Childhood Friends On Mission
It was June 2021, and three friends from the same boarding school had been brainstorming for 2 months over different ideas on how to build a doubt solving platform EdTech platform to improve learning outcomes for the next half billion learners in India. Frustrated by the current offering, one of them exclaimed that “learning should be as easy as booking an Uber.”. It is this ease of learning that led to the eventual birth of DoubtConnect.
The team initially built a web app and launched the beta on Children’s Day, i.e., November 14, 2021, where any student can connect with a verified educator powered by an algorithm.
What makes them different is the fact that the whole platform is built for students, by students. Vaibhav and Suraj are engineering students from MIT Manipal, whereas Raghav is a law student from Bennett University. They believe that being student founders has helped them empathise with students across the country and build networks on their campuses.
“The current Edtech market is designed for mass consumption, it is bundled, unaffordable, lacks learning data, lacks 24/7 support, lacks regional language support, and students cannot control the pace of learning. That’s when we decided to build for the next half billion learners in India who belonged to Tier 2, Tier 3, and Tier 4 cities, had unparalleled dreams of learning, limited resources, and decent internet connectivity. “All we could think of was
building the Uber for education, which would eventually help students get instant, personalised, quality, and affordable solutions,” recalls a visibly proud Raghav, DoubtConnect’s Founder and CEO.
DoubtConnect uses a 6 step onboarding process to hire educators where they have to go through an assessment, sample video submission, video interview, and maintain an average rating of 4.25. “We have seen freelancers, educators, students, and working professionals who have shown enthusiasm to be onboarded and teach students in the most efficient way,” says Suraj, who is a co-founder and COO.
“So far we have had over 12,000 learners, solved over 25,000 doubts with an average rating of 4.8/5, created over 40,000 minutes of learning, onboarded over 300 educators, and yet spent zero on marketing,” recalls the proud marketing co-founder Vaibhav. The startup is associated with and backed by BITS Pilani’s incubator, PIEDS, they are also incubated at NASSCOM 10,000 Startups, IIIT Hyderabad, and CIBA Mumbai. They have also raised funds from BITS Pilani’s incubator and an angel investment from Rajneesh Chaturvedi.
“We have begun with doubt solving and concept learning, but our vision and mission is much broader, we plan to close gaps in education and enable a generation to go upward in their learning curve. We are also building SAAS for schools in tier 2,3 and schools in backward areas who lack quality teachers and learning resources, we will be helping those schools with full-stack tech support alongside learning data to help students from all learning abilities find excellence in learning” added Raghav.
