Monday, November 4, 2019
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A former head of election integrity operations at Facebook says the company's business model and ad targeting tools make it hard for it to not harm democracy (Yaël Eisenstat/Washington Post)
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Gradeup raises $7M to expand its online exam preparation platform to smaller Indian cities and towns
Gradeup, an edtech startup in India that operates an exam preparation platform for undergraduate and postgraduate level courses, has raised $7 million from Times Internet as it looks to expand its business in the country.
Times Internet, a conglomerate in India, invested $7 million in Series A and $3 million in Seed financing rounds of the four-year-old Noida-based startup, it said. Times Internet is the only external investor in Gradeup, they said.
Gradeup started as a community for students to discuss their upcoming exams, and help one another with solving questions, said Shobhit Bhatnagar, cofounder and CEO of Gradeup, in an interview with TechCrunch.
While those functionalities continue to be available on the platform, Gradeup has expanded to offer online courses from teachers to help students prepare for exams in last one year, he said. These courses, depending on their complexity and duration, cost anywhere between Rs 5,000 ($70) and Rs 35,000 ($500).
“These are live lectures that are designed to replicate the offline experience,” he said. The startup offers dozens of courses and runs multiple sessions in English and Hindi languages. As many as 200 students tune into a class simultaneously, he said.
Students can interact with the teacher through a chatroom. Each class also has a “student success rate” team assigned to it that follows up with each student to check if they had any difficulties in learning any concept and take their feedback. These extra efforts have helped Gradeup see more than 50% of its students finish their courses — an industry best, Bhatnagar said.
Each year in India, more than 30 million students appear for competitive exams. A significant number of these students enroll themselves to tuitions and other offline coaching centers.
“India has over 200 million students that spend over $90 billion on different educational services. These have primarily been served offline, where the challenge is maintaining high quality while expanding access,” said Satyan Gajwani, Vice Chairman of Times Internet.
In recent years, a number of edtech startups have emerged in the country to cater to larger audiences and make access to courses cheaper. Byju’s, backed by Naspers and valued at over $5.5 billion, offers a wide-ranging self-learning courses. Vedantu, a Bangalore-based startup that raised $42 million in late August, offers a mix of recorded and live and interactive courses.
Co-founders of Noida-based edtech startup Gradeup
But still, only a fraction of students take online courses today. One of the roadblocks in their growth has been access to mobile data, which until recent years was fairly expensive in the country. But arrival of Reliance Jio has solved that issue, said Bhatnagar. The other is acceptance from students and more importantly, their parents. Watching a course online on a smartphone or desktop is still a new concept for many parents in the country, he said. But this, too, is beginning to change.
“The first wave of online solutions were built around on-demand video content, either free or paid. Today, the next wave is online live courses like Gradeup, with teacher-student interactivity, personalisation, and adaptive learning strategies, deliver high-quality solutions that scale, which is particularly valuable in semi-urban and rural markets,” said Times Internet’s Gajwani.
“These match or better the experience quality of offline education, while being more cost-effective. This trend will keep growing in India, where online live education will grow very quickly for test prep, reskilling, and professional learning,” he added.
Gradeup has amassed over 15 million registered students who have enrolled to live lectures. The startup plans to use the fresh capital to expand its academic team to 100 faculty members (from 50 currently) and 200 subject matters and reach more users in smaller cities and towns in India.
“Students even in smaller cities and towns are paying a hefty amount of fee and are unable to get access to high-quality teachers,” Bhatnagar said. “This is exactly the void we can fill.”
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Dozens of companies in Vision Fund's portfolio have struggled lately; sources: Oyo founder invested $2B into his company by using a loan backed by Masayoshi Son (Wall Street Journal)
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More Xiaomi Mi Watch teasers surface online
It isn't too long ago that we learnt of Xiaomi's plans to unveil its first smartwatch in the market. Dubbed Mi Watch, the wearable greatly resembles the Apple Watch. It will be launched along with the Mi Note 10 smartphone (CC9 Pro in China) on November 6. Now though, with only a day left to go for the launch, the popular Chinese electronics manufacturer has posted more live images of the smartwatch online on Chinese social media website Weibo, confirming in the process what we've known about the device so far.
From the teaser images posted by Xiaomi on Weibo, it's easy to work out that the Mi Watch utilises a glossy stainless steel construction with ‘rounded screen lines’. One image clearly reveals the smartwatch's single crown on the top right corner for navigation within the UI. This is very similar to the Apple Watch's design, as we can see in this video. We learnt only recently that the Mi Watch would come with MIUI for Watch, replete with an app store that includes maps and even TikTok.
In another teaser image posted by Xiaomi on Weibo, we see the curved edges of the company's upcoming smartwatch up close. According to Xiaomi, the Mi Watch features “four-curved sapphire glass”. In yet another teaser image posted by Xiaomi, the Mi Watch is seen sporting an independent calling functionality along with independent internet connectivity through e-SIM. The device is expected to be powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon Wear 2500 Platform.
According to a recent report published by The Quint, the upcoming Mi Watch will indeed resemble the Apple Watch to a great extent but cost nothing like it. The Mi Watch is expected to be launched tomorrow at a price that's under $150, which translates to about Rs 10,612 approximately. The Mi Watch is confirmed to pack wireless radios such as Wi-Fi, NFC, and GPS, apart from support for independent mobile connectivity through e-SIM.
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