With the increasing competition and hectic schedules that kids have these days, tution classes have become a necessity for a majority of them. But, how do you choose the right tutor? Several times, one goes to the best tutors in town and yet fails to perform well in his academics. Other times, a not so popular but efficient teacher can help get better results. To create a balance between these two, selection of the right tutor based on several parameters is necessary.
Bangalore Based Startup, Flipclass is using the technology and the internet to provide effective home tutoring solutions. FlipClass aims at helping children succeed academically by helping them learn better, clarify doubts and prepare themselves for the competitive environment.
The Driving Force behind FlipClass
The basic idea behind FlipClass was motivated by a very basic need. The founder, Vineet Dwivedi, wanted a home tutor for his son, who was then studying in the fifth grade. After a tiresome search with no results, he realized that the whole process was unreliable and even after abundance of tutors, hiring a reliable and affordable tutor was next to impossible.
Hence, after a tiring search and disappointment, Vineet decided to create a platform to ease the process of tutor hiring and FlipClass was born. It was started with the sole objective of providing a professional approach to tutoring.
How does FlipClass work?
FlipClass works on a three tier model and helps cater to the specific requirements of customer, ensuring fulfillment of their needs.
- It provides an online platform to match the requirements of the parents to the qualifications of the tutor and find out if they are a suitable match.
- It also has an inbuilt assessment platform, to give a feedback to the students and to gauge their learning.
- Apart from this, the website also provides tools to support the ongoing classes and guide the students better.
The Challenging Road
The startup was a new concept and no other venture had tried to approach the home tutoring market in a similar manner, one of the major challenges the team had to face was to understand the needs and the requirements of the consumer. To overcome this hurdle, the team had to carry out detailed surveys and market research and get an insight into the customer’s mind and understand their expectations.
Setting up the whole framework for FlipClass was a challenge, but with the help and support from team co-founders Sharad Lal and Ashis Roy, this became easy as they had a good insight on how to make this work.
The Competition
Some of their competitors include Classfever.com, 2tion.com, Thinkvidya.com and Myprivatetutor.com. But, most of these competitors are aggregators who do not provide a guarantee for quality or a thorough check of the credentials. Proper filtering is required and other ventures like JustDial and Quikr fail to provide those because their main focus is on reaching out to a maximum audience. FlipClass, on the other hand, is an end-to-end service provider which filters tutors based on specific criteria and provides the best results.
The Numbers
India is a key player in the education industry with a lot of opportunities lined up in various segments. While the education sector is vast, the home tutoring industry itself is valued at $25 Bn with an annual growth of 20 percent.
FlipClass has a revenue sharing model which provides the tutors with a good share of the revenue and also provides the tutors with incentives to maintain the quality of service. The revenue sharing with the tutors varies from 12-30% and depends on several parameters. With revenue of approximately $800,000 per month, FlipClass has a vast base and is expanding with a growth rate of around 15% month on month.
With a current team of 40, FlipClass has an active database of 1500+ students and 2000+ tutors, and, the monthly growth rate in terms of numbers is approximately 15-20%. The tutors have completed over 50,000 academic hours as of now.
Funding and Future Plans
Initially, FlipClass raised INR 1.5 Cr from online fundraising platform LetsVenture. At present, they are concentrating mainly on business in Bangalore and Hyderabad but owing to their expansion plans, they may seek funding in the next 2-4 months. According to Vineet, “The overall experience was good because all the searching for the investors, meeting and pitching them, all these were done by the platform itself.”
The company plans to achieve a student database of approximately 25,000 students by the end of two years with their presence throughout the country. Currently, FlipClass caters to students in the K-12 segment and various languages, but in the coming time, they plan to expand their reach out to a vast audience.
Our Take
Since the education sector in our country is vast and needs attention, FlipClass has taken the right step by introducing several quality standards when it comes to education. Due to busy schedules, parents cannot always take care of their children’s daily school activities and opt for home tutoring. But, paying extra for home tutors without any guarantee for results is not a good option. Hence, FlipClass plays an important role as it helps the families choose the right person for their child’s education.
