Among various categories of educators affected by the Covid-19 pandemic, individual tutors and coaching centres are probably the worst hit as they have seen a complete shutdown of their offline businesses. Many have moved online, trying to make do with whatever tools available, but it has not been easy.
In a bid to eliminate the troubles faced by tutors as they shift online, Bengaluru-based ed-tech startup Teachmint came up with a SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) platform in the form of an all-in-one free live tutoring solution, a mobile-first video-first app that enables tutors to seamlessly digitise their tutoring business. The app delivers two-way streaming video as well as a simple tutoring business management workflow to mark attendance, create content, conduct tests and a lot more.
Within four months of its launch, the Teachmint app has been used by more than 75,000 tutors to regain control and authority in their tutoring businesses. These tutors and their students are spread across more than 850 cities and towns. The startup has seen a whopping 2000%-plus growth in the number of tutors using the platform over the past one month, company officials inform.
“Repeated studies have shown that learning happens best in cohorts where there is a personal touch from the teacher and there is a connection within the cohort—this is something that has been largely missing in the approaches taken by edtech players so far,” says Mihir Gupta, founder & CEO, Teachmint. “In the coming days, we will see an emergence of localised brands of edtech led by tutors and institutes from different regions of the country propagating their own unique styles and pedagogy.”
As per internal data collated by Teachmint, tutors and students from Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Maharashtra have shown highest adoption of online methods in recent times, closely followed by Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan. While regional educational hubs such as Lucknow, Patna and Pune have taken the lead in pioneering large-scale transition towards digital coaching and tutoring, many other tier-2 and tier-3 cities are also catching up. Another trend witnessed is that these online tutors are now teaching students residing in neighbouring towns, thanks to these apps.
Payoj Jain, co-founder, Teachmint says, “Teachmint is a product made in India, for India. Our video technology is specifically customised to support live classes even in low speed connections. The mobile data consumption of our app is also highly optimised given that most students often only have 1/1.5 GB of daily limits on data.”
Gupta says the aim now is to be the technology and infrastructure backbone to empower more than 1 million such tutors in India.
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