Edtech Trend: Startups in India Prepare for Vernacular-based products

With mass popularity of India edtech startups like Byju’s and Toppr, more and more Indian students are attracted to digital learning products.

English is the primary language of teaching for these popular products. Therefore, many Tier II and III city students are left out of this learning revolution.

Many startups have recognized this language gap and are preparing to cater to markets that need content in vernaculars.

A report by RedSeer (research on learners of K-12, test prep and professional learning markets) recently suggested that the next wave of edtech in India will be backed by companies that offer learning material in vernaculars. This will allow deeper access of edtech products in the Indian market.

The report ?shows a strong need for vernacular education, something which most offline and online platforms fail to provide adequately as of now .?

Source: RedSeer report

The initial run of edtech in India has been all about English-based content and live-streaming. The focus was on Metro and Tier I cities.

Now, it’s time to expand the reach of edtech to other regions.

Concept validation of vernacular-based edtech products lies in the rise of DoubtNut. It is an edtech product offering 12 vernacular languages and targetting Tier 2 and 3 cities.

DoubtNut raised $3.3 million in Pre-Series A of funding from Sequoia, Surge, Omidyar, Waterbridge Ventures and Japanese mobile gaming company Akatsuki Inc.

DoubtNut uses AI and ML technologies to recognize images of Math questions submitted by learners to offer solution videos. This app was launched in 2017 by Tanushree Nagori and Aditya Shankar. It claims to now have over one Lakh videos. DoubtNut has a user base of about 3.5 million active users. It caters to students of classes 6-12, IIT JEE, and Bitsat.

DoubtNut’s app is one of the top 10 free apps on Google Play Store in India.

Another player catering to Tier II and III cities is Adda 24X7. It aims to reach a customer base of 10 million by 2020. Its Youtube subscribers reached over 2.5 million subscribers, recently.

The Indian online education market is worth $247 million, at present. It is estimated to grow to $2 billion by the year 2021, as estimated by a report published by Google and KPMG.

With time, the big players in the market are also likely to adapt to the need for vernacular-based edtech products. This will help change the face of learning in India, as even village students will have access to one-to-one classes and learning materials through mobile phones.

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Author: Team Edutech Post

The Edutech Post team offers news and reviews on edtech products for learners, parents, educators and edtech businesses.

Their aim is to assist in making education accessible to all with the help of technology.