Learn accountancy through stories
Students of finance and accounting often find it hard to understand the jargons used in their courses. If taught in a visually rich and simple format with practical illustrations, one may find them easier to understand. This is what, IndigoLearn, a Hyderabadbased ed-tech start-up, promises.
It uses visual effects and animation to enable students to understand theoretical concepts easily.
Founded in March 2017 by Sriram Somayajula, Sathya Raghu, Suraj Lakhotia and Sarat Veulmuri, the elearning service provider has recently raised $150,000 in its seed round. Angel investors based out of India, the US and Europe participated in this round.
IndigoLearn claims to be India’s first ed-tech start-up focused on finance and accounting domains.
“There is a dearth of quality players in this space. With their studentfocused approach and high-quality content backed by the extensive use of technology and analytics, IndigoLearn can substantially improve learning outcomes,” says Maheshwar Peri, chief executive officer of career360.com, one of the angel investors.
IndigoLearn starts a complex topic by first explaining a related reallife story in a visually rich form, such as graphics and animation, and then links the concept to the story to demystify the subject. “Once the stories ignite the curiosity of students, we take a deep dive into the critical concepts in the subject. Finally, in order to prepare the students for examinations, we gamify evaluations. We also have leaderboards, badges, coupons, etc to make the evaluation more interesting. Stories with animation, bytesized modules, gamified evaluation and great analytics make the learning experience enjoyable for the students,” says Somayajula.
Competing with individual coaching classes, the company feels the student-first approach is its biggest differentiator. With IndigoLearn, students can learn from home or using app anywhere anytime at their convenience, it says.
It charges students fee per subject for various durations. Per subject, the fee ranges from ~3,000 to ~6,000 depending on course length, complexity and faculty.
It expects break-even in 12-15 months.
The company, which started by offering online courses for students pursuing CA (chartered accountancy), CS (company secretary) and CMA (certified management accountant) programmes, plans modules for global professional courses like CFA (chartered financial analyst), CPA (certified public accountant ) shortly.
Presently, it provides accounting, auditing and goods and services tax subjects on its platform. In three months, the company plans to add four full subjects and a similar number of revision subjects (crash course) covering a significant portion of the CA syllabus.
“With a registered user base of over 5,300 students, we plan to grow to 10 times in 12-15 months by launching e-learning modules for other professional courses in finance and accounting domain as well as for Class XI and XII commerce students,” says Somayajula. The start-up will use the new funds for a mix of product development, technology and marketing.