Edtech startup Vedantu focuses on K-12 as it eyes ’aggressive expansion’ to increase reach

Vamsi Krishna, CEO and Co-founder of Bengaluru-based online e-learning platform Vedantu, believes that the rise of the online learning model in recent times has made high-quality teachers and content accessible to people.

“The pandemic accelerated the shift to an online mode and led to huge growth for the edtech segment. A combination of things has really increased activity in the sector,” he says.

Vamsi shares that Vedantu was seeing year-on-year growth of 2.3-3X in 2019 – this jumped 5X in 2020. In 2021, the edtech startup is witnessing 4X year-on-year growth. Vedantu’s topline run rate is $65 million at the moment and their target is to increase that figure to $200 million by next year.

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He adds that the current focus is on increasing the reach of the company. At present, 35 million students access the platform. Vedantu has its own YouTube channel and other alternate access channels, which grew substantially over the years, and is aiming to be overall profitable in the next 15-18 months.

Vedantu recently acquired AI-enabled learning startup Pedagogy, the second acquisition for the company. Pedagogy provides access to standard books and has created a platform for offline publishers to put their content online and allow students to access those in one location. “They not only provide access to content but also convert content into an easily consumable form. Millions of students on Vedantu use the Pedagogy platform.”

“We are constantly thinking of ways in which we can help our students gain access and consume content in an easy way,” Vamsi says.

According to Vamsi, it is way too early to gauge the success of online education in India. The category has “massive potential”, but has not been penetrated well.

Focus on K-12

Vedantu, as a company, is focusing on K-12 as a category as it has huge scope. Apart from that, it has always focused on student experience and learning outcomes. “These are the pillars on which we are going to focus on and invest substantially in future,” Vamsi says.

The edtech startup is open to the idea of fundraising and aims to double down on expansion in terms of categories. Last year, it launched the early years category, which grew massively in one year and now contributes to 15 percent of the company’s revenues. Plans are afoot to launch new categories such as ‘state boards’ or ‘lower grades’.

“We are going to be very aggressive in our K-12 expansion as this is an area that we really want to dominate,” Vamsi says.