How this English learning app crossed 70K downloads in two months
Kings Learning, a Bangalore-based startup which provides English language training to Indian students and professionals is scaling new heights in this segment. Launched in late April this year, Kings Learning’s first e-learning mobile app, enguru: Learn Spoken English has amassed over 70, 000 downloads from the Google Playstore. The footprint on the platform is continuously rising with over 1000 downloads every day. Kings Colleges, a UK-based institution, providing university preparatory courses and English language training, has a minority stake in this startup.
The enguru app is based on games which give employability-related educational experience. It follows the story of a shop assistant working his way up the corporate ladder, featuring realistic interactive workplace conversation scenarios and informative training exercises.
As a character in the game a user goes through realistic conversations with customers, colleagues, and managers (with language training sessions included between the conversations) to help them improve their language skills. With this interactive learning game, you build your career in a retail scenario by learning and improving your English.
“The focus of enguru is to help people practice conversational English in a workplace setting. It caters to students and young adults who require English in order to excel at their jobs, or even just require using English socially. There are other apps that focus on teaching English from the basics, but none of them focus on conversational English practice in the manner that we do,” says Arshan Vakil, Co-founder, KingsLearning.
Arshan adds that enguru has been developed completely in-house. The app content comes from the combined learnings of its teachers and program directors who are teaching the target audience on a daily basis, and hence, able to relate to and create the most appropriate content.
The startup claims that enguru has approached the language app space from a completely different angle from any of the other players in the market. In this learning app, the entire delivery is in a game format, which keeps the users engaged. Besides, it is addressing the issue of poor spoken English and communication skills in young adults by focusing on conversational scenarios.
Increasing employability
Kings Learning also aims to address the employability issue - owing to poor English language and communication skills.
Launched in February, 2014, Kings Learning, the offline platform, has trained over 7000 students in eight different cities across India. The online platform has also received a good response.
“In association with colleges, corporates, and independent language schools, we run traditional brick-and-mortar high-quality classes around the country. The launch of the enguru app is an extension of this service to anyone with a Smartphone. Through enguru we aim to help students and young adults practice conversational English, and experience real world workplace and social situations through a fun interactive game,” says Arshan.
Enguru 2.0
Enguru is completely free; with no ads on its platform. It is currently looking for more downloads, raising traction of the platform, and the market sustainability. So far, it is satisfied with the response. It claims to have a high usage rate, a low uninstall rate, and positive reviews on Google Playstore.
“We are now focusing on the enguru 2.0 update in September, which will have an overarching general English title that will be available in Malayalam, Tamil, Kannada, Hindi and Arabic. The general English title will enable users to learn English from the rudimentary level. It will also include industry-specific interactive stories such as English for the Hospitality Industry and BPOs,” says Arshan.
Taking-on the challenge
One of the biggest issues that language apps face is the retention of its users. Enguru is trying to solve this problem by formulating an extremely interactive and engaging approach to language apps.
The other established players in the language app segment pose a serious challenge – in the form of competition. There are a few big players on the global scale; and some emerging local players as well.
“From the point of view of our business model, the combining of traditional offline classroom teaching with our mobile app is different from any other player. The synergies are very strong and there is the added advantage of actual cash flows from the offline business. This will allow us to scale efficiently and sustainably. Additionally, we are able to test and get feedback from our students. This feedback, together with our experience in teaching, has enabled us to create an app that stays true to the ethos of learning English,” says Arshan.