Online education is starting to take off albeit at a slow pace in India. This has seen a host of entrants starting from way back in 2000, when players such as Educomp, Everonn as well as Aptech and NIIT came out with digitised solutions for schools and colleges.

According to a study by ASSOCHAM, higher secondary market spends are estimated to reach $20 billion by 2015. Sensing this, a slew of entrants have entered the education segment. InOpen, one such startup feels strongly that there is an urgent need to simplify solutions and make them easier to integrate in the core curriculum.

It is an IIT Bombay incubated startup focussing on developing quality academic content through research. It offers products and services to government and private schools and is currently serving more than 3 lakh students directly through its products. “The way their curriculum is structured in story format, helps teachers and students who experience the fun in learning,” says Gadge Raje of Shivaji High School.

InOpen was co-founded by Rupesh Kumar Shah and Professor Sridhar Iyer in Oct 2009 in the scenic IIT Mumbai which stands out in stark contrast amidst the chaos outside the campus.

“During my engineering days, I was doing my B-Tech project under Iyer who was a professor at the department of Computer Science and Engineering at IIT-B. I was passionate about Open Source and its applications across the education sector and over one discussion we figured out we can tap a glaring gap in computer learning. I noticed that everybody just wanted to learn computer application through skill and not through concept,” reminisces Shah.

In the same month, the company came into existence. InOpen continues to believe that in today’s scenario, despite a proliferation of education-related material, there is an information overload which ends up confusing both students and teachers.

InOpen serves the K-12 market with its flagship product, Computer Masti and newly introduced science curriculum, Small Science. It also works with the IT literacy solutions across government and corporates.

“In the initial days, getting business involved going to schools and getting feedback, which we then incorporated in our curriculum,” says Shah.

After interacting with 500 schools, InOpen managed to get 2,000 students across 8 schools in its first year of operations. During this time, the company started building on its team by adding academicians and business development functions.

Initial Challenges

Like other startups, the initial challenges were office space and low cash flow to manage salaries and operations. “I cramped 25 people in a 300 sq ft area of office space,” says Shah.

As the company grew, it faced challenges around maintaining quality amidst bagging projects. “Delayed revenues, time spent on managing resources and expediting processes, and ironing out operation issues are other challenges,” quips Shah.

Uniqueness

The uniqueness of Computer Masti, according to Shah is that it adopts a constructivist pedagogical approach, which encourages children to ask questions and explore on their own. The content apart from teaching the computer literacy skills, also teaches other concepts such as step-wise thinking and logical reasoning.

These skills lay both the foundation for future programming skills as well as help students develop important life skills considered as skills of the 21st century.

Currently, Computer Masti is being used by around 3 lakh students in India and is available in all Indian languages. “Our biggest advantage is our ability to customise the curriculum for each and every school which signs up with us,” reasons Shah. The company believes that second rung schools are same as the top ones and one size does not fit all in the education sector. Hence, for every school which signs up, we do a thorough study and then provide the school with a customised version of the product, explains Shah.

The company takes into account factors like the number of years IT is being taught in school, which board it follows, activities undertaken in a school etc.

Funding plans

InOpen has raised seed round of funding of $5,00,000 from VenturEast for a minority stake in August 2011. It is now planning to raise Rs 20 crore of venture capital (VC) funds. “We are talking to some PEs as well as strategic investors,” says Shah.

With the funds, the company plans to build its team, add technology platforms to the existing content and set up smoother processes.

Learnings

Shah is of the opinion that an enthusiastic person with good intent somehow manages to get on the right path. “When I joined college I didn't even know of the concept of a startup. Till date, I get spelling of ‘entrepreneurship’ wrong,” he says.

He advises prospective entrepreneurs to hang in whatever they are doing. A big problem which you might have faced in the past becomes ordinary in the present, he says.

He feels that people from small towns lack self-belief. “Someone needs to constantly induce clarity of thought and patience should be a top priority,” he says.

Future plans

InOpen is working on e-learning modules and different platforms besides digitising its content and is eying government projects all across India. “We will open up at least four more remote offices,” says Shah.

The company plans to explore opportunities abroad, especially in the Middle East and other countries in the subcontinent such as Bangladesh and Sri Lanka.

venkatesh.ganesh@thehindu.co.in

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