From Left to Right – Jaideep, Sangeeta, Parteek, Vaishali, Arushi – Founding Team, ExtraClass
December 16, 2019, New Delhi, India–
Aditi Mishra, a class 12 student is determined to get admission into the prestigious Delhi University, which is known for its high admission cutoffs. Aditi belongs from a small village in Eastern Uttar Pradesh, Ballia district. One of the many problems, students from small towns and villages face is the lack of quality education. One day, her friend recommended ExtraClass. She instantly fell in love with the app and how its teachers make even the most difficult concepts simple for students.
ExtraClass was founded by Delhi University alumni, Jaideep & Parteek Solanki in late 2018 and eventually registered as a private limited company by the same name “Extraclass EdTech Pvt Ltd”. Which offers comprehensive educational content along with real-time doubt solving on its app-based platform. Parteek Solanki, CEO, Extraclass, is a cost accountant by profession and has previously worked with Indigo Airlines. He says, “High quality at affordable prices made Indigo one of the largest airline carriers in India. I always thought why we couldn’t do the same with online education, that’s where the inspiration came from!”
A 2017 Google-KPMG report states the biggest barrier in the adoption of online courses in India is the unavailability of quality content at affordable prices. Jaideep, COO, Extraclass adds “using technology as an enabler we at ExtraClass are trying to remove this barrier by providing courses at affordable prices.” In the pre-revenue stage, the biggest motivating factor for the Extraclass team is when thousands of students from various parts of India regularly send Thank You notes, explaining how the app has brought a positive change in their lives, by providing quality content at their fingertips.
ExtraClass app provides high-quality Video classes, Notes, Practice tests, as well as Doubt sessions for the students. The Content is prepared by a team of expert teachers who also resolves students’ doubts. The App is currently available for class 10 to 12 CBSE board. With a 4.8 rating, ExtraClass app has been consistently ranked as a top app on iOS & was trending #2 on Google play-store in September 2019.
Moreover, the startup boasts of having more than 200,000 students on their platform in less than a year. “80% of the students come from tier2, tier3 cites & small towns. To tap the large vernacular language audience, we have to ensure our content is available in multiple languages for various state boards” says Parteek. So far, ExtraClass has only created content in Hinglish (English+Hindi) for class 10-12 and is looking forward to adding new classes and launch content in other regional languages as well.
Students in Tier2, Tier3 cities and small towns have access to high-speed internet, however, they don’t have deep pockets to pay for expensive online courses.
Extraclass comes as a saviour and provides free online classes to millions of school-going students in India. Founders at ExtraClass EdTech are not worried about monetising for the moment. Jaideep says “Monetisation can wait till we grab a major chunk of market share from the established players.” He adds, “Low infrastructure cost and a larger student base will help us leverage on the economics of scale. And the ExtraClass courses will be priced very aggressively, based on a pull model”.
Extraclass is currently bootstrapped and yet shown strong traction which is hard even for many VC funded startups in EdTech space. As a result of which, renowned VC firms like Mayfield Funds is showing interest in them. With several e-learning apps like Byju’s, Toppr, Unacademy and Vedantu, it’s tough to survive in a competitive world without any funding. Looking at the overwhelming journey of the ExtraClass, external funds can surely add speed to their goals and who knows we may be looking at another unicorn in the making.
Read the article on: Forbes India | ANI | Business Standard