Delhi-based Eupheus Learning is an education technology firm aiming to bridge the gap between in-class and at-home learning by offering pedagogically differentiated, technology-led solutions in the K–12 space. The company aims to reach 10 million kids in India through its curriculum and specially curated educational offerings in Kinaesthetic Learning, Reading Enhancement, STEM/STEAM, and English language learning via exclusive tie-ups with award-winning education technology companies from across the world.
The company’s primary objective is to bridge the gap between what is taught in-class using institutional textbook driven solutions and retail at-home learning providers by seamlessly integrating both. To better understand what they do and how they do it, we spoke to Sarvesh Shrivastava and Amit Kapoor, founders of Eupheus Learning. Here is an excerpt from the interview.
Tell us about Eupheus Learning. What does it do?
Eupheus was incepted to address the two anomalies of the Indian education system. The first is a lack of solution provider that addresses both the classroom learning as well as home learning needs. This creates a disparity for a child because the child goes to school and is taught a particular subject in a particular way whereas the same subject is taught at home in a different way.
At Eupheus, we provide an end-to-end solution which not only addresses the classroom needs but also addresses the home learning needs by eliminating inconsistencies in pedagogies and levels between classroom and home learning.
Secondly, there is a total absence of technology and content aggregators in India’s education ecosystem, i.e. like a Netflix in education that offers technology and content which is not just organically created in the company but also aggregated from outside to address different pedagogical needs, as well as different levels that are required for learning. At Eupheus, we are not just creating our own content but we are also curating a solution.
How do you do that?
Since the child always tries to pick up what he has been taught in the classroom, we have come up with solutions like textbooks and various other integrated solutions that enable a student to learn and understand what is being taught. So what we do is we take care of all the stake holders, which is the teacher, parent and the student. The intent is if we can do that in grade 1-5, then by the time they reach grade 9 or 10, there will be lesser need for rote learning. That is one reason why we are heavily focused on pre-primary-grade 5.
If you can make the subject more engaging then kids can have better conceptual clarity and therefore, lesser need for rote learning in higher classes.
For example, if you want to learn English, you will have to learn four skills – listening, reading, writing and speaking. Not all skills can be addressed through the textbook. So we need to have digital intervention for addressing some of the requirements to meet their particular skill level, which is required as far as learning outcome is concerned. To do that, we aggregate the best of breed solutions from across the world to bring to the Indian market the solutions which addresses these needs the best. So, to help kids develop their speaking and listening skills, we have a language lab that is brought from Sanako – a Finnish company that is a world leader in language lab.
For teaching Mathematics, we have a Singapore-based partner called Koobits – a gamifying platform to learn maths based on the Singapore bar model pedagogy. So we have 17 international partners today from all across the globe and these are exclusive partnerships for the Indian subcontinent for 5-7 years.
What is your model for sustainability?
We have a 130-member sales team today spread across 70 cities countrywide. They are the brand ambassadors, who go to respective schools and decision makers, talk about the solutions and give demos. The school would opt for a solution after doing the due-diligence in form of comparing it with what they are using currently, or what their needs are. They would ask for a detailed demo or give a presentation to the teachers, do a pilot or workshops. So the teachers are aware about the advantages and how easy they are. Because the biggest resistance otherwise, would be “you are increasing my workload.” So if it helps me as a teacher, then I would be very happy to look at a solution. That’s the intent when we are creating a solution, rather than asking them to change it fundamentally. How can it save their time? For example, if a teacher uses ‘automated checking of essays’, then she can spend more time on giving feedback. Our solution would say, “Hey, 10 of your kids’ introductions are really bad, you have to do this.” For 20 others, it could be, “Hey, your body is hay-wired.” Now think, if that kind of analytics is available then we are helping both the student and the teacher. Otherwise what happens is you’ll just get a score. Period. This is what we are trying to address and so far we have been able to get around 4000 schools to work with us in less than two years.
What is the price of the learning solutions?
On the curricular side, we would be as competitive as any legacy player. So it could be between Rs. 200/- to 400/- per student per subject. However, for any of these supplemental subject solutions, it could anywhere between Rs. 300/- to 2000/-.
Do you also offer these programmes for underprivileged kids?
Not yet. As of now, we are only focusing on the top 25000 private English medium schools affiliated to CBSE and ICSE. That’s where we are focused for the next couple of years. Because once you have that, morphing the same programme for the budget schools/ public schools, would be much easier because each region also has its own dynamics. Also, we need to be mindful of infrastructure availability – a crucial deciding factor when it comes to implementing our solutions in a given school.
Manoj Joshi