This edtech platform offers holistic learning through academics and extracurriculars
Ahmedabad-based Orphicy is an edtech startup with a unique Flipped Learning approach that addresses the academic, extracurricular and personality development needs of students.
Edtech may have been the biggest buzzword of 2021, but with a strong focus on academics, most edtech platforms do not address every aspect of a child’s development. This is where Ahmedabad-based steps in to provide a solution.
Founded by Vipul Tyagi, Ujjwal Nagar, Mukesh Pareek, and Arpit Mehta in June 2021, the platform promises holistic development of students by encouraging equal participation in academics, extra-curricular activities, and other aspects that children need to excel in today’s competitive environment.
“The curriculum at Orphicy is based on 360-degree learning. This ensures that students ace their exams while getting a healthy exposure to co-curricular activities. We celebrate each month with a theme-based competition and there are regular soft skills sessions as a part of the curriculum. We can say with pride that an Orphician stands apart from their peers in terms of communication and presentation skills,” explains Vipul in conversation with YSWeekender.
Team Orphicy
The story
Orphicy is the brainchild of four academicians with a cumulative academic experience of more than 50 years.
Ujjwal is an engineer by qualification. Previously, he built an organisation that raked in Rs 100 million annually by training students for management exams. He leads the marketing and branding initiatives at Orphicy. Vipul is a CAT faculty member and his role is to handle the curriculum design and execution. Mukesh holds an MBA and is a qualified company secretary, having worked with L’Oreal India before becoming an academician. He takes care of operations and content development at Orphicy. Arpit is a graphic designer by qualification but takes care of customer outreach and growth initiatives.
Their love of teaching and desire to disrupt the established system of education tied them together.
Vipul shares, “Orphicy as a brand stands for ‘Zimmedari’ – the responsibility of not just improving the students’ scores but also bringing a meaningful transformation in a student’s personality. After training graduation and post-graduation students for more than a decade and helping hundreds of students achieve their IIM dreams every year, we yearned for an opportunity to interact with students in their formative years and add greater value to their lives. We feel a personality and outlook change is possible only if we interact with kids much earlier. Orphicy is the result of this vision.”
In the next five years, they see their organisation becoming a ‘value for money’ coaching alternative. They hope to boast a student strength of 200,000 students by generating a revenue of more than Rs 600 crore in the next five years. By this time, they also hope to have an international strategy in place.
How it works
At Orphicy, textbook teaching happens in pre-class lectures. In-class sessions are reserved for active discussions, activity-based learning, and live quizzes. Post-class sessions are enriched with computer-adaptive tests and summary sheets for revision. The team believes these measures culminate in better learning outcomes.
“Orphicy is an edtech startup in the K-12 segment. Our pedagogy is built around the Flipped Learning approach which divides the entire learning process into pre-class, in-class, and post-class modules. We believe that the process of education involves two steps: one is the basic step of knowledge transfer, which conventionally takes up all the time and energy of a teacher, and the other, often ignored part, is of the conceptualisation of ideas and dialogue with students”, explain the founders.
The platform can be accessed on the internet and they also have an app that can be downloaded on Google Play Store and Apple App Store. Students enrol through the website orphicy.com or the number provided there.
Currently, their batches are made for students in classes IV-X in the age group 8-16 years. Catering to a pan-India clientele, the platform has students from 15 states of India. A few international students have also logged in through their free programme called the ‘Mini MBA for Teens’.
Orphicy’s flagship full-year study programmes prepare students for the school curriculum and to appear in competitive exams. Apart from these, the team lists out the following programs which are popular owing to their unique design and delivery:
a) Orphicy Aspire (Global): This soon to be launched programme has already gotten a large number of sign-ups. It will focus on a global curriculum and also prepare students for their SATs.
b) Orphicy Aspire (Public Sector): A unique weekend programme that acts as a foundation course for appearing in the competitive civil services exams (IAS, IPS) at a very young age.
c) Mini MBA for Teens: A week-long programme with a rigorous B-Plan competition in the end.
“Being teachers first and entrepreneurs next, we have always kept an element of giving back to the society built into our system. We run a separate batch called Orphicy Solutions where we provide free tuitions to needy students with perks similar to those of the batches paying full fees. We allow students to consume pre-recorded content for free on our app through ‘Orphicy Essentials’, through which they can study on their own. We also plan to design something especially for students from remote areas by collaborating with government schools but we are yet to work out the exact outline of the program,” says Vipul, explaining their CSR activities.
Growth in numbers
According to a report by Mumbai-based edtech-focused VC firm BLinC Invest, India’s online education market is expected to be worth more than $3.5 billion by 2022. Edtech offerings across grades I–XII are projected to increase 6.4x to create a $1.7 billion market by the end of next year, and overall, the edtech market is estimated to reach the $30 billion mark by 2030. This is perhaps the reason for the growth of Orphicy’s services since its inception.
Their initial investment of Rs 2 crore has been supplemented by an investment of Rs 2.5 crore in their first round of funding. The team intends to raise Rs 20 crore in the coming months, and is also in the process of growing its already 60-member strong team.
Vipul says, “Orphicy was incorporated in the month of September 2020 and we launched our live batches only in June 2021. We presently have 150 paid students registered with us for full-year programmes and the number of students who have attended our free programs and are a part of the active Orphicy student community is about 18,000. We are sure of reaching 1,000 enrolled paying students by the end of May 2022.”
When asked about their competition, the team highlights, “Orphicy as a brand stands apart because our model has a rate of high teacher intervention and regular mentoring. Our format gives equal importance to extra-curricular activities and personality development. Our monthly schedules include competitions like Ramanujan, Science Fair, Quizzards, Check Mate, etc. Our students from Tier II and Tier III have improved their scores by at least 15 percentage points or more.”
Next, they are dabbling in AR/VR, to attract younger kids in Grades I to IV, who respond well to gamified learning. They also plan to consolidate their presence in the four states of Gujarat, Maharashtra, Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh in the coming academic session. After this, they hope to target the Delhi-NCR area.
Edited by Kanishk Singh