The pandemic put the education systems around the world into an unprecedented crisis. Pakistan was already suffering from a severe learning crisis, an extended shutdown of schools deeply impacted the national education ecosystem.
Sometimes the world needs a crisis. Covid-19 turned out to be an opportunity in disguise for many sectors. The greatest impact was on Digital Education. Digital education tools helped bridge the learning gaps created by lockdowns and other disruptions.
Surprisingly, Covid didn’t bring about a rise in the formation of ed-tech startups but a rise in their usage. It was only now that most of the long-founded ed-tech startups came in daylight.
The pandemic, rising internet penetration, and globalization are some of the aspects that shifted the focus to online learning. Pakistan has many ed-tech startups fully functioning and delivering to their target audiences. Many of these collaborate with schools while others provide app-based platforms.
Here are some of the ed-tech startups that are transforming the education systems in Pakistan.
Maqsad — Learning made fun
Maqsad is a mobile-first education platform startup, with a goal to make education more accessible to 100 million Pakistani students. The Urdu word ”maqsad” means purpose.
“We believe everyone has a purpose. Maqsad’s mission is to enable Pakistani students to realize this purpose; whether you are a student from an urban centre, such as Lahore, or from a remote village in Sindh: Maqsad believes in equal opportunity for all,”
— Rooshan Aziz, Founder of Maqsad
Maqsad aims to change the traditional rote memorization techniques of Pakistan’s education system by adapting comprehension focussed ways of teaching.
In September 2021 Maqsad raised the nation’s highest Ed-tech funding of $2.1 million in its pre-seed funding round. The team now aims to make education accessible to a wider audience.
AirSchool- Shopify for Courses
AirSchool is a live-streaming educational platform with engagement and monetization tools to help anyone start teaching online. It helps experts to create courses, build their audience and make money.
In addition, it offers a free video series course on how to develop a digital course to get you started. The platform has thousands of courses covering a wide range of topics, in English and Urdu both.
These are a few features that make air school easy to use and popular among course creators and consumers alike.
- Free Subdomain & Easy live or recorded courses setup.
- Accepts payments through Stripe, PayPal, BankTransfer & local payment methods and keeps adding more methods as per expert requests.
- Dynamic Dashboard to see all data.
- Powerful Course analytics to help improve course completion rate.
- No upfront fee.
NearPeer- One-stop destination for online learning in Pakistan
Nearpeer aims to make quality education affordable and accessible throughout Pakistan and the Middle East using technology.
It offers learning packages for CA, ACCA, University Courses, MDCAT, University entry tests, CSS, FSc, O’level and A’level. Each course has thousands of enrollments.
This startup is a success story of LUMS Center for Entrepreneurship (NIC) incubation. The idea was founded in 2015, ever since then they have upgraded adding more fields each year. It received an investment of $500,000 in 2021.
Edkasa
Edkasa is an ed-tech startup that facilitates high-school students by providing online education through their youtube channel, mobile app and online tests.
“If you look at the larger education landscape, we are here to meet the gap of people that have the need to go to an academy or hire a tutor to prepare for exams. We provide an alternative to that at a lower cost.”
— Fahad Tanveer, CEO and co-founder at Edkasa.
Edkasa is an attempt to ensure the required results, increase the chances of getting into world-class universities and increase Pakistan’s knowledge-based economy. They provide two products: the Edkasa app and connected classrooms.
Knowledge Platform
Knowledge Platform has developed and is continuously improving a highly innovative solution to address Pakistan’s educational crisis. They are currently working with more than 1,000 schools across 120 cities and towns of Pakistan.
- Through their content and technology, teachers can easily improve engagement for a low price and without internet access.
- Knowledge platform provides training programmes for the staff of its partner schools.
- Performance Dashboard identifies learning gaps in real-time to make sure that no student or class is left behind.
Taleemabad by Orenda Project — Never stop learning
The Orenda Project’s mission is to use technology to bridge the digital divide between private and public schools in Pakistan by providing engaging, high-quality digital education to the masses.
- It creates educational cartoon series.
- Taleemabad offers daily follow-along lesson plans.
- Collaborates with underprivileged schools to provide them with world-class education.
- Taleemabad offers primary grades learning app for homeschooling.
- They offer franchising opportunities for those who want to build a successful business in the field of education.
From teaching in refugee camps and forming a slum school at the young age of 18, Haroon Yasin, founder and CEO of Taleemabad, now runs the largest network of technology equipped schools that focus on the underprivileged masses of Pakistan.
The trend of online learning has just started in Pakistan. In a few years, most of the schools, academies, and universities would shift most of their operations to digital. These ed-tech startups would become household names in a matter of a few years.
