Students who were preparing for competitive exams have been anxious about the changing examination dates amid the Coronavirus lockdown. The uncertainty of what will happen and the fact that they are unable to attend any kind of classes or get guidance during this crisis has left them in a lurch. However, if you are appearing for the upcoming JEE and NEET examinations, there's no need to worry. This online platform developed by an IIT Guwahati alumnus is here to clear all your doubts over Zoom calls free of cost over a span of 30 days. Founded in 2018 by Ravi Nishant, Edvizo, a Bengaluru-based start-up started this initiative on May 10 to help students aspiring to crack these entrances.
"When Union Human Resource Development Minister Ramesh Pokhriyal 'Nishank' had on May 5 announced July 18-23 as the dates for JEE Main and July 26 for NEET exams, we started getting a lot of requests to arrange doubt solving sessions from the students and parents who are registered on our platform. Many platforms provide free online courses during this crisis, and many students are catching the help of online content. Still, no one is there to clarify their uncertainties on time and at an affordable price, and we don't want the students to fear. So, we started a 30-day free doubt solving session to assist aspirants to cope with the abrupt closing of educational institutes in light of the ongoing crisis," explains Ravi.
Doubts are being cleared by IIT-JEE and AIIMS top rankers Monday to Saturday from 10 AM - 9 PM via Zoom. "Seeing the massive response from students, we have now onboarded 36 IIT-JEE and AIIMS top rankers to assist the aspirants. Our main objective is to ensure the students do not feel demotivated because of the lockdown. In this initiative, we have been focusing on 'real-time query resolution,' which a Google-KPMG report in 2017 said topped the problems for India's EdTech firms," he adds. These sessions are being conducted for a span of one hour for each subject. Aspirants can send in their doubts or queries via messages on the Edvizo Whatsapp number, or even as comments on Edvizo's official Facebook page regularly from 6 AM to 4 PM. Then these doubts are collated by their experts and spoken about during the Zoom sessions. In just a day after their launch, the team had received over 600 queries from more than 500 students. The response has been phenomenal, adds Ravi.
Edvizo is an online marketplace, which was set up as a platform to help students and parents find, compare and enrol in the best and trusted private institutes in their locality. At the same time, Edvizo also assists institutes in finding them the best students through their standardised testing 'NLCEE - One Nation, One Exam' model. "We have developed a platform where students and parents can check every detail of any coaching institute, including teachers' qualifications, their experiences, fee details, facilities available, previous result records, old students' reviews, etc. The central dogma we are currently trying to solve is getting complete and accurate information about any coaching institute in today's misleading branding and advertising era. In this scenario, choosing the right institution has become an excruciating task," says Ravi. Edvizo has team members from different IIT, IIM, NIT, AIIMS, and other reputed colleges.
Edvizo was launched on March 28, 2018, and since then they have registered more than 50,000 students from across India and tied up with more than 2,500 coaching institutes in five cities — Kota, Hyderabad, Pune, Patna and Guwahati. Edvizo's website and the mobile app does not charge anything from students or parents for the services and ensures to provide verified, accurate information about the institutes. Students who enrol through Edvizo in any institute can also avail a few features like discounts of up to Rs 15,000 while enrolling in any institute, can pay their institute's tuition fees monthly instead of paying in 1-2 instalments, free access to unlimited all India test series packages, view the current and old student experiences before enrolling in any institute and more.
"Most often, students get confused in selecting the best institute to prepare for their competitive entrance exams. Millions of students take help from private coaching institutes and tuitions, outside and parallel to the mainstream education system in India. This number is increasing since everyone is a smartphone user. They do much research sitting from home to find out the information online. In the past 7-8 years, I have seen a large number of students who end up choosing a career path not suitable due to a lack of awareness about different available career options. Even if the career option is quite clear to the student, then many students end up choosing an institute not able to manifest his/her potential, due to a choice decision based on un-authenticated and limited sources of information available. We try to provide a solution for this," says Ravi.
They also have mechanisms in place to verify the institutes that they take on board and feature on their website for students and parents to choose from. They verify all the data by making personal visits to the institute before it goes up on Edvizo. And, the most crucial part is that they keep updating the information every three months. "We allow only verified reviews, which means that students or parents reading it can rely on it for being genuine and, hence, making better decisions. Our standardised test 'NLCEE' saves time and money involved in appearing for different entrance exams conducted by various coaching," adds the founder.
Edvizo has plans to launch its services in other cities of India soon. "By 2021 end, our target is to enrol 1.5 lakh students through our platform," concludes Ravi.
