YesGuruJi for inclusive education

Problem: 

Infrastructure for education-delivery lacks by 30% (KPMG-2019 study) in the state of Uttar Pradesh (population~2/3 of entire US).

UP is merely ONE (of NINE) states that administer their 10th-12th grade examinations in Hindi. 15M students overall take annual exams in Hindi, (6.6M girls). They form the poorest sections, with lowest development-indicators including skewed sex-ratios and abysmal girl-education; unfair means are used widely to clear school exams.

ALL students failed in 150 schools (UP) when such unfair means were controlled.

Covid-19 Context: Students from underprivileged communities distanced from education further.

Solution: 

1. Accessing education curriculum on Smartphones, ANYWHERE, ANYTIME (Enabler: High internet penetration and Inexpensive data)
2. Providing gender-responsive and contextualised educational content in the local language to ensure higher retention

Scalability: 

49% of all Indian children study in Hindi. Commonality of language, and subject-design makes audio-visual solutions scalable across 15-Million Students annually. Regional, vernacular applications can improve education standards worldwide.

Context: The Hindi Belt: 15-Million students appear for 10th & 12th grade exams in Hindi Medium across India; 6.6 Million are girls. Problems abound.

1. Multiple barriers including social & caste standing and poverty affect student performances adversely. Given there are no systematic, standardised platforms (online or otherwise) customised to their needs, the challenge becomes insurmountable. Further, girl-students are doubly-disadvantaged with gender stereotypes, patriarchal norms, social restrictions associated with adolescence, puberty and taboos around menstrual issues.
2. Teachers & education infrastructure short by at least 30% (UP); conventional teaching is expensive, and inefficient.
3. Passing rates are among the lowest nationwide. Maximum dropouts recorded between 8th-12th.
4. No Repetition/Clarification to clarify doubts in conventional teaching.

Root-Causes:

1. Real threats of sexual assaults, and vulnerability of adolescents enroute to, and in schools. Distances to schools aggravate the issues.
2. Girls burdened with increasing domestic chores to prepare them for marriage/ family needs. When chores clash with pre-set school timings, they are forced to prioritize chores.
3. Puberty and associated needs of menstrual hygiene engenders absenteeism.
4. Subject matter starts getting complex; lax infrastructure and conventional teaching fails to help simplification. Education in foreign languages unaffordable & presents language barriers.

The Yesguruji portal provides a Simple, Online Learning Environment, tailored for students from disadvantaged Hindi medium backgrounds to boost Gender & Social inclusivity.

1. The audio-visual content is contextualised to daily lives and local points of reference. This makes complex science concepts easier to understand, and this our favoured approach in demystifying subjects considered most difficult for students.
2. The content is device agnostic, and internet-speed adaptive. It can be watched on all Smartphones, Tabs, PC/Macs, at all Internet speeds.
3. The Online Audio-Video lessons can be paused, repeated, speed varied, resumed and shared Anywhere, Anytime, by Anyone. 

We incorporated in Aug-2018 (17-months before Covid-19 began), continually evolving and modifying content to simplify and contextualise it. We began uploading our videos since May 2019. The insights and feedback from users worldwide over one year have thus enriched subsequent lessons.

Benefits:

1. Curriculum in any order, available Anytime, Anywhere
2. Inclusivity though improved access to Education, regardless of gender, social, mobility, distance and/or time constraints.
3. Pause/Repeat/ Share/ Ask a question (POC pending)
4. No fear of getting judged has helped kids ask questions and raise doubts for clarifications. 

We look forward to promote creative, collaborative, and exploratory activities for deeper and more experiential learning.

YesGuruJi has been established to bridge a wide and yawning gap in the education infrastructure for students enrolled in Hindi medium education in small towns and rural areas across India (Overall, 15-Million students across 9 states take exams in Hindi Medium in the 10th & 12th state boards. 6.6 Million of these are girls.

Studies and reports from the state of Uttar Pradesh highlight the lack of infrastructure by a whopping 30%. This impacts the quality of education and results in low retention levels among students. Results from other states like Bihar, Haryana, MP, Odisha etc. seem to be even worse. YesGuruJi provides a simpler, conducive and more relaxed learning environment for students from Hindi medium backgrounds in India. All available on your smartphones with cheap internet packets.

