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DoubtNut: The edtech startup that has evolved the concept of tutoring

doubtnut founders - Tanushree Nagori, and Aditya Sankar
doubtnut founders – Tanushree Nagori, and Aditya Sankar

Throughout the years, the Internet has gradually saturated our lives and turned into an essential piece of it. Cell phones, applications, and WiFi were ideas that we most likely had not known about a couple of decades back. However, today we use it with no ifs or buts. The impact of innovation can likewise be strongly seen in the field of teaching. In spite of the fact that education has remained thoroughly the same for many years, technology is rapidly changing the old ways. Edtech or instruction innovation incorporates the straightforward utilization of a computer to carry out and regulate studies.

By making productive use of the social reach of the Internet, online education platforms can adjust accordingly to the pupil’s learning skill. Edtech can change the eventual fate of training, both for teachers and students. DoubtNut is an online learning platform based in Gurgaon, Haryana which provides real-time interaction between students and tutors. Established in 2016 by the couple Tanushree Nagori and Aditya Sankar, DoubtNut has been helping students all over India with convenient and interactive tuition services. They have become popular by providing the one thing that many other online learning platforms lack – immediate answers to queries.

DoubtNut (1) offers thousands of creative videos that can be used to clear any doubts of the student. These videos have been made by certified tutors who are the best in their subject matter. You can also browse through these large amounts of videos and learn something new every day. DoubtNut has videos in English, Hindi as well as 11 other regional languages. They believe education is a right for students not only from the metro cities but from the most rural areas of India. The students can freely make use of their services during learning to clear any doubt that pops up on their minds. The DoubtNut app has a wide favor with a 4.4 rating and over 1 lakh downloads on Google play. They have around 13 million active customers making use of their services every month.

How does DoubtNut work?

doubtnut

The stage utilizes artificial intelligence technology for picture recognition to give solutions to the students’ doubts regarding maths and science. To discover the answer to a question, one needs to transfer a picture that shows the problem. The application takes out content from the picture and attempts to coordinate it in its database of inquiries which are pre-replied, having recorded video arrangements. After this procedure, the platform finds a match, and at that point, the outcome is given to the user. DoubtNut also poses the choice for the student to post their inquiry openly for mentors accessible on the platform to provide a video clarifying his question.

Every time a student has a concern about a maths or science question, all they need to do is take a picture and upload it into the app. The app finds the exact video that will give them the answer. DoubtNut has a collection of over 90,000 videos to help students of classes 8th to 12th. This system enables them to answer 90 percent of the questions immediately. This allows for an immediate clarification of their doubts. On the off chance that the specific video that the students require has not been made before, the team creates one and sends it to the student within 8 hours of posting the query.

The birth of DoubtNut

doubtnut founders - Tanushree Nagori, and Aditya Sankar
doubtnut founders – Tanushree Nagori, and Aditya Sankar

The founders of DoubtNut, Tanushree Nagori, and Aditya Sankar are both graduates from IIT, Delhi. They previously worked with many enterprises in India and the USA in the field of strategy and consulting. It was in 2009 that they decided to initiate a tutoring course named Class 21A to help school students. The couple took maths and science tuition for students in classes from 9 to 12.

However, the increasing number of students and the limitations of a physical classroom made it difficult for them to cater to each student’s personal needs. Most of the children were too shy to raise their questions in front of their peers. Giving one to one sessions to clear each student’s doubt was not a practical solution to this problem. Tanushree and Aditya felt the need to make use of technology to make education a more fulfilling experience. The first innovative idea that they came up with was to create videos that could be sent through social media. They asked the students to prepare the doubts regarding the lessons given at school each day. The couple would then make a video to answer their doubts. This individual attention helped to improve the score of each student as well as grow the business of Class 21A.

As this practice went on, the couple started to realize the drawbacks of making several numbers of videos to distribute through an offline class. This led to the idea of developing an app for the same purpose. In that way, they could also keep track of the questions and this did not require them to create a new video each time a question is asked. Thus DoubtNut was established in July 2016 and the couple spent the next six months working on improving the technology and managing videos.

Funding and Investment

Omidyar Network and WaterBridge have contributed about 35 lakh rupees to Doubtnut. They raised a total of 45 lakhs from investors during the seed funding round. DoubtNut used this amount to expand its team, add more regional languages, and come up with more innovative features on the app. Within a year of working, DoubtNut answered more than 5000 questions every day.

In January 2020, the company led a series A funding led by China’s Tencent Holdings in which they raised 15 million dollars. This round also saw participation from prevailing investors Sequoia Capital, AET Japan, Ankit Nagori, and Omidyar Network India. The market estimation of the company is 50 million dollars by now, and they have offices in Delhi and Bangalore. DoubtNut plans to broaden its services to more cities and small towns by utilizing this new funding.

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