Up To Grade

Online edutech startup Gradeup is trying to carve a niche by focussing on undergrad and graduate students

- Rajiv Singh

Attending Parent-Teacher Meetings (PTM) was a dreaded affair for Shruti Shukla, though she had endured them without a quibble for a decade when her son was in school. At another such meeting in early October, the 45-year-old, who is a chartered accountant with an MNC in Gurugram, hoped against hope that she would not have to hear a recurring snub that often came her way from teachers who did not rate her child highly: That her son Rohit—now 23, and preparing for the Graduate Aptitude Test in Engineering (GATE)—was “good for nothing”.

The online PTM started at 10 am, only to surprise Shukla with the news that her son had scored a distinction in most of his mock examinations. The voice at the other end, that of a teacher from online ed-tech startup Gradeup, further informed that Rohit’s chances of clearing GATE were high. As she accessed the online report card, Shukla could not have been happier.

An online PTM for undergrads is one of the ways in which Gradeup is trying to stand out in a cluttered online edu-tech market and an unorganized offline market dominated by mom-and-pop coaching centers. Other differentiation strategies include online live classes, regular intensive mock tests, student feedback about the teachers and a team that closely tracks the progress of every enrolled online student.