The surge in Covid 19 pandemic has brought every industry to a standstill. Education is no exception. While schools and colleges around the world shutter down classrooms to limit the coronavirus outbreak, college authorities and educators around the globe are clamoring to move their classes online. The ongoing crisis has resulted in a rapid transition to online learning, and edtech startups are leveraging this opportunity. According to SimilarWeb, the edtech segment saw a 26 per cent increase in user visits between April 2019 to March 2020, as compared to April 2018 – March 2019. Further, the first 28 days of lockdown in India edtech segment saw 128.8 Mn visits (on average, 4.6Mn daily visits) as compared to 102.2 Mn average visits between April 2019 – Feb 2020. The rapidly rising graph of the edtech sector has seen an increased interest from investors. In the first quarter of 2020, edtech emerged as the hot sector with Byju’s raising $400 million and Unacademy raising $100 million in a round led by Facebook. However, out of the 14 startups, at least 9 have raised seed funding which means investors are willing to bet on early stage startups that can prove their worth during the coronavirus pandemic.

Startups in edtech are serving a roadmap for making this rapid shift to online learning during school closures. They have been doing their part by taking proactive measures in offering free or discounted live classes, conducting a series of mock

tests, providing question banks, digitalizing admission process to ensure that seamless education process amidst the crisis. They have literally brought the classroom into one’s living room. Several startups are partnering with schools and colleges to enable professors to use interactive online tutoring platforms which offer live classes to students. With open classrooms, visual presentations, and a more collaborative form of learning where students are able to take greater control, these start-ups are delivering great results. Through these online classes, students are also able to easily live stream all the material in the vicinity of their home and mark virtual attendance. Some of the various online course includes, VR content, gamification, personalized assessments, soft skill development, test preparation, digital libraries, specific language tools, learning analytics, amongst others. 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 prevent college closures.

Operating online classes
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. Amid this crisis, many schools and universities are putting together plans to extend online operations by closely working with edtech startups. Many educational institutes have been enabled automated admission process by these startups. Besides, some of these edtech startups have revolutionized the training programs by developing user-friendly apps that can help students access knowledge on quality education – anytime, anywhere.

B2B edtech startups like Eupheus Learning and Next Education have come forward to offer their live-streaming feature to educational institutes free of cost. They have upgraded their platform to help schools and colleges set up virtual classrooms. Other than Unacademy, Vedantu is one of the few B2C companies that has jumped in to help schools rather than just opening the platform for students. Both the companies have temporarily lent their live-streaming platform to schools and other educational institutes for free.

While the demand for B2C and B2B edtech startups have soared, it’s difficult to tell if they would be able to sustain the current traction post Covid. But when the entire world is struggling with the covid crisis, the edtech startups are ensuring seamless learning.