Noida based Extramarks Education has launched an Android app called Extramarks Smart Study which lets users study for CBSE and ICSE curricula, ranging from pre-primary (kindergarten) and Class 1 to Class 12. The app has validity based (3 days, 1 week, 1 month or 1 year) packages, starting at Rs 75 per day, which means users needn’t pay for the entire syllabus.
The company told Medianama that as of now, users could pay for content through the app’s payment gateway (redirected to the web payment gateway) or Paytm wallet, with plans to integrate the Mobikwik wallet. It also said that an iOS app was in the pipeline, but declined to give specific launch dates.
It features animated videos of poems and content. There’s features like quick study and ‘just a minute’ which offer lesson synopses, game based lessons, along with virtual lab experiments, solved board papers, chapterwise Q&A, multiple choice questions and quizzes which generate progress and performance reports. Note that the app asks you to install an SWF (Shockwave flash) Player to play the lessons content. The company claims that the app uses the same learning solutions used by over 7,000 schools from India and abroad.
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Extramarks was formulated in late 2008 and launched in 2009 and currently employs 1,500 people. It provides solutions like ERP, smart learn classes, test centres and homework help for schools across India, South Africa, Kuwait, Singapore and UAE. It claims to have over 8 million ‘learners’ and over 1.1 million online users. Its product Extramarks Smart Learn Classes uses educational board syllabi in the form of learning modules, which it claims have been developed by educationists. The company also has another product called Extramarks Live which provides homework help and a test centre. In 2011, Reliance Industries acquired a 38.5% stake in Extramarks Education.
Samsung partnership
In February, the company partnered with Samsung to offer educational content to school students via Samsung tablets. Extramarks’ learning solutions would be sold on Samsung tablets under retail and to schools in the country, while Samsung had plans to launch tablets aimed at students, as indicated by a TOI report.
DRB Hycom partnership; educational content for web and mobile
A Business Standard report from May states that Extramarks runs and manages over 35,000 paid digital classrooms across India. The report estimates that the number of digital classrooms in India is around 120,000, out of which Extramarks may have a third. The company tied with the Malaysian group DRB Hycom to provide content for schools in Malaysia earlier this year. In Kenya, Namibia, Nigeria and Zimbabwe, it provides content on the web as well as the mobile phone. According to the report, the basic material for science and maths in Africa and India is the same, but needs to be customised for local exam boards, for which it put together a team of over 250 people in India.
IBM partnership
In May, the company also tied with IBM to expand and grow its educational content business using SoftLayer. The three year partnership, Extramarks would use IBM cloud for its Extramarks Live product, which it claimed had 700,000 enrolled students.
In October last year, the company said that it would invest over Rs 500 crore over the next two years, tying with a ‘global data services provider’, to jointly roll out a plan to expand its operations in India and other countries it was present in.
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