EdTech startups helping education industry amidst COVID-19

While schools and colleges around the world shutter down classrooms to limit the coronavirus outbreak, college authorities and educators around the globe are clambering to move their classes online. At the same time, EdTech startups like Admission24 are coming forward with services that allow remote learning.

The ongoing crisis has resulted in a rapid transition to online learning, and EdTech companies are serving a roadmap for making this rapid shift to online learning during school closures. They have been doing their bit by taking proactive measures in offering free or discounted live classes, conducting a series of mock tests, providing question banks, digitalising admission process and taking offline operations online, in order to ensure that learners’ education is not obstructed amidst the crisis.

Let’s further dig into how and to what degree EdTech is revolutionizing the educational sector in order to tackle the crisis.

Digitalizing traditional schooling
EdTech has literally brought the classroom into one’s living room. Many startups have gone a step ahead and partnered with schools and colleges across Hyderabad, Bengaluru, Delhi and even parts of Kerala to enable professors to use interactive online tutoring platforms which offer live classes to students.

These online learning tools are specifically designed to augment with synchronous face-to-face video instruction which is in a way a very practical step to help preempt college closures. Under this initiative, educational institutions can use their own content and teachers, take online sessions by creating their very own, personalised platform or even opt for end-to-end online tutorials which comes with free live classes and assessment solutions. Students can easily live stream all the material in the vicinity of their home and mark virtual attendance.

Free live classes are being conducted for all exam categories including banking, UPSC, railways etc. This whole concept of competitive exam preparation ensures that educators from across the nation will come on the platform to provide their time and impart knowledge for various exams and hundreds of live classes will be conducted on the portal per day.

The whole online course of competitive learning also includes, VR content, gamification, personalised assessments, soft skill development, pronouncement marketplace, parent engagement, student networking, test preparation, digital libraries, specific language tools, learning analytics and real-time scenario engagements.

Bringing offline operations online
Technology has helped the sector identify the needs and gaps in the education system, and several startups in the space are addressing crucial needs of both students and parents. In the same capacity, Admission24 is digitally transforming all the key functional services provided by any educational institutions and bringing almost all the offline operations online. The biggest benefit that the EdTech industry can offer, especially in times like this is to offer the most reliable and convenient experience to parents as well as students.

Many schools and universities are putting together plans to extend online operations by closely working with Edtech companies. On a close brisk, Admission24 enabled more than 50,000 educational institutions with an automated admission process during the coronavirus outbreak. Recently, they have also launched an app for students and parents where they can access knowledge on quality education and its availability. It is a tactical gambit to help them have a customer-friendly online admission experience amidst this scenario.

EduPayment gateways easing transaction hassles
With online payments becoming the norm for people for every other transaction, especially amidst the heightened awareness of the outbreak, they are fast becoming a convenient mode for the education vertical. While traditionally in India, the role of a payment gateway was restricted, but nowadays, the EduPayments market has reached an inflection point.

They offer value-added services including faster processing, customised reports, a large number of convenient modes of payments like accepting credit cards, debit cards, net banking options, mobile payments, etc. Edtech companies are capable of delivering these value-added services, and offering a secure system is crucial in the current times.

While the coronavirus spread across the world may not have been contained yet, but the education system continues to sustain itself by truly embracing the idea of ‘learning anywhere, anytime’. The EdTech startups have made sure that the learning never stops!

-- Abhinav Sekhri, CEO and Founder, Admission24.