After serving the education sector in US for more than 15 years, when Kiran J returned to India with his family, one of his key priorities was to look for a good school for his child.
Coming with rich expertise in the field, he had a clear set of expectations. Referred by friends and family, he visited several reputed schools in Hyderabad offering large campuses, air-conditioned classrooms, GPS tracking, high pass percentage and much more. But, what he was looking for and couldn’t find was a holistic and integrated approach to education that promotes better learning, better understanding of student behaviour, capabilities, and preferences and a stronger student teacher relationship and interaction, all that was possible today through an effective intervention of technology.
Expertise to business opportunity – The Journey
Identifying the opportunity, Kiran quickly put forth a proof of concept and presented it to the schools he visited. Many were impressed; a few thought it was futuristic, but for Kiran, with his passion to make an impact it was a great start to build a solution. Thus, was born Hyderabad based EdSense, an education management platform that integrates the entire ecosystem of education with the overall development of student as its primary focus. He was soon joined by Vijay Reddy, Sunil Sathyavolu and Vivek C, experts from varied sectors of technology industry, all equally passionate to be a part of the journey that could very well fuel the education growth engine in the coming years.
Speaking about the journey, Kiran says, “Today, students are getting bombarded with a lot of supplementary education material apart from classroom learning that teachers are not aware of. The main reason being the One-Size-Fit-All pedagogies followed by schools. Interestingly we have a world of high quality content available on the web and schools should be equipped to personalise and customize that content to match the skills, interests and capabilities of students. Schools should become the epitome of education and emphasize on overall development of the student. That is what EdSense brings to the table”.
EdSense connects schools/teachers, students and parents on a single platform and seamlessly integrates the existing B2C supplementary learning methods, digitized student records, effective teaching methodologies, Artificial Intelligence based learning and performance tracking, and more. As the team puts it –Ed Sense is an educational system that focuses on the unique combination of “Academics – Child preferences and psychology – Technology” to help the key stakeholders “School – Students – Parents”.
What makes EdSense stand out?
“We did extensive research on the Indian school systems, technologies and methodologies being used before coming up with our solution. Combining our expertise in technology and education, we developed a unique platform with features that help schools plan, define and implement a digital strategy to incorporate new ways of teaching and learning for today’s generation of learners, “says Kiran.
Some of the innovative offerings from EdSense include Student information system, Behavioural Tracking, Education management system, Personalised Learning with AI, Flipped Classroom Platform, Project based learning, Content Generator, Aggregator & Integrator and Online Assessment & Analytics Engine.
EdSense offers comprehensive 360o learner profiles not limited to academics but covering the entire gamut of academic performance, behavioural and personality skills, health and nutrition, strengths and areas of improvement, and, goals and interests. This helps teachers and parents to understand the academic and extracurricular preferences of the student thereby enabling the school to provide customised learning methodologies based on student’s preferences and skills.
Co-founder Sunil Satyavolu is excited about the immense possibilities that the platform can offer. “We have incorporated research-backed psychometric tests in the platform that builds a transferable digital record of the learner. We are enabling new teaching concepts like Flipped Classrooms and ‘Learn-from-one-another’ to help students have better control over learning, he says.
EdSense emphasizes the integral role played by teachers for the success of this ecosystem and have incorporated a continuous professional development programs for teachers. For parents, the system allows better involvement with child’s education and close collaboration with schools with EdSense’s constant smart parenting tips.
“All of this, with no software installation, no maintenance and no requirement for a computer. An innovative mobile app (patent pending) would cutdown on the time and burden of routine administrative work of the teacher significantly. Data always stays secure with industry-standards like FERPA and COPPA. The system is powered with cognitive services which helps every stakeholder of the system, Sunil adds.”
Short but sure steps to win the game
EdSense has received an excellent response from the target audience during the pilot phase. Twelve months into the journey, the team has better insights into the market demands and has transformed to focus more on the core offerings that are required.
At present, EdSense has presence in a few CBSE Schools in Hyderabad and Bengaluru and are making great progress in engaging with educational institutions and getting their buy-in on the benefits. With aggressive business expansion plans, team is fine tuning the platform stability, user experience and optimum adaptability to maximise the benefits for their customers.
Seed funding – Early success
Till now we were boo strapped and just couple of months before launching EdSense, we’ve successfully closed our first round of funding for a undisclosed amount from anAngel Investor.
This has been a truly adventurous year in so many ways: we’ve believed in our dream and are working for making it a reality. We started building EdSense and met several schools and educators, of course investors… every time we pitch EdSense there is a rise in our confidence levels. We’re a multidimensional dream team based out of Hyderabad.
This investment round will allow us to stay focused on our product development and aggressively execute our sales & marketing strategy.
As entrepreneurs, we’ve always believed in our venture and we work on making our vision a reality. And thanks to our rock-solid team who got EdSensed as much as we are, and our advisors, mentors and early customers. This really has been an incredible ride. We’re super excited for the road ahead and we’ll keep you posted on our developments along the way!
Zooming into the future
EdSense team is ready to go full steam ahead and discussions for long term business expansion geographically, and to different business verticals are in progress.