Focused on bringing-in inclusivity across all genders, restricted mobility and socially disadvantaged segments, we began our attack on the malaise with higher secondary (adolescents grades 8th-12th record the highest drop-outs, especially girls). We plan to create content for grades 7th−12th soon hereafter.

To expand our impact to the largest, underprivileged sections, we began with the curriculums with the largest user-base, but have modified our subject matter to address syllabi of other curriculums as well. As of now, we have already uploaded contents for Class 11th. Other classes will follow soon.

NO organised player exists in India in private, online, education in Hindi medium for secondary classes

1. While we have no competitors (yet), scattered Youtube attempts to explain short pieces serve as advertisements for upcoming teachers and their expensive private sessions.
2. EdTech space is abuzz with comparable business models, including unicorns like Byju’s (Highly expensive), Khan Academy & Unacademy (All content focused on English speaking and privileged Tier-1 town students).
3. YesGuruJi content in conversational Hindi, and examples adapted to student’s daily lives helps simplify complex scientific concepts. This forms our most important approach in demystifying subjects considered most difficult for students.
4. Our truly diverse team consists of members with stellar experiences in their respective fields and have earned eminence as a Doctor, an Engineer, a Professor, a Business person and a Photo Journalist. Our team members understand ground realities because of our roots and our own backgrounds from the Hindi Belt.
5. Our team members hail from small-towns, with Hindi mother-tongues and backgrounds. The diversity of our professional profiles (Doctor, IT-lead, Business Strategist, Academic Professor and Photo-journalist) brings in diverse ideas and a treasure of experiences from their respective fields.
6. Finally, our commitment to cause a lasting social impact in the simplification and delivery of education trumps the profit-driven objectives of the Ed Tech companies.

YesGuruJi is a novel way of leveraging the reach and penetration of the following:

• Smartphones & Internet enabled devices.
• Fast Internet (cable OR over the air)
• Affordable data

Together, the above trinity can be leveraged to bolster the poor infrastructure of education delivery for adolescents, vulnerable sections of the society, disadvantaged communities with little or no access to schools. Moreover, this technology provides options for continued education to those who are medically/ physically unfit to attend schools regularly, or too occupied to attend school during pre-set hours.

The application of this technology to simplify and contextualise education material in local languages addresses the needs of communities who have fallen behind and have little access to education.

By mid 2021, we intend to test, pilot and run an AI chatbot which uses machine learning to answer tough subject-related questions from science students, and also offer options to test themselves, with adaptive testing mechanisms to narrow down their weak concepts and provide additional guidance.

The technology is widely used by the following, though for English medium education only, and is not customized to state boards. 

1. Byju's (https://www.googleadservices.c...https://www.googleadservices.c...https://www.googleadservices.c...https://byjus.com/) 
2. Khan Academy (https://www.khanacademy.org/) https://www.khanacademy.org/math/in-in-grade-9-ncert/xfd53e0255cd302f8:polynomials
3. UnAcademy (https://unacademy.com/)

Research has proven that students improve their understanding of complex concepts much better when they use online mediums to supplement their school studies. 

Additionally, it has also been proven that studies in student's mother tongues helps their comprehension of subjects and complex concepts better, apart from helping them gain increased confidence and better articulation.

We have seen the same model succeed wildly for Byjus (in less than a decade, Byjus valuation crossed US$ 1 Billion). This was induced by high subscriptions, consistent revenues and academic successes of its student base.

We are therefore very confident of our business model and using such cases as comparables, and using these studies to cause large scale impact on regional languages, vernacular scripts, and contextualized subject matter. 

Our launch plans, originally scheduled for late September (2020), were hit badly by Covid-19 lockdowns. To enable school children to continue their studies during the stringent lockdown, we opened our website to all immediately, and made it completely free. 

As of now, our website doesn't require any registration. We have also committed to keeping YesGuruJi.com completely free during Covid-19 Pandemic. 

Yet, we have 100+ registrations, and 900+ regular visitors, doubling every 22 days. Once we have critical mass, and the economy affordable enough for people to reconnect their phone connections, we expect a rapid rise in the registrations

• By Dec 2020, we expect to have 15K registered users. 
• By June 2021, we expect 100K registered users.
• By June 2025, we expect our registered user base to be around 2 Million.

