If there’s anything the COVID-19 pandemic has taught us this year, it’s that education should be accessible to all. Long before a pandemic was even on the horizon, NeoStencil (founded in 2014) set out to ensure that students from all walks of life could compete with the best in the exams such as the UPSC, IES, GATE, NEET, and JEE among others.
Kush Beejal, the founder, said that his brother and he were lucky to have been able to attend top coaching institutes in different cities as students. However, they also witnessed a lack of similar opportunities for students in tier-2 and 3 cities and villages. “Many people’s aspirations die because of lack of resources,” says Kush. “This led us towards the idea of creating a platform that could be accessed by anyone, anywhere, without spending beyond his/her capabilities. The point was that learning should not stop at any cost.”
Thus NeoStencil began as a way to level the playing field for students from across the country. Kush says that, while the tools and technology such as Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning are now key factors in online education, the content is even more important. The idea was to bring the excellence of top coaching centres and reputed teachers to the students. All that a student needs is an Internet connection and a computer or a smartphone. NeoStencil takes care of everything else — from study material to mock-exam evaluation.
“We live-stream classes to ensure the student gets a high-quality current learning experience — identical to what they would get if they went to a classroom. There are also recorded classes that they can access at any time or go back to whenever it suits them. Students do not have to compromise on their jobs, the comfort of their home, or spend large amounts to relocate to ‘coaching hubs’.” Till date, NeoStencil has helped more than 400 people achieve their UPSC dream. Like Pradeep Singh from Tewri village in Sonepat, who topped the 2019 UPSC exams.
NeoStencil also digitises material from traditional coaching institutes they have partnered with. An added benefit is that teachers can now reach out to both their regular offline students and hundreds of others online. Not only is the content available 24/7 but assignments, mock examinations and evaluations are also the same for both sets of students.
Challenges and trends
While technology is improving daily, what happens when Internet connections in more remote parts of the country are either non-existent or extremely slow? Kush says that, while an Internet connection is definitely needed, all videos are optimised for all forms of devices. To overcome issues with internet speed, buffering, data consumption and so on, they have begun to work with Edge Computing technology to help reduce buffering times and to allow users to watch high-definition videos at the same bandwidth they already have. Today, NeoStencil has about 11 lakh registered users from across the country.
During the pandemic, however, many regular institutes too began to go online. Did this pose a challenge? Kush says that NeoStencil’s advantage is that they had already established themselves and could ride out this wave. “We often get students who want to pursue multiple exams. So we are a place where students have ready access to various products. This generates a lifetime value, which will win over an online institute that caters to a single exam.” During the initial months of the lockdown, the start-up doubled its partnerships to encompass 100 institutes, as compared to the 50 it had accumulated over the past five years.
“One of the biggest trends amongst EdTech companies is trying to master blended learning,” said Kush. “While there will always be excellent online content, bringing that element of interactivity and peer-to-peer social learning to be on a par with offline learning is what companies are constantly working towards.”
