Edtech Revolution: The way startups are breaking India's education test

India's edtech industry is booming, fuelled by AI breakthroughs as the government underinvests. Startups such as SuperKalam and Bhanzu take the lead in AI-enabled test preparation and maths education, whetting a prospect of greater affordability and quality of education.

India's education industry has witnessed robust innovation in recent years. Almost 85% of students credit better learning outcomes to edtech platforms in India, as revealed in an Internet & Mobile Association Of India (IMAI) report entitled, Impact Study Of Edtechs In India: Driving Innovation & Creating Opportunities.

Factors such as compelling content and quality educational resources are driving edtech demand within the nation, but it doesn't stop there. The development of artificial intelligence has taken over most of the conversations, and education hasn't been left out.

This has encouraged various startups to throw their hat in the ring and capitalize while the iron is hot.

One such startup is SuperKalam, which offers AI-driven test preparation solutions for civil services examination aspirants. 

"We are not reliant on humans for resolving doubts, evaluating multiple choice questions or creating content. By eliminating humans as a variable, we are making the whole learning experience infinitely scalable," says Vimal Rathore, co-founder, SuperKalam.

The company has one instructor for every 1.7 lakh aspirants, providing personalized coaching. Almost 5 million aspirants sit for civil services entrance exams in India, and SuperKalam claims to be witnessing a surge in registrations despite monetizing its services in June 2024.

Cashing in on an Underfunding Crisis

India's Edtechs also thrive in the face of inadequate government funding for the education sector. PRS Legislative Research data indicate that Union Budgetary allocation to education has fallen steadily with a slight increase in 2023-24.

While government expenditures on education remain mostly static, the quality of teachers has become a cause of concern as well. According to the Ministry of Education's report for 2023-24, 48% of the teachers at pre-primary levels remain unqualified and 12% of teachers across primary to secondary levels are professionally untrained. The majority of edtechs are focused on upskilling, but the situation today is indicative of an acute need to overhaul the infrastructure of education.

While Union Budgets in the past focused on building more infrastructure for top education institutions, primary education — basis of students — does not gain much attention. In addition to that, the pandemic further degraded K12 education among students in India and across the world.

One of the startups showing great progress in mathematics education is Bhanzu, which originated as a pandemic-era Telangana government venture. The site specializes in the development of mathematics skills in kids aged between 5 and 12 years old.

Neelkanth Bhanu, co-founder of Bhanzu, states, "We teach core math through our own pedagogy, which accelerates a child's arithmetic speed 4x, making them perform exceptionally well at school and use math in the world around them."

Since its launch, Bhanu states that the platform has expanded to 55,000 active students, with almost 40% of them being from the United States, the United Kingdom, and the Middle East. Online learning is just as effective as offline classes. We get to have children from all over the world interact. I believe cosmopolitan exposure is typically lost in offline setups," states Bhanu.

Demand For Personalised Learning Experiences

The explosion of edtech startups in India is a big representation of the status of the education industry in the country, with the startups vying to bridge the gap caused by a shortage of qualified teachers. 

Having dealt with education sector startups before, SuperKalam's Rathore had knowledge of the gap competitive exam aspirants had. This drove the company's emphasis on individualized guidance for test modules and achieving monthly targets.

SuperKalam has created a "nudge-based system" for each individual over the years. More remarkable is that the company created this AI-driven system with a small team of individuals. The website has two human teachers, Rathore and Arpita Sharma.

"I mentor students at SuperKalam on how to set their daily goals and be disciplined and consistent. They will typically face various types of distractions, so I mentor them on how to have a sense of discipline for a minimum of 4-5 hours daily. I also give them empathetic, mental and emotional support," says Sharma.

Investors such as Y Combinator have bet on SuperKalam, with seed investor Sparrow Capital full of hopes regarding the progress of the platform.

"Being profitable would have been a worry if Superkalam was a part of some established offline business model. They are attempting to create a technology platform which involves inherent cost savings. our burn has been trivial relative to growth in metrics," says Yash Jain, cofounder of Sparrow Capital.

Making Education Accessible

In 2023-24, the dropout rate from secondary school in India was as high as 10.2%, as per government statistics. It impacts 26% of learners in today's education system.

The current Union Budget this year raised the estimate of expenditure on education by 12.5% (to ₹1.28 lakh crore) compared to last year's revised estimate. Overall, however, taking a broader perspective, data from PRS reveals that education as a percentage of expenditure has experienced a major decline from the 19% it received in 2015-16. Education is a concurrent subject wherein the state and central governments must coordinate.

Programmes like the Samagra Shiksha Abhiyan, providing funding for education from pre-school to Class 12, heavily depend on state funding. However, in a recent reply in Parliament, the Ministry of Education stated that Kerala, Tamil Nadu and West Bengal did not see disbursal of any central funds.

The pandemic may have widened educational disparities, but SuperKalam's AI-driven services and Bhanzu's products are a glimpse of Indian innovations that highlight how technology can make learning more accessible and efficient.