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How and Why well-funded Edtech Startups failed in India?

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The Edtech sector in India has experienced rapid growth, with new startups being introduced frequently in recent years. This growth can be attributed to the increased usage of smartphones and the growing demand for online education. However, many Edtech startups are facing significant challenges, leading to the closure of numerous companies.

In 2022, several Edtech companies were compelled to make difficult choices. Lido, an Edtech company that provided live online tuition classes, had to close down in February 2022 due to a lack of funds. In April 2022, Unacademy laid off over 600 employees, followed by Vedantu, which laid off over 200 employees. Additionally, over 800 employees resigned from Byju’s Edtech startup within two months after being asked to work from the office. The Edtech industry also accounted for 40% of the layoffs in 2023. Byju’s is now involved in multiple bankruptcy cases in India and abroad.

Let’s delve into the factors that led to the downfall of these heavily financed Edtech startups.

Byju's Logo

Fierce Competition.

The Edtech sector market has become saturated with nearly 4500 Edtech startups in India. Many of these startups offer similar products and services which led to fierce competition. This increase in competition led to price wars and an increase in customer acquisition costs. Many startups invested heavily in marketing and advertising to reach potential customers, which strained their finances as acquisition costs often outpaced revenue growth, leading to unsustainable business models.

Regulatory Challenges.

The regulatory environment in India can be complex and unpredictable, with strict guidelines governing accreditation and quality assurance. Edtech startups often struggle to navigate these regulations, especially those offering formal degrees and certifications. Changes in these regulations can disrupt ongoing operations and increase operational costs. Failure to comply with these regulations could lead to various legal issues, making it challenging for startups to establish themselves in this oversaturated market.

Ineffective Marketing Strategies.

Effective marketing strategies are essential for Edtech startups to create brand awareness and establish themselves in the market. Many unsuccessful Edtech startups fail to invest in targeted marketing and communicate their value proposition effectively. In the Edtech industry, marketing should concentrate on developing relationships, demonstrating value, and creating a supportive learning environment. Authenticity and credibility are more important than flashy advertisements.

Conclusion.

Edtech is not a company or an industry but a powerful evolving concept. Despite countless failures in this sector, the future of Edtech is still promising, provided companies learn from past mistakes and address these issues through innovation, quality focus, regulatory compliance, and a commitment to user engagement.

wiziq

WizIQ- Virtual Classroom you can use to conduct classes online during the lockdown

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Since
e-learning has grown its root deeper in our education system, India has also
come up with innovative techniques to make the experience better. More than a
million students have benefited themselves from the e-learning platform, taking
up new courses and expanding their knowledge. The best thing about online
education technology is both a student and a teacher can play the part of a
learner.

Features
of WizIQ’s Virtual Classroom

WizIQ
is very popular for its versatility and engagement with users. The virtual
classroom of WizIQ comes with more than enough features to make your learning
experience better. Some of the features are high quality videoconferencing,
server-side recording, polls and surveys, secure live streaming, live screen
sharing, collaborative code editor, advanced collaboration and moderation,
interactive whiteboard, etc. More than 3 million people worldwide use the WizIQ
virtual classroom to take online classes. 

A
versatile platform 

WizIQ
offers a chain of tools and services that can make the experience of online
education better for both learners and educators. 

Here is the list of services you can access from the WizIQ platform. 

Also Read: Brush Up Your Skills With The Learning App Of Byju’s

1.
Create your course

An
ideal learning platform is one where you can play the role of both a learner
and a teacher. WizIQ allows you to create your course and sell them through
their platform. You can also host live classes if you wish to and interact with
the students. One of the best things about this service is if you want to join
a course in WizIQ you can pay for it from the money you make by selling your
course. So, this is a very cost-effective strategy for the course
creators. 

2.
Introduction to online tutoring

Online
tutoring is very common these days given that students have the liberty to
learn from online educational platforms. WizIQ gives a very big opportunity for
the tutors to go online and expand their market. You will find many personal
tutors around you trying hard to reach out to more people. Platforms like WizIQ
make it possible for them to earn more and extend the audience base with low
investment.

3.
Create Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs)

MOOCs
are very common for any online educational platform. They help in driving
traffic and attract students from around the world. MOOCs can be created in
millions of different topics starting from literature to science. This is a
humongous advantage for independent teaching professionals or even students.
Teachers can expand their courses to unlimited students and similarly anyone
who wants to learn can join the courses. The main target of the MOOCs is to
generate more a lump-sum amount of additional revenue. 

