Software engineer Milan Sharma was eager to gain new skills in emerging technology areas such as big data analytics. But a day job at a travel firm left him with little free time to attend regular classes, pushing him to opt for an online course with Edureka.
"The beauty of online courses is that it gives you flexibility and easy access to course content," said Sharma. Lack of qualified teachers, professionals pressed for time and high education fees are all contributing to a rising demand for online learning that is offered by a number of new startup ventures.
"We have more than 20,000 paid students right from Seoul in South Korea to Azamgarh in Uttar Pradesh," said Lovleen Bhatia, co-founder of Bangalore-based Edureka, who expects his company to earn a revenue of Rs 30 crore in fiscal 2015.
Founded in 2012, Edureka offers online skill-based courses in areas such as mobile application development and big data for professionals at prices ranging from Rs 12,000 to Rs 30,000. Companies like Edureka, handa ka funda and Jigsaw Academy which offer online learning use a combination of live interactive sessions, animation to explain a subject, as well as flexible schedules and constant feedback.
For many pricing is proving to be a tool to attract students as well. "A typical course for CAT preparation offline would cost around Rs 30,000 to Rs 45,000 depending on the city. The costliest course we offer through our online platform is priced at Rs 4,000," said Ravi Handa, founder of handa ka funda.com, which was founded in January 2013.
"We have seen tremendous response to online education," said Jigsaw Academy co-founder Gaurav Vohra, who started the company to offer courses in analytics.
The company has been cash positive from day one and expects to earn a revenue of about Rs 40 crore in the next two years. Experts said online classes bridge the gap between small town students and larger cities making it a high potential market.
"Education is a lifelong investment, everyone wants the best in class education," said Pragya Singh, assistant vice president for retail at advisory firm Technopak. Apart from professional courses, there is demand for online education even for school kids.
Bangalore-based Vedantu.com, founded by five childhood friends Anand Prakash, 33, Pulkit Jain, 30, Saurabh Saxena, 31, Vamsi Krishna, 30, and Ujjawal Misra, 30 caters to high school students. Vedantu is the second educational venture for this team of IITians, who sold brick and mortar entrance preparation institute Lakshya to MTEducare in 2012.
"Online tutorial is catching up not only in India but globally, and I see potential for great scale," said angel investor VN Ramaswamy, who invested Rs 2 crore in Vedantu.com last year.
Vedantu has an annual turnover of Rs 30 lakh and expects to earn Rs 1 crore in fiscal 2015. Entrance and competitive exam preparation is another big area where online education startups see huge opportunity for growth.
Tuition portal Smartlearning.in that provides online tuitions to school goers expects to earn a revenue of around Rs 10 crore this year.
"Everyday more than 1,000 students and parents from all over the country register on our website," said founder of Smartlearning.in Chinmay Shah, who graduated from the University of Southern California.
Delhi-based Pace2race.com, which started as a brick and mortar coaching institute for CA students, soon realised that it was difficult to scale the business beyond a certain point and decided to take its offerings online. "Till now only the students who were staying in metros or had means to move to the metros were able to get quality education," 31-year old co-founder of Pace2race.com Kavita Goyal said.