New Delhi: Crossing another milestone in its stellar growth journey, ConveGenius, an EdTech social enterprise, has scaled its reach to 1.5 crore students in 11 months.Against the backdrop of the pandemic-led technological shift, the social enterprise moved from tablet-based adaptive learning to chatbot-assisted teaching and learning, thus boosting the outreach of its EdTech platform.

Viprav Chaudhary, VP-Operations, ConveGenius, had found that during the onslaught of Covid-19, access to digital devices was a major barrier to education for young students hailing from rural and remote regions in India. “While education shifted to the online medium in the wake of the pandemic, device inequity emerged as a major problem faced by a majority of students beyond tier-1 and tier-2 regions across the country,” he commented.“We realized that we needed to turn the adversity at hand into an opportunity to resolve this challenge effectively. We decided to transform our existing solution to a parent-based offering, moving from tablets to WhatsApp as the optimal vehicle of education. Parents and their wards were quarantined at home, and children could use their phones to access learning in, and despite, the viral outbreak.”

The ConveGenius team adopted the chatbot-based model of learning by integrating WhatsApp APIs into their solution and using the messenger function to deliver small chunks of information and materials to students studying from home. The shift to WhatsApp was inspired by both device (tablet/PC) inequity highlighted by the viral outbreak, as well as the ubiquity of WhatsApp among Indian households across all socioeconomic backgrounds. The app’s user-friendly interface further made it the ideal solution to deliver education to quarantined students while also enabling their parents to monitor and participate in the learning progress of their wards.

Since the launch of the chat-based teaching and learning platform inMay 2020, the startup has now scaled up to 1.5 crore students across 10 mediums of instructions, with learning sessions through the WhatsApp platform reaching 98% completion rates weekly. “Integrating WhatsApp into our EdTech solution has unlocked many benefits for not just students but also teachers and parents. Students can retain information better when they are empowered to access learning at their own pace. The conversational AI built into the platform allows us to push each student up personalized pathways of learning. Educators have been creating many educational videos in vernacular languages during the lockdown. The AI-led algorithm is designed to connect students with the most relevant content. Further, teachers have their own version of chatbots which gives them access to student data. This empowers them to map and shape the learning trajectories of their students while assessing their individual learning outcomes,” Viprav adds.

Since its inception in 2014, the startup has raised funding worth INR 20 crores from institutional investors including Michael & Susan Dell Foundation (MSDF), Benori Ventures, Enablers, and angels such as Ashish Gupta, Founder, and Trustee, Ashoka University, among others. Its annual revenues for the financial year 2019-20 was INR 18.4 crore. Astride of the pandemic-induced, tech-led transformations in the education sector, the company is looking to reach 4-5 crore students from middle- and low-income households in 2021 as part of its ‘EdTech for Naya Bharat (ETNB)’ Mission.