Amazon Academy: Amazon announces launch of JEE preparation app to take on Byju’s, Unacademy, others in test prep segment

Amazon India, which had forayed into the booming edtech market in India in 2019 with its JEE Ready app for IIT JEE coaching for students and later rebranded it as Amazon Academy, on Wednesday announced its launch. However, the service continues to run in beta mode. Amazon Academy offers class 11 and 12 students IIT JEE courses along with all India mock test series for entrance to engineering colleges. With Amazon Academy, Jeff Bezos’ company competes with the likes of Byju’s, Unacademy, Toppr, and other leading Indian edtech startups helping students with IIT JEE preparation.

While the courses are currently available free of cost on its website and the Google Play store, but it is only “for the next few months only. Amazon Academy reserves the right to terminate access to the free content at any time,” the company said on its portal. The app is currently not available for iOS users. Amazon Academy said that it will offer JEE preparatory resources “at launch” including mock tests, over 15,000 questions with hints, and detailed step by step solutions for practice.

“Our primary focus has been on content quality, deep learning analytics and student experience. This launch will help engineering aspirants prepare better and achieve the winning edge in JEE,” said Amol Gurwara, Director, Education at Amazon India in a statement. Students will be able to track their progress over time and get detailed insights into the overall test-taking strategy.

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Amazon has been strengthening its overall play in the edtech segment in India. Its on-demand cloud computing platform Amazon Web Services had launched its accelerator programme for edtech companies called AWS EdStart back in 2018. The programme is “designed to help entrepreneurs build the next generation of online learning, analytics, and campus management solutions on the AWS Cloud,” according to the accelerator’s website.

Indian edtech market saw investments up by 300 per cent in 2020 on the back of the pandemic and the following lockdown. The segment had secured $2.22 billion funding in 2020 up from just $553 million in 2019, according to report by the Indian Private Equity and Venture Capital Association and PGA Labs. The education market, as a whole, was worth $117 billion in India with around 360 million ‘learners’ with primary education comprising 66 per cent of the spend followed by 27 per cent coming from secondary education.