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.
