Online Tutoring In India Beginning To Take Off In A Big Way!

Knowledge commands, and knowledge is power, is what we all know. Online tutoring is starting to take off in a big way these days. Many online portals are starting to offer educational support to students which has further lead to a win-win situation for students, teachers and parents of students who are working for such portals.

Extramarks.com Private Limited is a Delhi-based call centre which caters to NCERT course related queries of students from standards 6th to 12th. Registration is free for all students, teachers as well as parents of students. Registered users can access the community online to ask queries and share concerns with all other members. Expert teachers hired by these portals reply back with answers to questions of these students. Extramarks is planning it operations across the US and UK within the next six months, and has many other plans as well.

There is another example of an online education provider listed on the stock market which has now evolved into a giant online education service provider. Educomp Solutions is a leading online education provider and has approximately 3.6 million users across India, Singapore and the US. Educomp had launched its online learning initiatives in July 2006 through Mathguru and students have to pay approximately Rs 2,000/-. We had even blogged about mathguru during the time of its launch.

Shantanu Prakash, CEO, Educomp India Private Limited was quoted by Hindustan Times as saying:

“We have 15,000 registered users on Mathguru and are expecting the number to reach 25,000 by March 2008,”.

Meanwhile, Anjali Saxena, Teacher – Noida’s Amity International School says:

“Online assistance for studies is a very good initiative. It will help a student do self-study and get online help as and when queries arise as compared with a coaching class where one has to study as decided by the tutor. However, one should make sure that the teachers involved are subject specific and well qualified.”

Online tutoring in India seems to be a good proposition as Indian students are internet savvy though online tutoring can become a big distraction to kids of age 12-18 years as the risks of students visiting porn websites on the pretext of studies will certainly be a disadvantage. Parents will have to regularly monitor the internet activity of their kids. For teachers, this is a very good opportunity as the payment scales range from 12,000 – 22,000 rupees depending upon expertise. For parents, they can save money as these services are cheaper than hiring a tutor offline though parents will have to give time to their children more often than not in this case. In any case, hiring a tutor offline for students will always remain as a good choice over online tutoring through expert teachers as students require one-on-one coaching. Still, there is plenty of scope for online education service providers and online tutoring services to capture the tutoring market in India as their online service models are known to be quick, qualitative and cost-effective as of now.