In the last decade of the 21st century, we have observed different innovative technologies and new trends. Because of the continuous technological advancements, people even call the 21st century an era of technology. The Internet has brought a revolution about how we perceive things lately. All the sectors like health, travel, commerce, hospitality, etc have changed their operation styles after adopting new technologies.
One of the sectors where the latest technology has played a vital role in education. Online education is no more a dream for India. The Government of India is also currently working on a policy that describes the role of online learning in reforming the Indian education system.
To utilize the high demand for online learning, so many EdTech startups have been founded by technology enthusiast people. One of such startups that have grown exponentially is Vedantu.
About Vedantu
Vedantu, an online tutoring learning platform, was founded in 2011 by 4 IITians Vamsi Krishna (co-founder, CEO), Saurabh Saxena, Pulkit Jain (co-founder, head of product), and Anand Prakash (co-founder, head of academics).
Name Vedantu is a combination of Ved and Tantu. Ved means Knowledge and Tantu means Network. It is a Bangalore based ed-tech startup that provides live online interactive sessions for classes 6-12.
Traditional to Interactive Teaching-Learning Approach
In 2005, after graduating from IIT, Vamsi with his 3 friends Saurabh, Pulkit, and Anand left for Barnala, a small town in Punjab, and started an education start-up Lakshya. They prepared students for IIT exams. They also trained teachers for recruitment in Lakshya.
After initial success, they opened Lakshya branches in different places. They were quite happy with the results of Lakshya. Standardized contents and a proper pedagogy system were implemented in Lakshya to maintain the quality for better results.
But after a few years, they found that students started losing interest in teaching, and teachers’ creativity as well started degrading. Team Lakshya observed that after putting standardized academic systems and processes, things started degrading.
As a solution to the above issue, Vedantu was started. In Vedantu, all traditional ways of teaching were stopped to make the teaching system better. To achieve success in the new system, they used technology a lot. Live video/audio. Online whiteboarding tools are the noted applications that were applied in online learning platforms.
Students and teachers were invited to interact online/virtually for teaching-learning purposes. No guidelines were created for teachers as well as for students. Teachers were free to choose what they wanted to teach and how they wanted to teach. Students were also free to choose a teacher of their own choice.
When teachers got the freedom of choosing the contents/syllabi, they became more creative. To maintain quality, teachers’ profiles with Qualifications, Experience, and Grade were created. Students were asked to grade their respective teachers after every session.
To maintain democracy and transparency, these teachers’ profiles were made public. This way, the ranking of the teachers was decided. And students were free to select any teacher from the list. It had a positive impact on teachers. They insured quality and became proactive.
So, Team Vedantu found that instead of imposing rules and regulations over teachers and controlling them for quality, it’s better to make them free.
This concept of teaching-learning is bringing a lot of success for Vedantu. In 2012, Lakshya was acquired by MT Educare. One of the co-founders of Vedantu Saurabh Saxena exited the company in 2018.
Vedantu’s main objective is to transform the education system with the use of the latest technology. Currently, Vedantu is using the live learning platform WAVE(Whiteboard Audio Video Environment) to revolutionize online teaching. WAVE is an AI-enabled online platform with more than 70 parameters to make the teaching-learning more interactive.
Achievements, Revenue, and other Stats
In 2020, as a part of its series D round, Vedantu has raised $100 million. The revenue of INR 10.44 crore in FY19 is 97% more than in FY18.
‘Best Organization to Develop Technology for Education’ by DNA Innovative Education Awards in February 2016, ‘KINSES 2016 EduAwards’, ‘Online Education Startup of the Year’, ‘Most Promising and Live Online Tutoring Platform in India’ in 2015 are some of the noted recognitions received by Vedantu.
As per their own website, It has some 500+ teachers who have taught more than 1 Million hours to 40,000+ students spread across 1000+ cities from 30+ countries.
Byju’s, Toppr, and Unacademy are some of the noted competitors of Vedantu. With the advancement of Edtech, new competitors are rising on a daily basis. Coding for kids, reading for KG are the two major new initiatives started by Vedantu.
