Helping parents monitor their children better

Families have transformed into nuclear with both parents earning for a livelihood. This has left them with less time to dedicate for their children.

But Itsmytutor, a Hyderabad-startup, is trying to change this by enabling parents to guide their children virtually and keep a vigil on them during after school activities.

Launched in July 2018 by Uday Kondle and Konakalla Sai Sateesh, the startup is dedicated local search engine for after-school activities with daily tracking mechanism. The edtech startup is flagship of their firm Student Teacher Network India (STNI) Services Private Limited.

An aeronautical engineer by profession, Uday Kondle was also into home tutoring when he had free time. The idea for the innovative startup germinated from his experience as a home tutor.

In collaboration with Konakalla Sai Sateesh, founder of Sateesh Academy, he transformed his idea into an after-school online marketplace for parents, tutors and after-school institutes.

Initially, the B2C platform catered to parents with private tutors. After some time down the line, Itsmytutor rolled out two mobile applications for parents and the home tutors.

In a period of six months, the platform witnessed 4,000 sign-ins from private tutors.

Gradually, the startup developed B2B model, and launched a third mobile application for after-school institutes in Hyderabad like the hobby classes, tuition centres, fitness centres etc.

"Available under 20 different categories, after-school activities in India are estimated to be around $3 billion in India. This completely unorganised segment, has around 25,000 such institutions in Hyderabad.

Every player present in the edtech space is into providing leads only. We are the only startup to come with tracking option," says Founder and CEO Uday Kondle.

Through a free mobile app of Itsmytutor, parents can search for institutes, admit their child via app, pay though payment gateway, track and provide feedback.

Under tracking service, they get real time notification of the class timings if the student was present or absent for the after-school activity, the subjects taught in the class, the payment to be made and due dates, number of classes conducted, etc.

For the institutes partnering with Itsmytutor, they get an institute management software, logo and co-branding with Itsmytutor.

Under the software, services like fee management, lead generation, employee management, etc, is available to digitalise the institute and go paperless.

In a period of three months, the startup has on boarded 250 institutes and 1,500 parents have downloaded its app. While private tutors are charged on lead basis, the institutes have to pay a fee of Rs 10,000 for a year, on subscription basis.

"These institutes having a student size of around 30, are not in a position to buy their own software, which costs above Rs 50,000 to Rs 1 lakh for a year. We provide the software at a very low cost which is less than one students fee," adds Kondle.

The founder has plans to launch a solution for primary schools in the first half of 2020. "Going ahead, the app will act like an advertising platform as schools looking to place an ad will be able to find their dedicated customers - parents - on our platform," he says.

The startup has several expansion plans. By January 2020, Itsmytutor will have a dedicated payment wallet. By end of 2020, they target to bring 8,000 institutes on the platform and one lakh users.

"Imagine if our one lakh users transact nearly Rs 10,000 per month as payment towards fees to these institutes or tutor. This means Rs one billion will be paid through our platform.

This is the potential we are looking forward to achieving with Itsmytutor. Hence, we will soon be introducing a wallet which will come with cashback and other offers," he said.

But, how will Itsmytutor take on startup unicorns like Byju's and Toppr? For this, Kondle says, "we did a research to find out if parents are getting their children back to tuition institutes after having subscribed for Byju's.

We found out that retention rate and second time payment to update the subscription is missing in Byju's users, as parents have found out that the videos are for one time use and getting back with doubts related to the video is difficult."

He further says, "Indian parents' mindset is that they want their children to be monitored personally, and if these Byju's learners had the self-interest to learn through videos, wouldn't they do that at school itself," he adds.

Itsmytutor has a headcount of 24 direct employees, consisting of developing team, customer support, business development, and digital marketing team. At present, the startup is operating in Hyderabad only. But by mid-2020, it looks to enter Pune, Vijayawada, Warangal, Tirupati, Surat and few other non-metro cities.

To scale up, the founders plan to raise funds to the tune of Rs 10-15 crore. In January 2019, they raised Rs 50 lakh from two individual angel investors.

For the next one year's operation expense, discussions are under underway to raise Rs 3 crore.

As the software provided to institutes is given on a trial period for three months, the startup has generated Rs 6 lakh in revenue, from two months.

However, they have an offer period, wherein the institute can get the software free for 100 days on a payment of Rs 10,000, post the offer period the subscription fee for a year is Rs 20,000.

The founder's vision is to continue expansion as every unique product takes time to be adopted.

Saying that the startup has a unique business model which can't be replicated, Kondle foresees scope of growth till the next 10 years and beyond as there will be exponential growth in number of working couples.

Itsmytutor is the platform which will attract daily usage by users as every Indian parent wants to fill the void of not being present with their children, he concludes.