Introduction
Covid 19 taught, not only India but the rest of the world, the application, integration, and importance of technology within the education sector. With education posing as the forefront of most Indian households, the opportunities which the Edtech industry has pronounced are clearly limitless. With companies like Coursera and Udemy, who have penetrated the market at a much earlier stage, have failed to become dynamic and hence are not able to meet the constantly developing needs of the Edtech industry which poses a huge scope of challenges that can be addressed by others.
Pre-recorded sessions are beginning to lose their charm due to their ineffectiveness of being able to change with time and updates regarding that specific topic. Live discussions, which were at the crux of physical learning have also completely evaporated through this format. As a result, a new system had to be put in place to address these problems and Cohort based learning was born.
This doesn’t mean that the Cohort based system does not have its own share of problems. It can be argued that this system has more issues to address than the Pre-recorded sessions, in terms of a structured model and technological infrastructure, but each of these difficulties are being solved by various platforms at a rapid pace. However, these solutions are spread out across various platforms and thus it becomes extremely tedious and expensive for an individual to host such courses.
Strive provides an all in one platform for Cohort based courses both from the perspective of the learner and teacher. Through the Strive platform, course curators can get access to all the tools necessary to create, promote, and manage their course structure and curriculum. By incorporating a unique drip module system, the learners are also more incentivised to complete their assignments and ultimately gain a great experience throughout the course.
Where it all begun
The journey of Strive began when all 3 co-founders, Pranav Shikarpur, Aseem Khanduja, and Kartik Mehrotra met ironically, at an online cohort based event in Bangalore. Kartik, who used to work for a consulting firm, began sharing his experiences of teaching Blockchain Technology at various offices of the firm spread across India and the ultimate benefits which cohort or live based sessions had over recorded classes or MOOCs which resonated with Aseem and Pranav as well. They realised that there was a gap in the market which had immense potential and as a result began building Strive to what it is today.
Market Opportunity
With companies like BJYU’s and Unacademy scaling the Edtech industry to new heights with both their valuations and acquisitions, it doesn’t come as a surprise to see this industry have a CAGR of 39% from 2020 to 2025. With a predicted worldwide market of 252 billion dollars and with the Indian landscape poised perfectly for the growth of this technology, the Indian Edtech space is set to be valued at roughly 30 billion dollars by 2024.
Within the Edtech industry, the Cohort based learning has a TAM of 8 billion dollars and with a current target segment of 1.5 million content creators with over 10,000 followers, the market potential for penetration is huge.
100X Thesis
Cohort based learning is a tricky problem to handle because it is difficult to design and implement a proper structure for various features such as - constant live sessions for the students, effective feedback mechanism, community activity to name a few. Due to these problems, cohort based content creators are only able to cater to a small number of students at a time which makes the value proposition for these creators not substantial enough. In addition to this, there is no single one-stop platform which can help the creators in providing tools for structuring the course and improving community building, creating a streamlined payment gateway, helping in promotions and marketing, etc.
We believe that Cohort based education is the future of Edtech and with Strive addressing the needs of both the learner and creator, a perfectly poised ecosystem can come to fruition in the near future. Strive also helps the creator in understanding the demands and needs of a specific course before launching which no other business is currently offering. By focusing on brand and community building, the overall learning experience is surely being benefited which ultimately leads to close-knit communities that share and learn together. Since the learning is done live, the personal connection among peers and between the teacher and student has increased manifold. With larger and established competitors having to spend significant levels of capital as well as having to pivot from their current business model to compete with Strive would pose a significant moat for the company.
Conclusion
With a perfect blend of experience, knowledge, and drive for creating a difference in the world, 100X.VC believes that Strive has what it takes to stand-out in the highly competitive Edtech space. Based on their focus of improving the current status of cohort based education from both ends of the spectrum, a new genre of creators, students and learning experiences will slowly but surely be born and with Kartik, Aseem and Pranav heading this growth, we definitely believe in their goal and wish them the very best of luck!
