Shaastr enables educational institutions like coaching classes, teachers and tutors to take their test prep offering online with plug and play solutions
With most competitive exams like IIT JEE (Mains and Advanced), GATE, CAT and more moving online, it has become existential for students to prepare in a similar environment. Says SumitBhagat, COO, Shaastr, “A lot of time wastage occurs when students give exams online for the first time, directly in the examination hall. With cut off marks getting more and more competitive, it is imperative for students to prepare online too.”
While most online test prep solutions today compete with the business of coaching classes, Deepak Gupta and SumitBhagat decided to provide for them instead. “We realize that it will be a few years before test prep can entirely move online and students stop going to coaching classes. Until which time, why not empower the coachings themselves, to take their test prep online. Hence, we built for the same”, says MD, Deepak Gupta.
The company plans to introduce many more useful features in the platform, based on mass demand and input from clients. “Our product is built on a robust, scalable stack that is fully responsive to bend to the needs of modern smartphones, says SnehaKataria, CEO, “we’ve built in features to help against copying, reduce distraction and give powerful analytics for teachers to course correct immediately.”
Post their inception in June 2015, the company already has commitments from 6000+ students across the country, for their newest version and is mainly looking to focus on Tier II cities. “It’s time institutions upgrade the quality of education given to students. It’s a long, slow but sure process to growth in the youth segment”, Bhagat adds.
The company plans to entirely focus on PaaS (Platform as a service)operations without any diversions in the coming year to ensure an actual impact via reach can be made.
Catering to classes from as little as 30 students to those with 25,000+, Shaastr will see no barriers in numbers, geography, pocket sizes or even backend support effort to realize this impact. “Everyone wants to make money without an impact. We’re trying to do this the right way,” said Kataria.
Shaastr is a B2B business of Sierra Innovations Pvt Ltd which also has another B2C business called www.ToppersNotes.com that Bhagat and Gupta started when they were in IIT-B itself. It has only grown since and the company plans to deploy some resources by introducing GATE & UPSC notes too, adding to their existing IIT JEE set of physical topper-curated, handwritten book sets.
With a sound seed investment to support the product and sales thereafter, the startup is now in talks to raise a Series investment to scale operations. With multiple funds showing interest, the startup is confident of their growth plans for 2016-2017. They can be contacted on social@shaastr.com for any discussions/collaborations or business.