In an exclusive interview with IT-Voice, Mr. Rajesh Bysani, Chief Product Officer, Brainly shared inputs about the organization, EdTech Industry and the future ahead:
Prateek: What is the USP of Brainly?
Mr. Rajesh Bysani: Brainly is India’s number 1 doubt-solving platform that answers questions from students through collaboration and makes learning fun and effective. On Brainly, students connect to their expert teachers and peers to help strengthen their concepts, from math to science, history, English, and beyond.
The platform effectively functions as an online version of a real-life study group, and it can assist children in resolving their education problems. Brainly provides answers to students across subjects, boards, and pedagogies. It encourages self-paced learning. Unmatched convenience is a hallmark of Brainly. The platform helps students learn faster by clearing their doubts instantly, and works towards making education interesting, fun, and interactive.
Prateek: How is your company different from its competitors?
Mr. Rajesh Bysani: Brainly brings to India, global expertise to help Indian students answer their education problems. The platform encourages peer-to-peer learning. Brainly is used by over 5.5 crore Indian students, parents, and educators, it has by far the largest pool of resources as compared to its competition. Brainly’s Knowledge Base is available to students for free and in Indian languages like Hindi, Marathi, Telugu, Tamil, Gujarati, Kannada, Bengali and Sanskrit.
Prateek: What are the opportunities and challenges in the EdTech industry in India?
Mr. Rajesh Bysani:
Challenges
- Poor internet connectivity – continues to be a big issue, particularly in rural regions. For innovation-driven learning, high-speed internet is required. However, tier 2 and 3 cities are still struggling with bandwidth issues.
- Resistance to pedagogic change – COVID 19 brought a paradigm shift in the education space. It obliterated the classroom walls and transformed into online education. However, with the pandemic showing signs of easing, schools are moving back to classroom teaching, one size fits all approach is back in play. Students come from diverse backgrounds with varying learning aptitudes. Therefore, adaptive learning is more effective, like the ancient gurukul practice, where students were groomed as per their strengths. Brainly offers personalized adaptive learning, which can assist students in achieving better learning outcomes and can be utilized in a mixed approach to combine the best features of both systems.
Opportunities
- Growing mobile and internet population in the tier 2 and 3 cities of India – The Internet has given access to equitable and quality education to students in tier 2 and 3 cities. Smaller towns now have access to the same knowledge that major cities have. In smaller towns and cities, the availability of suitable infrastructure, high internet penetration, the increase of the middle class, a scarcity of high-quality education, create profitable growth potential for EdTech enterprises. These cities will play a major role in the educational transformation of the country.
- Parents support online learning – The pandemic and almost two years of studying online have made parents realize the benefits of online education. Parents now realize online education allows for learning beyond the norm. Students have access to unlimited topics and global experts. Parents are more open to their children learning online. They are constantly looking for online educational tools that will help their children excel in their education.
- Mobile-friendly Gen Z – Kids and youth are very comfortable with mobile phones and are the most active smartphone and internet users. Therefore, reaching out to them through online modules is much easier now.
- Cheap Internet – India offers the lowest internet tariff in the world, which has led to high penetration and acceptance even in tier 2 and tier 3 cities. This provides a huge opportunity for EdTech players to reach out to many students.
- Reducing the urban/rural divide – The Internet makes a wide range ofcourses available to those in urban and rural areas alike. Students in rural areas are constantly looking for online learning modules to meet their educational needs without having to leave their homes or cities or spend a fortune. Online education will also help address the needs of students who are intellectually or physically challenged
- Age no bar – Online learning makes it possible for people of all ages to access different subjects and gives them the power to uplift themselves by learning at any place and any time.
- Digital-friendly government policies- The government has launched several programs such as ‘Digital India’ and ‘Skill India’ to spread digital literacy, create a knowledge-based society in India, and implement three principles: access, equity, and quality of the education policy.
Prateek: What will be the organization’s strategy for expansion in India in the coming year?
Mr. Rajesh Bysani: The key goal for Brainly is to make education accessible to all sections of society. Brainly’s Knowledge Base is already available in Hindi, Marathi, Telugu, Tamil, Gujarati, Kannada, Bengali and Sanskrit. We at Brainly plan to make it available in more Indian languages.
It has been our constant endeavor at Brainly to democratize education and offer quality education to students in every nook and corner of the country. Brainly plans to expand into new products, beyond homework and exam help, to offer a more personalized and real-time learning assistance to students and parents.
We are investing heavily in India by building a stronger team in India in the areas of business, products, and marketing.
Prateek: How will Brainly address different Indian markets (Tier 1) and Tier 2, 3 Cities and The Role Technology Plays
Mr. Rajesh Bysani: There are three major challenges in Tier 2 and Tier 3 markets from an education perspective namely, language, socio-economic divide, availability of good teachers.
India is a diverse country with 28 states and 22 official languages. Hindi is spoken in 10 states accounting for 46.5% of the population and English is spoken by barely 10% of the population. A significant part of the population (43.5%) depends on regional languages for learning and enhancing their potential.
Brainly provides its Knowledge Base in Hindi, Marathi, Telugu, Tamil, Gujarati, Kannada, Bengali. and Sanskrit. We understand the importance of the local language and are expanding Brainly’s Knowledge Base in more Indian languages, to make education accessible to students in their local language. This is how Brainly will address linguistic diversity in India.
Brainly believes in the democratization of education and gives every student access to personalized learning. It provides access to peers in over 100 cities and towns in India free of cost. This can save students from spending huge money on coaching institutions/centers, which may pose a financial burden on the parents. This is how Brainly addresses the social-economic divide in Tier2 and Tier 3 cities in India.
Brainly provides a platform to teach and answer students’ doubts and questions in real-time, students can post specific questions about any material they need help with, and other students, teachers/subject matter experts across the globe or parents answer these questions. This provides students access to quality subject experts and world class teachers at no cost. This is how Brainly provides access to good teachers.
