Here’s why education startups are gamechangers in India

Giving a whole new makeover to how education is being imparted in India, a few educational startups are bringing a revolution in this arena. Teaming education with most advanced technology, school children are no more feeling reluctant to attend school.

As per a news report by The Economic Times, these startups in the education sector that happen to be in the right sector at the right time, as infrastructure - high-speed internet connectivity, cloud-based software, advanced analytics capability, and smartphones and tablets - now exist to support newer education formats for an attention-deficit and highly competitive generation Y. The complex kindergarten-to-class 12, or K-12, segment isn't without deterrents, but it's not easy for education entrepreneurs to resist the potential to address India's more than 250 million school students, larger than the populations of the United Kingdom, South Africa and Japan put together.

A school teacher, Latha Selvan, said her students are more attentive in class and do their homework because otherwise they don't get to play. The games reinforce classroom learning. So instead of merely learning about fractions on paper, the students experiment with the concept online: Pour water in a bucket, fill it to three-fourths, empty the bucket a little, fill some, let the water spill. The games encourage the students to try, make mistakes, and correct themselves.

“There is a generational shift taking place in the student community - the way the current generation lives their life, thinks, engages and spends their time - which has not happened over the last three generations," K Ganesh, one of India's most successful education entrepreneurs, who sold his online tutoring company Tutorvista to British firm Pearson for over Rs 1269 crore ($200 million) two years ago told the ET.

"The next 25 years will be the golden era of education," he said. Education startups are teaching students the way they like to be taught: in small, byte-sized, 10-minute videos that can be watched on the go; fostering peer-to-peer learning through games or quizzes; and providing customised training, among other things. In doing so, they are able to engage and retain students' attention far more effectively than early e-learning firms such as Khan Academy and Coursera, which continue to offer lengthy video lectures online.
It’s not all glittery, though. For one, there exists a pervasive disconnect between the users of education products and the makers. Ajeet Khurana, former CEO of IIT Bombay's Society for Innovation and Entrepreneurship, likens the current phase to the wave of commercial computer education in the 1980s. Almost anyone setting up a computer institute would make a profit. But most of these perished, and few like NIIT and Aptech survived as they delivered quality and content.