What demonetization did to the fintech, COVID-19 has done to the edtech, which has taken the world by storm by becoming one of the biggest beneficiaries of the pandemic. While our conventional education system seems to have taken a back seat due to the closure of schools and colleges since mid-March, the edtech sector has grown at a breakneck pace in 2020. Homegrown Fliplearn is one such platform that has made its presence felt in this time of crisis by offering anytime access, personalized dashboards, board mapped content, 2D & 3D videos, gamified quizzes, tests, and assignments at an affordable price. The award-winning e-learning platform is designed to supplement a child’s learning with the help of fun and interactive digital content that has been mapped to all major education boards in India. Ramesh Kumar Raja talked to Divya Lal, Managing Director, Fliplearn Education, to understand how e-learning is becoming the order of the day and what’s in store for Fliplearn to take online education to the next level in India. Excerpts:

The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has given an opportunity for edtech platforms to flourish? How do you look at this trend?

The pandemic has accelerated the adoption of digital technology in education globally. However, the rate of acceleration could well be among the highest in India where we may look back at this period and realize that digital education advanced years in mere months. The COVID-19 crisis has indeed turned out to be an amazing opportunity for edtech to take strong root and widen its reach in the education sector, which while being cognizant of its benefits, was slow in adoption. The entire education sector in the country sprung into action and had to overnight adapt themselves to using some of the other remote learning techniques. Many online platforms stepped forward with solutions to try and ensure that the impact of school closure was considerably minimized on children’s academics and their future. The edtech platforms like Fliplearn are ensuring that schools make/made a seamless shift to online classes to continue the teaching-learning process from where they left it at the start of the lockdown. Thanks to this, majority of school students will not end up losing their academic year due to the pandemic.

Digital learning is an evolving space and as an industry has changed, and we can observe some key trends that have already begun to emerge. Digital learning has become easier to learn from world-class experts and has become more optimized. Students are getting the right content in the right form. Also, depending on the capability of the students, the students are getting personalized individual attention from the mentor/teachers or experts.

What makes Fliplearn unique in a hyper-competitive market like India? Please tell us about its USPs.

Fliplearn Edge is not simply student-focused like other prominent digital learning apps in the market, but focused on the needs of each stakeholder in the K-12 space. Our offering is unique and our product features are differentiated.

Our comprehensive platform has been intuitively addressing most of the challenges schools are facing in these times. No surprise then that just in the last 120 days, we have added over 200 schools and onboarded more than 10,000 teachers on our platform. This has benefited more than 2 lakh students.

Our main objective is to ensure that as many schools as possible are supported in these challenging times in providing uninterrupted learning to their students and that their teachers have access to the best tools for conducting effective online classes where teaching and assessments are not hampered in any way. We also believe in high-quality learning access for everyone and our USP is also our ability to bring all stakeholders together on a single platform – school, teachers, students and parents.

How user-friendly is Fliplearn?

Fliplearn is an extremely user-friendly e-learning platform and students get a personalized learning experience as it allows students to learn at their own individual pace. Also, it makes learning easy as it has an integrated home-classroom learning experience. Simplicity, adaptive, personalized are the core values which Fliplearn platform personifies. Intuitive interface makes it seamless to adapt to the Fliplearn learning platform for the students and teachers community without much of an effort. Comprehensiveness of the 2D/3D content makes it a great learning experience for anyone using Fliplearn.

Fliplearn tools have been curated to give schools and teachers complete control of their students’ learning and offer a fun and interactive learning experience. Fliplearn Edge enables teachers to upload videos, photos, or content at will while allowing for individual innovation and creativity. Teachers can also create question papers through an inbuilt bank with each question allowing a pre-set flexible format for answers – objective type, short answer type, or long answer type.

Fliplearn Edge has phenomenally enhanced the productivity of the teachers as it offers them well-designed practice assignments, reliable question banks to create the assessments and quizzes in a jiffy on each topic irrelevant of grade. A comprehensive report of any number of students can be generated and shared in one click saving a lot of time and effort. All of this allows teachers to give personalized attention to students.

So, be it learning videos, quizzes, assessment, tests – Fliplearn Edge platform covers the entire spectrum of learning for K-12 education.

Is it totally chargeable or also has free-of-cost solutions?

The pandemic has posed major challenges for schools and parents. Fund and resource crunch has been a key challenge. Seeing the challenges many schools are today facing in transforming from physical to digital, we have recently taken a step forward and waived off the subscription fee for Fliplearn Edge, Prime Learning System for schools across India till March 2022. This is our way of ensuring students have uninterrupted access to learning and schools make the digital transition as smoothly as possible. Our Fliplearn Prime app directed to students has also been very aggressively priced to meet the needs of parents looking for quality content and affordable app for their children to supplement their classroom learning.

How many installs are there on Google Play and App Store?

Fliplearn is available on Google Play with 146K installs as well as on iOS with 30K installs.

What are the exams and boards that Fliplearn caters to? What is the language curriculum available?

Fliplearn is mapped to all major education boards across India i.e. CBSE, ICSE, State Boards, and National Institute of Open Schooling etc. The platform caters to 12+ boards.

We cover a majority of subjects that includes languages as well. Though, we do not necessarily have a third language curriculum. The primary medium used is English. We have hundred thousands of videos available across the various curriculum followed in the country.

Do you also provide video conferencing?

Yes, Fliplearn provides a live video conferencing facility for students and teachers.

How do you manage data and ensure its security from any sort of fraud?

Fliplearn is an encrypted platform and schools have complete control over those who wish to log in. Also, a full charge of the admin dashboard is provided and there is tight security. We haven’t had a single breach issue since we have launched. Regular VA and PT scans make the system very robust for a shield against any user coming with malicious intent.

Do you have any expansion plan to make this application accessible to other countries?

Currently, we are focused on building our presence in the Indian market and catering to Indian schools. We have curated content for the Indian K-12 space. However, in the future, we are open to explore in other countries as well.

What’s your comment on the poor internet connectivity that plays spoilsport in many parts of India?

E-learning has emerged as the ‘new normal’ in the current times of pandemic, but it has also brought focus on the many challenges in the Indian education space. Poor internet connectivity is one of the key concerns for the education sector in India. Today, the internet is the main fuel of online learning and with poor connectivity in remote areas, it is difficult for students, schools, parents and teachers to continue learning smoothly.

However, we are seeing efforts from the government in alleviating the situation, by trying to ensure good connectivity in remote areas. It is a long process but we do believe that the pandemic and the urgent need for digital education will certainly push this process forward.

Also, we at Fliplearn are continuously working hard to make our system easily accessible at low internet bandwidth. Any students can access to Fliplearn platform with a 2G network from any remote areas.

What are your expectations from the imminent 5G telecom network?

We would like to see that the 5G network is made available quickly, not just in tier-I and tier-II cities but also in remote areas where it is most needed and where it will make the biggest difference. Availability of 5G network in remote areas will not only help the education sector but will also help truly bring about India’s digital transformation.

Also, our hope is that it will be made available at an affordable price point and easily accessible so that the lower strata of the society can also be part of the development being brought about in the digital economy.