - Vedantu co-founders | Credit - officechai.com]