4.
Mobile apps for Android and iOS

It is
difficult for many students to get access to PCs or laptops. Especially in a
country like India, poor children from remote areas cannot afford a computer
easily. But, nowadays at least one person in the family has a smartphone. And,
WizIQ has expanded its services through mobile phone apps. So, now you can
learn from your smartphone as well. The mobile application for WizIQ also makes
it easier to learn when you are traveling. Also, a smaller screen implies less
data usage. 

5.
Customer training

WizIQ
provides a course builder suite that helps you to create training courses. You
can provide online courses as well as host live classes to train your
customers. WizIQ provides this service mainly to train customers about many
software products and their applications. After the completion of the training,
the customers also receive certification which is either free or paid. You just
have to integrate WizIQ with your website, LMS or CMS then you are good to go.
This will help maintain consistency in brand voice.

6.
Online Partner Training

With the help of WizIQ training partner software, one can extend the advantage of training to promoters, partners, traders, etc. Through this software one can create unlimited courses. It also gives the benefit of running multiple live classes simultaneously for different categories of a global audience. This is a very good source of making a profit as you can upgrade the courses to various premium plans and charge for certification as well. You can also brand your learning portal if you want. 

Also Read: The E-Learning Platform Of Udemy Serves Dual Purpose At Its Best

Conclusion

Even a few months ago, many schools and colleges were using the platform of Zoom to carry out online teaching. But, after the incident of Zoombombing, I think we already have a more than better option right in front of us. So, what are you waiting for? Sign up and start enjoying the features of WizIQ. Maybe you will come up with your course during this lockdown. 

Also Read: Udacity Is Unleashing The True Power of E-Learning With Moocs

Verbling

Verbling: More Than A Language Learning Platform, Helping To Break Different Culture’s Stereotypes

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There are many online learning platforms are available, some of them are paid while some of the platforms do not cost a penny. But Verbling stands different from each of them because of its unique platform. On the Verbling platform, one can trade the linguistic skills of the language they know with others who know the language you want to learn through video chat. In fact, this all is free! This amazing idea behind setting up the platform makes it unique. It is set up by Fred Wulff, Jake Jolis, and Mikael Bernstein. After several struggles and lots of hard work they finally designed the platform as per their ideas.

As a matter of fact, the Verbling founders spent two days to decide the perfect name for their platform. In end, they come up with the name Verbling, the combination of two words Verbal and Linguistic. Presently, Verbling enables the best online learning platform that pairs learners with language tutors via video chat, for free.

About Verbling

It is an online language learning platform, known for allowing individuals to connect with language teachers through video chat. The company aims to address the problem of the language barrier, which is one of the biggest problems in international business. Yes, emails, video conference, and chat obviously made it easier to communicate over long distances. But still, not all international colleagues understand each other’s language. Here, Verbling plays an important role. Initially, only six English-Spanish exchanges were available on the platform. However, the founder’s keen dedication enabled other languages on the Verbling platform.

The Backstory of Foundation

In 2011, Jake Jolis, Fred Wulff, and M. Bernstein set up the online language learning platform known as Verbling. Initially, it started as a Verbling Friends, a simple video chat platform for people who are eager to learn new languages. For that, they design a video chat platform where users can learn each other’s language through chat. However, in a short duration, Verbling raised 1-million-dollar funding and shifted the headquarter to San Francisco. Thereafter, the company added nine more languages and finally launched online Verbling classes in 2013.

Exploration of Verbling

The firm raised series A funding of 2.7 Million dollars in 2015 so that expanding technology to more platforms. Other than that, Verbling offered free lessons in Swedish during the Syrian Civil War to help Syrian refugees. In 2016, Verbling took a new step and launched a platform for the corporate world to help their employees in learning new languages. For that, the company tied up with Inditex and Volkswagen Group. Thereafter, it launched iOS and Android apps in 2017, on this platform more than 2000 teachers are there to help in learning new languages. Moreover, 60 languages are available on the Verbling virtual language learning platform.

How does it work?

First of all, the person who wants to learn a language on Verbling platform, he/she needs to sign up. After that, a video chat will be aligned with the person who knows the language of the learner. Basically, the whole set up is work on allowing a person to learn your language for five to ten minutes and thereafter, the same service is provided to the other person on the chat. The best part about Verbling, one can share cultures to help to break stereotypes associated with it.

Founders in Limelight

Fred Wulff

A former software engineer at Google, Fred Wulff shared great contributions in the formation of Verbling. Before that, he worked for many other companies like Hillary for America, Causes, and Dropbox, where he served in the Engineering field. Fred has experienced in App Engine, focusing on MapReduce support, distributed systems work, API design, and operational work, etc. He also established Rodeo in 2012.

Wulff attended Stanford University for studying bachelor’s and masters in computer science. During his study, he also did an internship at Google, Mobile Evolution, and Texas State University.

