Knives are out as edtech platforms open physical tuition centres
New Delhi: As the battered edtech platforms enter the physical tuition centre space, knives are out and the traditional coaching institutes have threatened their teachers on leaving the institutes.
As schools and colleges reopen, leading edtech platforms like Unacademy, BYJU’s, Vedantu and the rest are facing the heat.
While BYJU’s has already opened offline tuition centres, Unacademny has announced to open coaching centres nation-wide, starting with Kota in Rajasthan which is the coaching hub for engineering entrances, IIT-JEE, JEE Main and medical entrance, NEET.
Now, India’s premier coaching centre Allen Career Institute’s co-founder and Chairman-designate, Brajesh Maheshwari, has announced to take strict action against teachers who leave the institute and join rival edtech platforms.
Without naming any edtech platform, he said in a video that those teachers who leave Allen institute will be blacklisted from working again.
“Jo koi jaata hai toh aaj se iss baat ko pakka krle, vo humesa k liye blacklisted at Allen (Any teacher who leaves will be blacklisted at Allen forever), said Maheshwari.
“Sharafat ki duniya khatam, jaise duniya waise hum,” he added.
His warning came after Unacademy, which recently laid off more than 600 employees in the funding winter, announced it will open a coaching centre in Kota and has reportedly hired several teachers from Allen institute.
Unacademy did not comment on the development.
As online education space shrinks with India reopening amid the ‘hybrid normal’, learning platform Unacademy last month announced its foray into opening physical tuition centres across the country, following BYJU’s footsteps.
The Unacademy centres will facilitate the offline classes in the NEET UG, IT JEE and Foundation (9-12) course categories.
The first Unacademy centre is likely to be operational in Kota this month, followed by similar institutes in Jaipur, Bengaluru, Chandigarh, Ahmedabad, Patna, Pune and Delhi.
“With ‘Unacademy Centres’ we will bring the best of Unacademy — India’s top Educators, best-in-class technology and product, and state-of-the-art infrastructure — for our learners,” according to Gaurav Munjal, Co-Founder and CEO, Unacademy Group.
The platform aims to enroll up to 15,000 learners in the first batch across centres.
Edtech platforms are seeing a significant dip in the demand for online learning and some of such firms have either shut shops or fired employees in recent days.
Founded by Rajesh Maheshwari in 1988, Allen is India’s most respected test prep brand that has “created a positive transformational impact on over 2.5 million young lives since its inception”.
According to Brajesh Maheshwari. most of the edtech products and services in the market are “currently not solving for the needs of a student”.
Last month, Bodhi Tree Systems, an investment platform by former 21st Century Fox CEO James Murdoch and ex-Disney executive Uday Shankar, announced to invest $600 million in Allen Career Institute which has a pan-India footprint with a growing presence in the Middle East.
Allen prepares students for JEE (main and advanced), pre-medical (NEET-UG), Classes 6 to 10, NTSE, and Olympiads.
The $600 million investment will help Allen, which has 138 classroom centres in 46 cities in the country, empower millions of students in test-prep and K12 segments.
