With educational institutions shut across the country owing to the COVID-19 pandemic, coaching institutes are also having a hard time coping with the new normal — shifting their regular classes and sessions online. This is where Mumbai-based start-up Classpro came into the picture.
Founded in 2011 by Jayesh Gopalan and two of his batchmates from Mumbai, Classpro was the first-ever company then to have come up with an online software for coaching classes management. With their new tool, coaching centres can teach their students online, share pre-recorded videos of lectures with students who might have internet issues while attending online classes, help students digitally submit their assignments, and also conduct exams online.
Classpro is a browser-based software and they have apps for both Android and iOS. "With COVID, everything shifted online - schools, coaching classes, everything is shut down. When the lockdown happened, we realised that we should come up with some kind of software to help them teach online. We noticed that the coaching industry struggled a lot with online technology, they tried platforms like Zoom, Google Meet, but couldn't manage. Classpro helps them with not just online classes but the entire life cycle," explains Jayesh.
Classpro caters to coaching institutes with at least more than 100 students. "We first provide these coaching classes with a trial run where a lot of handholding is done to make them understand the software, how it works. Once they want to opt for it then they can pay for it. No direct access to the software is given at first, we call and verify if it's genuine, we try to understand what they want, then a demo is provided. Following this, a 7-day trial is offered. We have a subscription model per student currently, as the number of students increases they pay us. It may start from Rs 50 per student," adds Jayesh.
Speaking about how they initially started Classpro, Jayesh recalls, "My co-founders and I were batchmates in college, pursuing a degree in IT when we started our own coaching centre where we began training students for the course, projects, subjects. We ran this for one and a half years. While running it, we realised that there are a lot of issues faced by us like managing collection of fees, tracking the enquiries and that's when we created our own software for managing these. Soon enough we thought, why not share it with others. We were the first company in 2011 to have online software to do all this - at that time most of the software was installed on desktops or computers."
Further, Jayesh wants to set up a platform that acts as a store where these coaching institutes can sell their courses, but the entire experience will be handled by Classpro. "We saw a lot of demand for a platform like ours during the pandemic, not just India but abroad. People want to conduct Spanish classes online, fitness classes on a live platform and other courses as such. We would want to facilitate that as well. But first, we need to raise more funds to keep our company afloat," he concludes.
