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Anil Srinivasan knows when to hit what note. In 2013, when the concept of teaching science through visual arts and music was hardly heard about, the renowned pianist and educator launched Rhapsody, a K-8 platform that facilitates STEM learning through music.
By 2020, Rhapsody’s education-through-music had reached 477 private, government and government-aided schools in South India enhancing the learning capacity and creative intelligence of over 3.76 lakh students. But the Covid-19 pandemic suddenly paused this physical teaching approach as schools downed shutters and shifted to online classes.
Srinivasan too adapted, fine tuned Rhapsody Music Foundation’s offerings for the online medium. Rhapsody raised roughly about $0.5 million in pre-series funding to create online content, build infrastructure and to launch a digital platform — CoCoon.
The funding was led by noted investors like Ashwin Damera (Eruditus Education), Ananth Narayanan (ex-Myntra, co-founder and CEO, Medlife), Shobu Yarlagadda (CEO, Arka Media Works) and Sanjay Raghuraman (CEO, Kalyan Jewellers) among others.
“I am happy to share that 60 schools have already confirmed that they want to take our online offering, which is a very good sign and a great proof-of-concept,” Srinivasan told BusinessLine .
Four streams covered
Rhapsody’s STEM-Through-Music in-curriculum already had 460 multidisciplinary lesson plans delivered in-school by more than 200 trainers. The CoCoon platform will offer courses in four streams- STEM, Languages (English and Tamil), Performative arts (music and arts) and a college-to-school programme, where students from the mid-school level will get future advice, career options and industry practices from professors from leading institutions and professionals from various industries.
“We have also enhanced and gamified a lot of lessons which would not have been possible in the physical space. We have created co-creation tools so a child from Assam and Tamil Nadu can work on a project together and learn from each other. ,” Srinivasan said.
The shift to online medium also seems to have helped Rhapsody to scale faster not just within India but even abroad. The company already signed up two schools each in Assam, Rajasthan and Gujarat. “Interestingly, three schools from Tokyo, two from the Gulf, one each in Oman and Malaysia have also got in touch with us to implement this,” Srinivasan said.
Subscription model
Rhapsody works on a B2B subscription model where schools pay them on a monthly or term basis depending on the number of children enrolled. Of the 477 schools that Rhapsody served, 125 were private schools and the remaining were government and government-aided schools, where subscriptions are funded by the corporate sector.
“We closed 2019-20 with a topline of ₹4 crore. If things have gone well 2020-21, the revenue would have been ₹6.6 crore and we have already got contracts worth that. But then the schools got closed. This year we are aiming for ₹5-6 crore in topline,” Srinivasan added.
Rhapsody's online platform CoCoon will be soft launched on June 7 and will officially be launched on June 21 coinciding with the World Music Day.
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