Bengaluru-based startup FlipClass is an online marketplace for tutors

While we’ve been hearing about e-learning for some time now, its m-education that is slowly yet steadily setting foot into the Indian market. With the growing affinity of kids towards mobile devices and the large market offering devices specifically designed for children, m-education is likely to be the next game changer. This isn’t a very crowded space, but there are enough competitors, and one such is Bangalore-based startup FlipClass. FlipClass is a marketplace for tutors. So, parents can register on its website and look for tutors for K-12 students, various entrance exams such as JEE, AIEEE and so on, for both home and online learning. In February, it also launched a new FlipTutor app that allows instant communication with the FlipClass teachers so that their queries can be answered in real time. It could be really handy in tier 2 and tier 3 cities, wherein students don’t have easy access getting their queries answered by subject matter experts, claims the startup. It has a Whatsapp-like interface that makes it easy for both students and parents. FlipClass was founded by Vineet Dwivedi, an IIT-Kanpur and IIM-Bangalore alumna. It was his ordeal to find a tutor for his 11 year old son appearing for Maths Olympiad that led to creating FlipClass. “It was in 2013, I was looking for a Maths tutor for my 11 years old son as he was to appear for the Maths Olympiad. But to my dismay, I found the task extremely exhausting and fruitless. No one could refer me to a tutor who was not just well versed with the subject but also excelled in communication. Even if someone would claim to possess both the qualities, they were either beyond my affordability or they proved me totally wrong when they started tutoring,” Dwivedi tells us. Currently, it’s a 40 member team situated across Bangalore, Delhi and Hyderabad catering to over 4200 students with 11,000 teachers onboard. He further tells us that FlipClass has a stringent filtering process to ensure that only the best tutors get onboard. “We do comprehensive screening of tutors for subject knowledge as well as teaching abilities. Our tutors follow a unique assessment platform and monitoring technology through our in-house built assessment platforms like FlipLearn,” he said. FlipClass recently raised funding of $1 million from Blume Ventures and S Chand & Co. It makes money via revenue sharing with tutors. The payment is made directly to FlipClass and after completing pre-decided hours of teaching, a part is paid to the tutor, he tells us. Moreover, the FlipTutor app that achieved over 40,000 downloads within a month needs certain virtual points to get the queries answered, and on exhausting them, one has to pay and buy more. By the end of 2016, FlipClass expects student enrolment to cross the 20,000 mark and get more than 30,000 tutors onboard. It aims to touch 100 million users before the end of this year.