With the National Testing Agency (NTA), in March 2022, introducing the Common University Entrance Test (CUET), the stress of students of senior secondary schools have increased as they have to prepare for their board exams and entrance exams to get admission in the colleges for further studies.
However, the increasing difficulties for the students and this new rule have opened a great opportunity for the coaching institutes and other edtech companies to encash on the opportunity by offering CUET preparation courses.
CUET is a standardised test for admission to undergraduate and postgraduate courses, diplomas, certification courses, and research programmes. CUET-UG is for admission to undergraduate courses in 90 universities, including 21 private and 12 state universities.
Chief Executive Officer of Educaptain Prince Gupta speaks to Opportunity India and discusses the business opportunities in the education sector and explains how this move by NTA has given push to edtech companies to turn into bigger platform for the students to gain knowledge.
Gupta said that more than 15 lakh students appeared for CUET in 2022 so inevitably it has created many more opportunities for edtech companies as well as coachings operating offline. This trend will definitely go upward and the interesting fact here is that because the way CUET syllabus has been designed which incorporates class 12th subjects, more and more local tuition teachers are adding its preparation to their existing syllabus coverage. So, it is a win-win for everyone including the students because now there is a level playing field.
He said that technology has democratised every area of day-to-day life and education is no exception. Now, even a teacher from a single room can teach lakhs of students if their teaching methodology is engaging, practical and helpful to students in cracking their exams.
“No matter how well-funded companies might be but now, they have competition even from teachers who have been teaching at a micro-scale. So, definitely, everyone can participate in this market, create opportunities for themselves and help students on mass,” he added.
He added further, “In my opinion, it simply boils down to the quality of guidance, teaching and practice material. We started with zero capital from a small room. But we have more than 5,000 paying students in total so far and another 2 lakh students who are connected with us on youtube. This is all because of the trust we were able to establish amongst students and the AIRs we have generated consistently over the years. With every passing year, we added new features to our course which were super helpful to students and no other edtech start-up was offering. Adding to that, we always made sure that our teachers did not feel like teachers to students but more like their elder siblings. We always believe that if a teacher is able to comfort students in a way that they are able to express their true selves then solutions are right around the corner.”
Speaking about the education sector during the entire year, Prateek Bhargava, Founder and CEO of Mindler said that The post covid era has reinforced the importance of educators as the most important pillar in the student learning journey.
He said Edtech solutions which are built around enabling schools and institutions in adopting technology driven solutions to enhance educator efficiency and student impact will lead the growth in the ed-tech industry.
“Government’s initiatives, such as Digital India, the National Education Policy, UGC Reforms will continue to create an enabling environment for the growth of the ed-tech industry at large,” Bhargava added.
Speaking about the coming year, he said that metaverse in education sector will come into mainstream as educators and students continue to explore the potential of this immersive platform.
“With massive changes brought about by the UGC reforms and NEP another area which will see fast adoption of technology driven solutions will be Career Guidance. The need for technology-driven solutions to aid students in career decision-making is a big need and we are seeing schools and institutions adopting advanced ways to leverage the benefits of technology especially in enabling students to build their future career paths. In the coming years we will also see improved student engagement and interactive learning with virtual reality driven solutions for educators,” he said.
