Our Mission Is To Make Learning Personalized Using Technology: Zishaan Hayath

How has the journey been so far for Toppr and what was your idea behind launching Toppr LIVE?

We reached a major milestone in the month of December. 10 million students have chosen to study with Toppr. From starting in 2013 to getting our millionth student onboard in 2016 to now growing 10 folds in less than 3 years, the journey with Toppr has been an eventful one. Today, we have grown to become India’s only comprehensive learning app. Our students see Toppr as their one-stop 360-degree platform for better learning to achieve better results in school and competitive exams.

The idea behind launching Toppr Live is to follow Toppr’s mission — make learning personalised. The new app aims at providing a learning experience designed especially for students aspiring for competitive exams. Millions of students across India will get direct and real-time access to India’s best teachers via online video lectures. Built on our insights obtained from the 10 million students already learning on Toppr, Toppr Live gives students free online access to lectures while also allowing them to send in reactions and upvote doubts asked by other students helping create a learning community.

Please shed light on core features of Toppr LIVE & what makes it different from existing offering live classes?

As mentioned before, Toppr LIVE is built on our insights obtained from the 10 million students already learning on Toppr. So the level of personalization we offer is much much greater. Also, students on the new app can experience an advanced, futuristic, and innovative form of Live Class that’s never been seen before on any other platform. In our LIVE classes, teachers make use of a wide range of tools and the latest teaching methods to give the students enhanced the learning experience and a better grasp of the concepts. This new app also utilizes Toppr’s deep-structured content and powerful adaptive algorithm, which have been praised by both students and teachers previously.

How do you predict this market to evolve further? What are the kind of innovations you are looking at bringing to this space?

Edtech is a fast-growing market segment. With technology being used extensively in almost all segments and changing our day to day behaviour, use of tech in education has relatively just begun. The advent of smartphones and low data costs are important factors which have lead to the evolution of the edtech segment.

At Toppr, our mission is to make learning personalized using technology. Student needs and problems form the centre of all our innovations. Like with Live classes, we wanted to bring a classroom to our students which is free of judgment, allowing students to interact freely in case of doubts. Similarly, with all our future innovations, our aim is to solve for various student needs. We are very excited to see how efficiently these innovations will help students learn better!

How kind of traction has Toppr LIVE witnessed since the launch? What is driving students' preferences?

The initial response to our new app has been very positive. With competitive and board exams just around the corner, the timing of the launch couldn’t be better. With access to some of the best teachers in India, we are seeing a rising number of students enrolling as the exams come closer. The convenience of preparing from home forms one of the most important driving factors. The Toppr Live online course is planned in such a way that it covers the entire syllabus in a fixed time and enables learning anytime, anywhere.

Now that traditional coaching players also are investing heavily to digitize their products and offerings, do you consider that as a threat?

Not really. Traditional coaching class have only just begun investing in digitizing their products and offerings. The data points they’d need to collect before they bring any amount of personalization in their offerings is massive. They would also require extensive knowledge and experience of cutting edge tech to make use of these data points effectively. With Toppr having identified this need gap much early on and now with more than 10 million students choosing to study on Toppr, we are confident.