Mobile app Flinnt becoming popular as learning platform

Ahmedabad-based start-up's app allows teachers to communicate with students, parents
Ahmedabad, June 24:
In what makes the learning resource rich, easy, and interesting for school children, a WhatsApp-like mobile platform called Flinnt, allows teachers to create groups with students and share academic resources such as chapters, videos, data, and charts, among others.
Developed by a group of entrepreneurs from Ahmedabad in June 2012, Flinnt is currently being used by about 105 academic institutions across Gujarat and a few in Mumbai, Noida, Gurgaon, Hyderabad and Tirupati.
"This will act as a communication platform between students and teacher. This is a platform that allows one/ few to broadcast to many. So, content broadcast can be monitored and managed. It is a good platform to share user-generated content such as documents, videos of class-room teaching, best answer written by a student, or a graph or charts," said Tarak Yagnik, one of the four founders and a marketing expert.
The Android-based mobile app is being used for students in the K-12 segment, graduate and post-graduate. "Up to grade four, teachers send one-way communications such as reminders, announcements, homework, and activity photos directly to the parent’s phone," said Yagnik.
Once enrolled, the institute is given sign-up codes, with which teachers and students can use the app. For instance, teachers can post a document or a video on the platform, and students can comment on it and discuss it further. But unlike WhatsApp, the teachers can prevent abusive mischief by restricting students from commenting on a particular topic. The platform can also operate on a desktop PC.
Currently, the company has 40,000 users of the app. "Our charges range from Rs. 5,000 per annum to Rs. 15,000 per annum for different sizes of institutions. We are targeting private institutions first as they can take faster decisions," said Harish Iyer, co-founder and CEO.
The company, which has raised around $400,000, including an Angel round from US-based investors, expects to break even this year. Going forward, it is also planning to raise about Rs. 10-12 crore from venture funds.
In the next two-three years, the company plans to cover about 8,000-10,000 institutions across the country. By this year-end the start-up plans to have a presence in 15 cities.
Customer acquisition accounts for 70 per cent of the company’s expenses, while the remaining 30 per cent goes into development and infrastructure.