Allen’s ed-tech venture aims to improve learning outcomes for students

Last week, the Bodhi Tree-backed company’s co-founder and director Brajesh Maheshwari had
warned its teachers in a video message to not move to rival offline coaching platforms and ed-tech startups.

In the video, Maheshwari said those who leave to join other edtech startups will be “blacklisted” from working with Allen Career Institute or its partners in future. Maheshwari had also referred to the edtech firms’ attempts to poach teachers as a “mayajaal” (delusion).

Allen Career Institute said in a statement on Tuesday that it would provide “a curated range of non-science courses in short-term, long-term, workshops, and crash-course formats” through the new platform

It already offers flagship courses for IIT Joint Entrance Exam (JEE) and National Eligibility cum Entrance Exam (NEET).

“Students who opt for the digital mode of coaching will be able to personalize their learning modules to suit their academic and career goals. Students can plan and modify their study plan even at the topic level,” Anand Maheshwari, the managing director of Allen Digital, said.

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Meanwhile, edtech unicorn Uncademy also launched two offline learning centres in Kota on Tuesday. Kota is Allen’s primary headquarters.

Unacademy said it aims to enrol up to 15,000 learners in the first batch across all its upcoming centres in Kota, Jaipur, Ahmedabad, Chandigarh, Patna, Pune, Bengaluru, Delhi, and Lucknow.

“The Unacademy Centres will facilitate the offline classes for learners and will extend access to top educators in the NEET-UG, IIT-JEE, and foundation (grade 9-10) course categories,” the startup said in a statement.

The Unacademy centre will have a multi-functional cafe, a library, doubt-solving zones along with several classrooms and functional zones. It is an 18,000-square-foot facility spread across four floors, it said.

In February, arch-rival Byju’s also doubled down on its offline play through the launch of ‘Byju’s Tuition Centre’.

Over the course of last year, the company said it had launched 80 offline centres across 23 cities and was looking to scale that up to 500 centres across 200 cities this year. It had also earmarked $200 million to grow its offline business.

Companies including PhysicsWallah, Cuemath and Vedantu are also in the process of either expanding or building an offline presence.