Education has always been a shared passion for Tanushree N and Aditya S, literally a ‘couple’ of IIT-D alumni. After working in consulting for over three years, they started their first venture, Class 21 A, a Gurgaon-based bricks-and-mortar coaching institute, in 2009, after observing that children often do not get a good grasp of the basics of Maths and Science in school.
“We had a good nine-year-run with the institute, but we were only able to reach the crème-de-la-crème of the society, while charging exorbitant fees as well. We realised that this was not really creating an ‘impact’ as such; I was raised in Bihar in a middle-class family and had to go through a lot of hardships to get to this point in life, and therefore understood that if we wanted to revolutionise education, we should use technology to create more value so that disseminating education becomes more accessible. That’s how we came up with Doubtnut, a free self-study app,” says Aditya S, co-founder.
However, if you thought that Doubtnut was like the million other study apps that only provide materials and hacks for improved learning, then you’re mistaken. Doubtnut stands out because any student, from any part of the country, can post a picture of a question from their textbook or study material (can be any language) and post it on the app, and they will get exact solutions within just 10 seconds. “From our interaction with hundreds of students, we understood that one of the main anxieties that plague a student is getting stuck on a Math problem for example, and not getting immediate help to move forward. That’s how we came up with the ‘ten-second solution’ idea. This may sound complicated, but the basic premise was coming up with relevant technology and implementing it,” he adds.
Solutions given on the app are mostly in the form of screencast videos, with step-by-step audio instructions on how to reach the final answer. “We are one of the world’s biggest repositories of ‘study videos’. We already have half a million video solutions in our solution bank,” shares Aditya, adding that the app is able to deliver solutions so fast because of this reason. Ask him if Doubtnut claims to have answers to any question that may be asked, and he informs, “At present, we have solutions for 90% questions that may be asked and by next year, we are working on getting it to 95%.”
Initially, they provided solutions for Math problems exclusively until August 2019, but since then they have ventured into other subjects like Physics, Chemistry, Maths and Biology. Before the start of the next academic year, they plan to cover all subjects from Class 6 to 12, including English, Social Studies, Business Studies, Economics, Accounting – everything except Humanities.
