It’s exam season in India. Thousands of school students across the country are sitting for their annual examinations even as many more get ready to sit for their CBSE and ICSE Class X and XII exams in March, followed by entrance exams to medical, engineering and other professional training courses. This is also the time when subscriptions at edtech platforms soar as students scramble to get test papers solved, queries resolved, undertake speed and accuracy tests to determine their preparations for these life-changing exams. Toppr is one such edtech platform that caters to over 2.5 million registered students from classes V to XII. Founded in 2013 by Zishaan Hayath and Hemanth Goteti, Toppr emphasises on adaptive learning using structured data and advanced algorithms. “We have over 1 million learning pieces that come married to a technology platform powered by machine learning and data; giving the student exactly the right learning task at the right time. We collect a billion data points from every user activity, which continue to evolve our adaptive learning system,” says Zishaan Hayath, CEO and co-founder, Toppr.
Students register on Toppr for free and have unlimited access to all the modules during the trial period. Once the trial period expires, students can upgrade to a paid subscription of their choice. Typically, the minimum duration of a subscription is till the end of an academic year. While the ‘Master’ plan starting at Rs 2,000 a month allows unlimited access to video lectures and practice questions, the ‘Advanced’ plan starting at `3,000 a month offers unlimited access to video lectures, practice questions and tests. The ‘Ultimate’ plan offers unlimited access to video lectures, practice questions, tests and doubts, starting at Rs 4,000 a month. There is also a ‘Custom’ plan starting at `1,000 a month where a student can pick the modules she likes. “Toppr students spend an average of over 100 mins per day on the platform. Our closest competitor clocks approximately 40 mins per day. About 75% of Toppr students come back even after 180 days with 98% of student doubts on Toppr getting a response in less than 2 mins,” says Hayath. “We are able to offer immediate doubt resolution service over chat, 24×7, that’s powered by over 15,000 educators.”
Toppr has grown over 5x in last 12 months, says Hayath.“We project 20X growth in junior grades, and 15X growth in the senior grades subscription by 2021,” he adds. The online learning platform recently launched study programmes for commerce stream, offering online classes for examinations held by such as IPCC, CAT, CPT and ICWA. It is aiming for 20-25% market share in this segment within a year. The start-up raised $7 million in Series C funding in September 2017 from SAIF Partners, Helion Ventures and Eight Road Ventures.
