Business Wire IndiaIndia is among the youngest nations in the world today with more than 50% of its population under 25 years of age. It is this population which is driving aspirations in the country. The youth of today seeks the best for itself, in terms of careers and colleges. A significant proportion of this demography is imagining itself as successful doctors and engineers of tomorrow, aspiring for admission in nothing short of the top colleges of the country.
The road to these top colleges, however, is paved with competitions of varying degrees. In 2018, around 13 lakh students appeared for the NEET exam and 12 lakh for JEE. These are staggering figures. In order to remain on top of such heavy-duty peer competition, students take recourse to coaching centres, which have mushroomed in all nooks and corners of several major cities. Many of these centres employ age-old, chalkboard pedagogy. Whereas, others fail to deliver learning resources matching the demands of students and of the relevant exam.
Enter Extramarks. The leading edtech company has had a successful journey creating innovative, curriculum mapped learning solutions for the K-12 segment. Their visually engaging modules are being accessed by millions of students and are present in over 8000 schools. Extramarks also has several apps for the K-12 and Test Prep segments, with the K-12 learning app and the IIT JEE Test Prep App being the most popular.
Now, this game changer has also started causing ripples of disruption in the coaching industry. It launched its coaching vertical - the Extramarks Smart Coaching Centers (EMSCC) - about a year ago. The key differentiating factor these coaching centres promise is a blended learning approach, which integrates cutting-edge technology within classrooms led by top faculty with proven track records, pan-India. EMSCC provides coaching for JEE, NEET and Foundation courses.
"Extramarks Smart Coaching Centers are the present and future of the coaching industry. Through the use of technology, we have built these coaching centres as collaborative hotspots of learning, where students, teachers and even the parents are brought together on one platform to ensure seamless flow of information between them. We have also worked hard to recruit only the best experts from across the country to lead our centres, giving our students the best of everything," shares Atul Kulshrestha, Founder and CMD, Extramarks Education.
The revolutionary 'Total Learning' innovation is what empowers the collaborative environment of learning in the Extramarks Smart Coaching Centers. This platform connects students, teachers and parents by keeping them updated with regular information on student's performance, tests, due assignments and reports. Such an environment helps enable informed interventions in student's learning. EMSCC students can also access all the learning material that is discussed in classrooms through a tablet, thus ensuring continuity for self-study after classes.
As of today, EMSCC has already mentored 15,000 + students in its 20 centres present in 17 cities. The boon of technology is that it helps standardize learning systems across the country. So, whether a student is studying in the Jaipur centre, or Chennai centre, or even, say the Shimoga centre, the same learning content, tests and schedules will apply to all. Extramarks has a centralized research and development team working on preparing learning material and modules, validated by experts, which is made available to all.
Atul further adds, "Technology is the great equalizer of our times. No student in any corner of the country can any longer be deprived of quality education and equal opportunity to excel in a career of their choice. We are also innovating newer ways to ensure the same. For example, we will soon be making our classroom lectures digitally accessible, such that students in cities where our centres are not present can still benefit from Extramarks pedagogy."
Extramarks also claims to use intelligence-backed data, with deep student performance analysis, to chart custom learning journeys for the aspirants. These reports contain information on strength and gap areas, thus determining the direction one's preparation must take.
Talking specifically about the IIT-JEE segment, the NTA has initiated a completely digitalized format for conducting the Joint Entrance Exam. Responding quick to this update, Extramarks has introduced a new feature in their test prep segment - the National Level Weekly Test series. Once each week, now, the aspirants are put through a pan-India test which simulates the exam's environment, thus helping assess the level of preparation better. In addition, peer ranks are generated after this test which makes Extramarks' competitive exam preparation national, instead of being local.
These technological interventions are carefully guided and facilitated by the 265 faculty members associated with EMSCC. Each of them has a proven track record of churning out top ranks in major engineering and medical competitive examinations. It can safely be said that Extramarks is trying to build holistic centres of learning which blend the best of both traditional and modern state-of-the-art technology along with the human mentorship necessary for nurturing brilliance and ensuring exam success.
