Next Gen of Digital Education Transformation

Access to information is becoming the defining jargon for educational digital learning solution providers in India. Traditional teaching model has slowly changed into a digital education learning platform, which is self-driven and fast! – making India one of the biggest education markets in the world. Students well-versed with the likes of PlayStations and iPads, via digital learning, are making a smart classroom environment more inclusive, participatory – and transforming the education system into an IT-enabled education system. In an exclusive conversation with SMEStreet, Aditya Tripathi, Founder & CEO MarkSharks explained market trends and digital landscape.

“Online learning has opened new career avenues for young professionals who are driven to imbibe new skills – at the luxury and comfort of their own pace and time. With the evolution of technologies such as the Cloud, Data Centers & Virtualization, the digital education ecosystem that we foresee is not a distant reality,” says Aditya Tripathi.

Excerpts:

SMEStreet: How did you came up with this idea of starting something like MarkSharks?

Aditya Tripathi: Despite significant innovations in Education Technology (“Ed-Tech”), the process of teaching globally remains largely the same: unidirectional. Whether it is a teacher lecturing through a chalkboard, whiteboard or smart-board, an audio-visual lecture by a “master” instructor broadcast widely through the internet, or rich audio-visual animations on tablets, children continue to be taught merely by asking them to simply ‘watch’ and ‘listen’ - passive learning.

MarkSharks is disrupting this unidirectional mode of teaching and learning. Students of the 21st century must learn in a 21st century style. We are building a learning app where children use mobile devices to construct their own knowledge and learn classroom concepts in a truly immersive, multi-sensory and meaningful manner through games, simulations, virtual experiments and interactive exercises - active learning.

What are the key attractions of MarkSharks for the young Indian students?

MarkSharks is building a system to teach secondary school students Maths & Science. It combines superior pedagogy with the power of Mobile device to meaningfully engage students and enable true” learning by doing”.

Students “Learn actively by playing brain games, exploring interactive exercise and discovering the principles behind concepts taught in class. Students ANALYSE their own performance in all MarkSharks tests, time spent on every lesson, content covered vs. not. Eventually, they will also to compare all this with friends or all MarkSharks users. Similarly, parents and teachers can also monitor and track their child’s performance. Students CONNECT with friends through a ‘social learning network’, which eventually allows them to share notes with friends, seek help from online tutorial and collaborate with others on MarkSharks.

Here are some websites for students to refer, read here.

Please highlight some key features of your offerings?

MarkSharks content currently follows the Indian Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) curriculum for classes VI to XII.

Product Features

• Personal, one-on-one learning environment since learner can use own mobile device
• Self-paced learning, since content is 100% hands-on and learner-led
• CBSE Maths & Science curriculum for classes 6 to 12
• Works on all Android devices – app downloadable from Google Play Store
• Voice-over and text in English - additionally serves as guide of good English language
• Content being developed modularly to enable easy adaption into different languages and curricula

Considering the fact, that in this space, there are a lot of players trying to make their mark. How do you manage to differentiate yourself?

What truly sets aside MarkSharks from other Ed-Tech companies is the solid pedagogical foundation. The MarkSharks team of senior educationists has over 100 years of combined global experience in education, training and curriculum design. Every lesson is designed and built to be interesting, interactive, experiential and effective. At MarkSharks, we are not trying to replace the teacher but only make them more efficient and effective by giving students the opportunity to immerse themselves in the learning process and actually understand concepts, rather than learning formulas and definitions. This is where we take advantage as we believe that our content is exactly what students of modern age needs.

What is the market impact MarkSharks have created so far?

Our apps for Class 8 and 9 are available on the Play Store and have been downloaded nearly 85,000 plus downloads from google play store so far. We are also working with a number of schools across the country. MarkSharks is currently being used in schools in UP, Rajasthan, Gujarat and Delhi, including Vasant Valley School (Delhi), Global Discovery Academy (Baroda) and Sri Aurobindo School (Jodhpur) to name a few…

What are the key drivers of Indian education segment?

India holds an important place in the global education industry. India has one of the largest higher education systems in the world. However, there is still a lot of potential for further development in the education system.

The Key drivers of Indian education segment are:

Market size: The education sector in India is poised to witness major growth in the years to come as India will have world’s largest tertiary-age population and second largest graduate talent pipeline globally by the end of 2020.

Investment Opportunities: The total amount of Foreign Direct Investments (FDI) inflow into the education sector in India stood at US$ 1,256 million from April 2000 to March 2016, according to data released by Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion (DIPP).

The education and training sector in India has witnessed some major investments and developments in the recent past.

Technology penetration: Increase in evolution of technology leads to virtual learning and advance education delivery

Awareness: Increasing awareness towards education has become an essential cause for career growth. Growing job opportunities and attractive salaries offered is making investment in Indian education a wise decision.

Robust Growth: The shooting income brackets, rapid urbanization, and increasing awareness about the significance of quality education have led to the robust growth of the Indian educational industry and business opportunities for private equity firms.

Government Initiatives: Various government initiatives are being adopted to boost the growth of distance education market, besides focusing on new education techniques, such as E-learning and M-learning.

What is your business roadmap for next one year?  

Launch the paid version of the existing app: We will be launching the paid version of the app soon, with a host of new features inbuilt into the app.

Launch new apps for other classes: As of now class 8 (Math & Science), Class 9 (Science) is live and available on Google Play store… Work is currently on to have the Math & Science modules for classes 6-12 soon.

Investment to scale up ops:  With a robust product offering in the education space, go forward, we intend to be the choice of the investor community to scale up the business and ops.