• By Dec 2020, we expect to have 15K registered users. 
• By June 2021, we expect 100K registered users.
• By June 2025, we expect our registered user base to be around 2 Million.

Marketing Barriers: 
The COvid-19 Pandemic has directed full state machinery towards keeping urgent health and well-being needs over everything else. In our specific case, this has affected our possibilities of:

• Partnership with State Govts with the Governments of the states in the Hindi Belt, to bolster and supplement infrastructure in education.
• Partnership with District Administrations in Secondary Education:Demonstrating the effect of our animated, audio-visual lessons to Senior influencers and Decision makers in the District Administrations in Secondary Education (DISE) to help adopt the portal to improve their district education infrastructure.
• Partnership for Social impact for Community efforts: Offering the portal for unlimited free usage to Jails, Correction homes. Also offering limited numbers of unlimited usage licenses to lowest paid contractual staff of Small & Medium companies to help educate their kids accordingly. 

Lockdown & total bans on assembly have also impacted our plans to connect with our end-consumers, students & guardians in small towns, rural gatherings & carnivals, and school crowds and roadshows to popularise our portal further. 

Financial Barriers:

Our venture is fully self-funded. Given studio rentals, videography equipment, Video-editor services and much more are extremely expensive, our cash outflow has been high, and therefore implementation speed much slower than we would have liked it to be

10 Teachers - Contractors                          :  Part Time

1 Video Editor & Videography -- Contractor : Part Time

5 Co-Founders & Team members   --           : 26 hours per day

1. Our truly diverse team consists of members with stellar professional standing in their respective fields. Thus, our team boasts of an eminent Doctor, a Senior Director in Technology Leadership, a Professor in India's consistently top-ranked University, a Business Strategist and a celebrated Photo-Journalist. Our team members understand ground realities because of our roots and our own backgrounds from the Hindi Belt.
   
2. Our commitment to cause a lasting impact in the simplification and delivery of education trumps the solely profit-driven objectives of EdTech companies.

Our plans to reach our target users involved the following:

Push Marketing Efforts. Plans were on the anvil to connect with the following, when Covid-19 hit.

1. Partnership with State Govts.  with the Governments of the states in the Hindi Belt, to bolster and supplement infrastructure in education.
2. Partnership with District Administrations in Secondary Education:Demonstrating the effect of our animated, audio-visual lessons to Senior influencers and Decision makers in the District Administrations in Secondary Education (DISE) to help adopt the portal to improve their district education infrastructure.
3. Partnership for Social impact for Community efforts: Offering the portal for unlimited free usage to Jails, Correction homes. Also offering limited numbers of unlimited usage licenses to lowest paid contractual staff of Small & Medium companies to help educate their kids accordingly. 

Pull Marketing Efforts: For our B2C efforts, we had also planned to land our feet on the ground, connect with people in small towns, rural gatherings & carnivals, and school crowds and roadshows to popularise our portal further. 

1. Partnership with rural schoolchildren, townsquare and gathering places etc to improve adoption, gather feedback and collect data.

We believe a Freemium model will work best for us.

While access to audio-visual lessons will be free, we will be able to charge a premium for value added services, esp. answering student questions, connecting with other students with similar academic problems, and options to pool resources.

Unfortunately, I got to know of the MIT Solve challenge just days ago, and am running out of time to be able to explain the answer in complete detail

We have been able to cap our expenses for the last 2 years at US$ 52,000. While that has meant only grade 11th (half of the course material of 12th grade school clearing exams) syllabus completed, we are also faster, wiser and better.

While the self funding road to get a working pilot has been important to get the critical mass and traction, we believe the increased interest will help us seek:

• Grants & donations
• Investment Capital & interest

Additionally, with the high interest we are getting from our target end-users, we do hope, with some deft marketing, and right strategies, we can continue to keep the course prices extremely affordable even after the FREE during Covid-19 time is over.

Current modeling shows us, with a $10 subscription price for the whole academic year of all subjects, we will capture 5% of the market, and run at GMV of $2 Million per annum.