Online Courses: What is so attractive about them?

Online education is making its presence felt in a big way throughout the world. India is no exception to this worldwide trend. Take the example of Milan Sharma who is a software engineer and works at a travel firm. Though keen to gain new skills in upcoming technologies like big data analytics, his day job prevented him from fulfilling his wish. But that was before he opted for an online course with Edureka. As he says"The beauty of online courses is that it gives you flexibility and easy access to course content.” Lack of qualified teachers, professionals pressed for time and high education fees are all contributing to a rising demand for online learning that is catered to by a number of new startup ventures.

"We have more than 20,000 paid students right from Seoul in South Korea to Azamgarh in Uttar Pradesh," said Lovleen Bhatia, co-founder of Bangalore-based Edureka. According to his expectation his company will earn a revenue to the tune Rs 30 crore in fiscal 2015.  Edureka started its operations in 2012 and offers courses in areas such as development of mobile applications and big data for professionals at fees ranging from 12,000 to 30,000. Edureka along with other online educators like handa ka funda and Jigsaw Academy put into good use a combination of live interactive sessions, animation to explain a concept in addition to flexible schedules and constant feedback.

The cost of online courses is just another incentive for students to sign up for such courses. "A typical course for CAT preparation offline would cost around Rs 30,000 to Rs 45,000 depending on the city. The costliest course we offer through our online platform is priced at Rs 4,000," said Ravi Handa, founder of handa ka funda.com, which had its inception in January 2013.

"We have seen tremendous response to online education," said Jigsaw Academy co-founder Gaurav Vohra, who started the company to offer courses in analytics.

The expectation of the company is to earn a revenue to the tune of Rs 40 crore in the next two years. According to experts courses have a market with tremendous potential with its reach of students from small town to metropolitan cities.

"Education is a lifelong investment, everyone wants the best in class education," said Pragya Singh, assistant vice president for retail at advisory firm Technopak. The lure of online courses isn’t limited to professionals, even school kids are looking forward to online help. One firm which caters to such students is the Bangalore-based Vedantu.com, founded by five childhood friends Anand Prakash, 33, Pulkit Jain, 30, Saurabh Saxena, 31, Vamsi Krishna, 30, and Ujjawal Misra, 30 . Vedantu is the second educational venture for this team of IITians, who sold traditional physical entrance preparation institute Lakshya to MTEducare in 2012.

"Online tutorial is catching up not only in India but globally, and I see potential for great scale," said angel investor VN Ramaswamy, who invested Rs 2 crore in Vedantu.com last year. Having an annual turnover of Rs.30 lakh, its expectations are to earn Rs 1 crore in fiscal 2015.