About the Company

Next Education is one of India’s leading education solutions providers and a pioneer in the K–12 segment. It is transforming education with innovative and engaging technology based K–12 solutions that is used by over 200,000+ teachers, to the learning delight of 10 million students across 10,000 schools.

Since 2007, Next Education’s educational solutions and services have been well received nationally and globally and cover the syllabuses of CBSE, ICSE, Army and 29 State Boards in seven Indian languages.

Current Market Landscape

E Learning in India is on rise. Technavio’s market research analysis predicts that India’s e-learning sector is expected to grow at a compounded annual rate of 17.4 percent between 2013 and 2018, twice as fast as the global average. Schools in India today understand that a blend of e-learning and classroom learning is a given. The new normal is to identify and implement the correct blend that works for each student.

The key factors for this growth in E-learning are:

● Increasing Government initiatives to promote E-Learning

● The growing adoption of technology

● Limited access to quality, world-class education

● Lack of infrastructure

● Convenience and affordability factors

Strong Government initiatives pushing student enrolments in higher education and distance learning will keep propelling market expansion at an ever increasing rate. The rapid adoption of low cost mobile technology is going to play a major role in the way the entire digital experience is valued and consumed. Most of the growth will come from players who build offline and online solutions. Products have to be designed so that they aspire for tomorrow, but deliver value today and don’t break yesterday. All educational solutions have to value the long term partnership of the ecosystem in mind be it students, parents, teachers, administrators, or partners.

Addressing the Challenges

There are several challenges in spreading world class education to every nook and corner of the country. First, governments must allow individuals to help bridge the gap between supply and demand. This includes looking at models of public private partnerships, for profit school ownership, deregulation of school academic systems, experiments in holistic schooling, etc. With increased competition, there will be greater responsibility on school administrators to offer world class services to their customers. Next believes that the market is bigger than any individual player in this segment.

Second, the government should invest in the backbones and build the public utilities that will allow schools and education systems to deliver value. Building sanitation systems, food delivery mechanisms, internet and telephony infrastructure are laudable goals and they should offer part of their infrastructure to this important segment. Since schools don’t need the cutting edge version of any of these, this is not an expensive step. From a corporate perspective, solutions that work in all scenarios have to be planned at the design stage itself.

Third, since open information is hard to get by, the government should standardize operational and management reporting of schools, and let the customers (parents, partners, vendors) take informed decisions. Parents do not mind paying for education or infrastructure if they see clearly where their hard earned money is going. Transparency will drive the market much more efficiently than any centralized, controlled planning process. Next Education is building scalable, cloud hosted ERP solutions that allow schools to securely share key data with their stakeholders.

Next Education has imbibed the NCERT guidelines in the core work ethics and all the products look out for the Indian student and their needs. From an interactive classroom to a complete curriculum solution, all efforts are aimed at making learning more fun, effective and impactful for the Indian student. Next Education’s dedicated R&D team has relentlessly worked to keep improving our products and the user experience based on the feedback received.

Services

Next Education is a pioneer in the K12 segment and has created a series of products and services for making education effective. The flagship product TeachNext is an optimal digital classroom solution which combines the best new age technology, creative content and interactive tools. It is present in 7 regional languages, 29 state boards along with CBSE and ICSE and follows NCF and NCERT guidelines. Working offline, TeachNext is packed with content, lesson plans, tools, maps, and much more for students and teachers, while maintaining an effective reports manager for school administrators.

The award winning NextBooks give a comprehensive and integrated curriculum solution for preprimary and primary school. NextBooks started with the question of ‘If today’s child is born digital, why are school books the same as they were 30 years ago’? The result of that has been integrated textbooks and digital content, and books that actually appeal to children.

NextERP serves as integrated management system that simplifies and support day to day activities of schools by streamlining the processes, departments and functions smoothly.

NextLab is an experiential learning approach for school enabling students to use hand on activities to understand better the concepts of English, Maths, Science and Robotics.

Next Education has also created products like LearnNext which is an engaging platform which facilities self paced learning helps students grasp complex topic easily. It is designed for home use, this DVD based product works without an internet connection.

Differentiating Factors

Next Education’s continuously identifies new ways of teaching students and helping teachers deliver lessons effectively. Each of the products Te achNext, LearnNext, NextBooks, NextERP and NextLabs provide a distinct solution to a dire problem that a school might be facing. The good thing is that all the products have been received quite well by schools.

Next Education is probably the only company in the space to manage all critical components in house be it school based staff, technical support engineers, support center staff, authors, designers, technologists and more. Next Education strongly believes that the key to delivering high quality is to manage it with our own staff. Employees are committed to the organization in the longer run than any third party partner. The company has been able to build several centers of excellence within the organization where it grows and matures its leaders.

Next Education’s award winning integration of TeachNext with NextBooks is almost unparalleled in today’s publishing scenario. Rather than write a book and give the digital PDF of the same, these books were designed from scratch keeping the potential of today’s students in mind.

Clients

Tagore International School, New Delhi, St. Claret School, Nagpur, Sanskar School, Jaipur, Bhartiya Vidya Bhawan, Kochi, St. Mary’s Koparkhairne, Navi Mumbai and Loreto Convent School, Lucknow, and 10,000 more!

Organizational Culture

Next has a very dynamic, young workforce that does not believe in traditional hierarchy. While the company does not have a ‘culture police’, it believes in certain rules that everyone needs to follow. Anyone can approach anyone without consideration of rank. Ideas and suggestions are appreciated, even if they are contrary to popular opinion. Everyone is treated with respect, irrespective of tenure, seniority or department. Trust in data. It’s ok to fail, but learn from failure. And once a decision is made, forget your past differences, and focus on execution.

Harboring Innovation

Next believes in seeking ideas from across the workforce. 2000 people surely have more insights than any one individual can. At the same time, it believes in modeling / debating various ideas before executing on them. The company also tries out experiments at a small scale and then rolls out to larger avenues.

Go-to-Market Strategy

Next has already crossed 10,000 schools in India. While it does not have a presence outside India, right now its goal is to focus on the India market. Considering the vast majority of its customers are happy customers, it is planning to go to existing schools and cross sell its product lines.

Quick Facts

1) Year of founding: 2007

2) Funding information: 350 Cr

3) Founding members: Mr. Beas Dev Ralhan, CoFounder & CEO and Mr. Raveendranath Kamath, CoFounder, CFO

4) Office locations: Hyderabad, Kochi, Pune, Delhi

5) Company strength: 2100+

6) Website: http://www.nexteducation.in