Verbling CEO and Co-founder-Jake Jolis

He is present CEO at Verbling. Jake is known for helping early-stage founders reach their next milestone. He has an optimistic view of determining whether a start-up achieves greatness or taps out pre-maturely. Previously, he was one of the partners at Matrix Partners. Also, he served as a Dray Alliance and Smartcat’s board member. Coming to his education, he studied at Stanford University.

Bottom Line

No one can have thought that the languages can be traded until Verbling made it possible. The dedication and new idea of founders set a brand-new example for entrepreneurs. In fact, the founders also showed the world that you need not have an office to run your business. Because they are working on their platform from the place they are living in. No such offices are there for the company. Today, many learners find a Verbling easy and fun platform to learn the new language.

Brian Dean : The Founder of Backlinko, ‘the Future of Modern Day’s SEO’

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Blogging is one trendy and the easiest business for earning some good cash. It has lured and helped a lot of young minds who can nurture their creativity through an online platform. But before one decides to open their own blogging site, there are certain rules and strategies one should get accustomed to. SEO, CRO, social media marketing, higher traffic, top ranking are some of the common terms that one usually comes across while blogging.

So, what if we tell you that you can get online training for becoming a good blogger, increase more traffic over your blogs, and even, get your site to the first page of Google? Backlinko, a site that maintains its own blogs and SEO expertise, is an awesome guide for all potential bloggers, digital marketers, and entrepreneurs out there.

Brian Dean, founder and CEO of Backlinko, formed the company back in 2013, to teach people more about practical blogging strategies. In no time, he became a very significant figure in the world of SEO and content marketing. But, success did not come to him overnight. He went through a number of failed businesses and tight financial circumstances before Backlinko happened. The flawless strategies of Backlinko seized the attention of the innumerous audience and brought immense success to the company in just a few years.

Early career of Brian Dean

Dean quit his job in 2010 to focus more on creating a niche in the world of SEO, but initially, there were a lot of failed attempts. The most fascinating thing about Dean is he always accepted failure as a path to success. He never thought of giving up even though he didn’t have sufficient money to invest in his business. Before his own startup, he worked as a freelance writer on Elance and Livestrong.com. After Demand Media (a company that owned Livestrong.com) went out of business, he was able to think of starting something of his own.

Backlinko

Starting from scratch, he started the business all by himself. His first successful website was live in 2012, achieving immense traffic. He started reading more SEO blogs to take this to the next level, but he was utterly disappointed. And, that is when he started to create his own blogs, and eventually, built Backlinko. The first blog of Backlinko was posted in 2013, and it attracted a lot of readers. With the overwhelming response, the company decided to take a step ahead and created its first flagship course, ‘SEO That Works’, in the same year.

Since he was the only member of Backlinko at the beginning, he did not have access to many amenities to shoot the videos for the courses. So, one of his friends helped him out by shooting the videos in Dean’s apartment. It took him around four months to deliver the first version of this course. But once it became popular, it started receiving around 200,000 unique visitors per day.

Business strategy

Dean, from the very beginning, focused more on the content, rather than the products of the platform. He was aware that most of the audience will gather around the unique blog titles and their content. So, he decided to focus on the quality of the content and posted one blog per month. These blogs comprised of unique content and effective strategies that, at the same time, were practical and achievable, too. Instead of writing several paragraphs, he crafted his articles in the form of tutorials and focused on making them easier to comprehend for the readers.

The first launch of Backlinko made around $80,000, and since then, it is only rising. The company also focused more on email marketing, and according to Dean, it is the key to the success of every business. The company also focused more on gathering customer stories and interviews. The process was time-consuming but quite fruitful. It helped the company grow and move ahead of its competitors.

Within a span of six years, and with only three team members, the company has become one of the top small online businesses. Currently, the site receives 25,000 visitors per month, and thousands of subscribers are regular over the Backlinko newsletter.

Dean targets on understanding his audience thoroughly, and according to him, once he figures out the type of audience he is dealing with and their demands, it becomes a lot easier for him to write the right content for them.

Growth of e-Learning Industry & Why Moodle is still the best LMS?

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E-learning is an electronic learning which involves delivering either part or a complete course using a computer in schools, universities  or delivering important technical and business training in companies. Earlier, e-learning growth was hindered by the thought that it would essentially inhibit the human element that some learners need, however with time there has been a variety of technological developments leading to many people embracing the use of smartphones, tablets and computers in classrooms and offices. The growth of interactive designs have made e-learning engaging and a good medium for course delivery. Moreover, most learning and business organizations have enhanced their e-learning through the partnership with course or training providers together with building their own technical team to ensure a smooth learning experience for their learners.

