START-UP ISLAND. Edu-tech start-ups that have lessons for institutions, students

Apart from many prominent edu-tech companies, there are a few other ‘outlier’ start-ups that aim to correct prevailing problems in the Indian education system. These are gaps that deepen inequality among consumers of education as well as contribute to poor quality human capital to the labour market.

Arguably, venture capital investment trends over the years have not helped the larger cause of education in India. Talking to three start-ups – epaathsala, Mindler and Lets Corp – provides a glimpse of the prevailing roadblocks in India’s education sector and what start-ups with solutions seem to be battling.

epaathsala helps higher education institutions across India with NAAC, NBA and other accreditations beginning with data collection, data migration and analysis to reporting and process implementation.

Suman Nandy, Founder and Director, says, “It takes 9-12 months for (manual) accreditation process, but with our ERP we enable turnaround within three months.”

While epaathsala has worked with over 800 institutions to date, Nandy shares that at least one crore student (and then professional) lives are impacted by the nearly 40,000 higher education institutions across India. So, with over 80 per cent of the institutions yet to be accredited in India, lakhs of students and jobseekers are affected.

Mindler says its study of over 8,000 students indicated that more than 90 per cent of them feel career decisions should be based on scientific assessments. In India, however, career choices have largely been guided by parents or inspired by a relative’s choice – this means that students may end up picking career paths not suited to their skill sets and personality traits. Mindler believes this creates “a literate but unemployable workforce.”

Prateek Bhargava, Founder and CEO, Mindler, says, “CBSE board, for example, stipulates that all schools should have mentors, but this is mostly carried out by teachers. Our platform is a completely automated career guidance tool. It provides real time mapping to careers based on student evaluation on over 56 dimensions... supported by access to world-class mentors and career experts.”

Lets Corp had aims broadly similar to Mindler’s. Shravan Charya, Founder and CEO of SocioLadder.com (formerly Founder and CEO, Lets Corp), shares that Lets Corp is “struggling to raise crucial capital in spite of being valued at $100 million by one of the big four consulting firms”.

While Lets Corp is “definitely open and operating,” Charya has downsized to preserve the company’s product and patent assets. Seeing, however, that businesses such as epaathsala, Mindler and Lets Corp aim to enhance the quality of talent supplied to the Indian job market, will it prove to be a chink in the country’s armour if the investment landscape sees little value in supporting such start-ups? Can Indian human capital then remain competitively relevant to the world?

COMMENT NOW