Serial entrepreneur starts edutech platform for Fatafat learning
In a space that sees a new startup in almost everyday, creating a differentiator is very difficult. This is especially true in the case of edutech startups. However, LearnFatafat claims to have brought in that differentiation. As the name suggests, LearnFatafat provides three- to five- minute videos on any concept, for it to be understood quickly.
"We launched our beta site a month back, with a pilot course for CBSE class 10. We plan to add many more courses in the coming year, for all classes and for all boards," says Pankaj Chhajed, Founder and CEO, LearnFatafat.
The time spent
Pankaj adds that, in one year, a student spends close to 1100 hours studying. This increases to close to 3000 hours in 10th and 12th standard. Close to 60 per cent of this time is spent on reading textbooks. "LearnFatafat covers all lessons in textbooks. So with LearnFatafat videos, student can reduce this time by upto 90 per cent," says Pankaj.
He adds that while other courses do offer videos, they're lengthy, unlike the videos at LearnFatafat. Before starting LearnFatafat, Pankaj started SDLC Services, four years back. It provides business analysis services to clients in the US. SDLC succeeded in expanding team size, scaling services, and also completed over 300 projects. "But I always wanted to start a new product," says Pankaj.
The genesis
A few months ago, his neighbour faced difficulty in understanding a topic, so she approached him. Pankaj took some time to understand the topic himself, and then explained it to her in about five minutes. "This triggered my thought process. I could not sleep all the night, thinking that there was something to this, something that could be served to the masses," adds Pankaj.
For the next few days, he contemplated various options and various solutions. Pankaj did some competitive analysis and then realised that there is a gap between what a student needs and what has been provided.
He says that the tuition system is teacher-driven, and that many times, it is difficult to find a good teacher. It got him thinking: why couldn't people in small cities learn from best-in-class lessons? "That's the need we are serving by providing quality education to all students across India," says Pankaj.
The concept, he says, is very simple; break any lesson into various topics and provide five minutes of explanation for each. "To validate my idea, we made some sample videos, and showed them to students who were unaware of the topic. The students understood most of the topics with a single view, and the idea worked out very well," says Pankaj.
Team and development
Backed by a strong in-house team, and supported by a developer friend, Senthil Kumar Bhaskaran, LearnFatafat was made live. The team has completed close to 300 short videos for the pilot. The team says they have a strong process for translating concepts into videos, and a tough review process. Each video has been passed through different test parameters, thus giving one of the best quality online educations.
LearnFatafat in its beta version is free till 30th August. To access the full course, the team has a paid subscription model in place. They're also planning to launch subject wise subscription. The team is currently bootstrapped and is looking for funding.
India’s education sector is pegged at over USD 60 billion. The market size in itself has attracted several players like Vedantu, Tutor Vista, Xamcheck, among others. "At present, we are targeting all school education and curriculums. But the market is so big that there are many opportunities outside school education, like professional courses, test preparation, competitive exams, technical courses and so on," adds Pankaj.