TUTORIALS TARGET GROWTH WITH FRANCHISE FIZZ

Increase in peer pressure, parents lacking the time to teach their children, competition increasing in beating the college cut-offs or cracking entrance examinations and the recent news of all state governments being asked by the Centre to take appropriate measures for effective regulation of coaching centers’ in the interests of the students – all such have proved to be the growth drivers behind coaching institutes which have turned metros and urban towns into educational hubs. However, with a plethora of coaching centres now in every nook and corner of the country, the bar to be better than the other keeps rising regularly and this is making it tough for tutorial brands to stand out among their competitors.

“We believe that a structured, systematic and process-driven approach is of extreme importance in the tutoring domain,” opines Himanshu Jain, President, Network Operations, Career Launcher Educate Ltd. He further states that a structured session plan is shared with the students as an academic pedagogy which helps the students plan out a study schedule while keeping pace with the extensive syllabi. Apart from classroom sessions, a whole lot of resources are also available online that aid and supplement their learning which includes mock tests, topic tests, HOTS (Higher Order Thinking Skills) questions for practice and NCERT solutions. Further, every faculty member is trained and certified by CL, thus ensuring the finest standardized academic delivery inside the classroom at all CL locations, thereby keeping the brand abreast of others.

“UPSC aspirants are often taught as per patterns followed from the 70s and the 80s and the demands of the exam have changed but unfortunately coaching patterns have not,” reveals Amrit Singh Chopra, Director and Founder, Unique Publishers and Unique Shiksha, according to whom, Unique Shiksha is the first and only institute with personal mentors and annual fixed class schedules for every student. “Four levels of testing help the students test their knowledge and build on the application ability the UPSC looks for and the personal mentors help tackle all doubts that arise in the minds of the students,” informs Chopra. He is of the opinion that their unique initiatives have brought rich dividends in the form of results with almost 33% success rate attained during the short three years of its establishment.

Scaling Through Franchising

The franchise model allows tutorials to reach out to new locations and regions with the help of driven partners. The luxury of having an owner run the centre in every city proves invaluable. “It becomes a win-win situation for all wherein students benefit from the award-winning pedagogy of Unique Shiksha; the franchise partner gets profitable returns on investment with a really short turnaround time; and the brand valuation grows steadily,” elaborates Chopra.

According to Himanshu Jain, the franchise model helps an entrepreneur who is eager to scale up business. “CL provides its core competence of R&D to develop thoroughly-researched study material, interactive online content and services, faculty training and support, tech-enabled centre operations support, and its brand goodwill, to name just a few, and harnesses the core competence of the teaching skills of an entrepreneur in return. Hence, there is huge scope to scale up the tutorial business through the franchise model all across the country,” he states.

The Disruption Effect

With more than 15 million students preparing for competitive exams (IIT JEE, CAT, banking, NEET, etc.) every year and test preparation becoming one of the most lucrative business models, a sizeable chunk of students and parents are willing to make an effort to go beyond traditional methods of accessing tutors. While classroom education in coaching classes still holds an iron grip on exam preparations, this tradition in the industry is soon expected to get disrupted by new startups that want to break the group study model, which they say doesn’t work for most students.

Using the potential of edtech for the exam preparation model, many startups like Embibe, Unacademy, Meritnation, Eamify, Prepathon, etc. have emerged which claim to prepare students competitively for such exams online. With these apps fast trending to aid cracking of entrances, the brick and mortar market of test preparation centres have been swept under the radar of disruption in the industry.

Franchising Facts

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