E-learning is widely used in many companies for employees’ effective and efficient training. Over the years, the use of e-learning in companies has increasingly grown. Companies have practically discovered that every money spent on online employee training increases the employee productivity and efficiency. In last decade E-learning has seen tremendous growth worldwide. According to a new survey, by 2020 the global market of corporate e-learning will be worth more than 31 billion US dollars. Recently, many traditional schools around the world have adopted eLearning.

The growth of e-learning has been effectively necessitated by its benefits to both the individual users and the organizations- Cost effectiveness,  24/7 learning that can be done anywhere without necessarily attending specific classrooms, tracking of course progress for learners and its discreet nature which allows each individual learner to learn at their own preferred pace.

The Moodle LMS and reasons why it is still relevant
Moodle Learning Managemnet System(LMS) can be defined as not only the world’s most popular but also the  most used LMS which was developed back in 2002 by Martin Dougiamas. The reason for its global popularity is the user-friendly nature of its e-learning platform. Moodle LMS is open source & free to download with full liberty to customize and develop further. Since its inception, Moodle LMS has strongly remained the educator’s relevant platform for providing online learning in more personal environment that easily boosts interaction and collaboration-

  • Moodle is free open source technology that enables its users to personally choose their own perfect LMS schedule so as to achieve their organizational goals
  • Its certification and gamification features and tools help many organizations to meet the increasingly common requirement of offering the course certification
  • The ability to centralize multiple course providers and systems, has always been the reason why Moodle has been persistently relevant and the best option to many organizations
  • Support for SCORM and third party plugins makes it obvious choice for educators and admins

Moodle features, customization and development options.
With the aim of organizations to working in specific and efficient ways, Moodle LMS has various customization and configuration features to cater to organizational needs and demands. It offers lot of freedom in custom development and design customization. As a Moodle admin you can build an amazing learning environment by adding a variety of your personal favorite plugins which can be either individually developed or from the community. You can also opt for Moodle development services offered by different Moodle experts.

Today’s Moodle is none less than any paid or custom LMSs being offered by different EdTech firms. Moodle have features that efficiently and effectively serve both the students and the administration. The open source learning management system offers excellent web support tools to ensure effective collaborative learning. Moodle has the ability to integrate with a good number of enterprise system to facilitate continuous integration flows.

 

Robot Tutor Musio is here replace your language teacher

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Education & training industry is making use of technology in many ways. While many youngsters and teachers are acquainted with online learning and eLearning, the next revolution is coming in the form of robots. An adorable robot named Musio is here to help you with your language skills. After successfully completing its Crowdfunding campaign recently, it was launched officially at a price tag of JPY 98,000 in Japan last week. One can buy Muiso easily via Amazon Japan, Softbank’s marketplace and through some offline retail stores.

As of now Musio’s capabilities include small talks, answering simple logical questions, admitting it’s fault or lack of knowledge and most important one is correcting language flaws. It can detect and notify wrong pronunciations and wrong grammar usage etc. This robot’s face and heart is made of interactive touch screens meant to show a range of emotions to connect on a deeper level with users. Moreover, one can even read books, play games; developed by an educational publisher Gakken, and go through menu using these touchscreens.

But, what’s all this fuss about? It looks and functions like a high-tech talking doll with some grammar sense. No, comparing Musio to a toy is simply underrating its capabilities. Musio’s parent company is an AI venture, AKA Study. That said, Artificial Intelligence is going to play a major role in further development of this robot. Although API’s are available free of cost from major players in AI industry like Google, Baidu, Apple and Amazon for development purpose, but AKA decided to build its own proprietary engine specifically for Musio robot.  Now that brings ability to recognize a particular user, referring back to his older conversations to analyze his growth rate and potential.  Musio robot might be able to find out the weak areas while learning language together and then design further conversations to help in advancing altogether.

On asking Jung, co-founder AKA, why he considers Musio a robot as it does not have any moving parts, he said “We put a motor system in there. If you need a dynamic part, you can add it in the future,” the CEO explained. The brand is planning to add movable components to the robot afterwards as future updates increasing its functionality even further. One of his visions for Musio is of a “companion” that’s always there for elderly people to keep them connected socially with rest of the worldand helping them in living a healthy independent life. He said there is a huge demand for social robots in Japan justifying their focus on the market.

AKA study has already raised 10.7 million in seed and series A funding. That’s a lot of money going straight into development. Moreover, brands like Gakken, LG UPlus and Nexon, a gaming company, are backing AKA with Musio’s project. Just to inform you, the first batch of Musio robots is already sold out! You have to wait for the restock to get one in your hands.