Knives are out as edtech platforms open physical tuition centres

New Delhi: As the battered edtech platforms enter the physical tuition centre space, knives are out and the traditional coaching institutes have threatened their teachers on leaving the institutes.

As schools and colleges reopen, leading edtech platforms like Unacademy, BYJU's, Vedantu and the rest are facing the heat. While BYJU's has already opened offline tuition centres, Unacademny has announced to open coaching centres nation-wide, starting with Kota in Rajasthan which is the coaching hub for engineering entrances, IIT-JEE, JEE Main and medical entrance, NEET.

Now, India's premier coaching centre Allen Career Institute's co-founder and Chairman-designate, Brajesh Maheshwari, has announced to take strict action against teachers who leave the institute and join rival edtech platforms. Without naming any edtech platform, he said in a video that those teachers who leave Allen institute will be blacklisted from working again. His warning came after Unacademy, which recently laid off more than 600 employees in the funding winter, announced it will open a coaching centre in Kota and has reportedly hired several teachers from Allen institute. Unacademy did not comment on the development.

As online education space shrinks with India reopening amid the 'hybrid normal', learning platform Unacademy last month announced its foray into opening physical tuition centres across the country, following BYJU's footsteps. The Unacademy centres will facilitate the offline classes in the NEET UG, IT JEE and Foundation (9-12) course categories. The first Unacademy centre is likely to be operational in Kota this month, followed by similar institutes in Jaipur, Bengaluru, Chandigarh, Ahmedabad, Patna, Pune and Delhi.

Edtech platforms are seeing a significant dip in the demand for online learning and some of such firms have either shut shops or fired employees in recent days. Founded by Rajesh Maheshwari in 1988, Allen is India's most respected test prep brand that has "created a positive transformational impact on over 2.5 million young lives since its inception". According to Brajesh Maheshwari. most of the edtech products and services in the market are "currently not solving for the needs of a student".

Allen prepares students for JEE (main and advanced), pre-medical (NEET-UG), Classes 6 to 10, NTSE, and Olympiads. IANS

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