As a child growing up in a unique and rapidly developing nation like India, education as a whole is quite a tricky bump. In the midst of the entirely new world ahead, the country is still relying on the traditional means of education.

Though the way education is imparted in India today is old, it has been proven to be very effective for a country like India. Besides that, India also houses some of the finest and diverse educational institutions in the world for higher studies.

But in a uniquely developed system, carefully curated for creating awareness amongst people about noble professions, the touch of real education somewhere lost its value. However, as interesting as it might sound, the top higher education institutions in India also instil the faith back in not the education system but actually ‘Education’.

As Kofi Annan once said, “Knowledge is power. Information is liberating. Education is the premise of progress, in every society, in every family.” Inspired by this, the platform is groomed in a developing and modern atmosphere and helps the students to get into the top-shelf universities and colleges of the country – that is the story of M-Learning, an online education platform that relies on modern ways to prepare students for the future and keeping the light of beautiful education alive.

In The Knowledge Review’s latest venture to find the finest online education service providers in India, we evidently came across M-Learning, a leading Omnichannel Educational service provider in the country that is preparing and taking students one step closer to their bigger-than-life dreams.

Moreover, in an exclusive conversation with the magazine, Mr Sundeep Gupta, the Director of Gupta Tutorials and Founder of M-Learning shares his exclusive story with the application and the education sector.

The Brainchild of Ambition & Innovation

The story of M-Learning, Gupta Tutorials, and its founder Mr Sundeep Gupta is a story written with care and passion. Talking about his journey with education, learning and the struggle to get into the finest topmost colleges in India, Mr Gupta says, “I have been tutoring since 1986 when I was just 13 years of age. Then, I launched Gupta Tutorials in the year 1994, in the small town of Ujjain, exclusively for IIT JEE.”

However, further moving out of the space and entering the education sector, Mr Gupta had to give up Pricewaterhouse Coopers Associates’ overseas job. When asked about this unique career choice, Mr Gupta shared that it was his ambition to coach students. He also shared that the IIT and Medical aspirants struggled to clear the entrances, which posed hindrances to getting into the country’s finest colleges.

Belonging to a middle-class family from Ujjain, Madhya Pradesh, a small intelligent boy with high aspirations taught and mentored his juniors to support his education and family to meet two ends, and these economic restraints inspired him to excel in the field of education as a tutor.

In 1997, Mr Gupta completed his BTech from IIT Kharagpur and expanded Gupta Tutorials with a new centre at Indore. It was just the beginning of its long years of existence in the coaching sector. At Gupta Tutorials, the student strength kept growing year after year, teaching about 1500 students sitting in 18 classrooms in seven towns of Madhya Pradesh.

The idea that Inspired M-Learning

It was in the year 2010 when smartphones had started to conquer the majority of the market share around the world when a passionate gizmo friend introduced the then-new Samsung Galaxy tab to Mr Gupta.

Amazed by the quality of videos on the tab, the idea of virtual learning was conceived in the mind of Mr Gupta. Asking himself the question that inspired M-Learning-If movies can be watched, why not educational video lectures?

To Serve the Younger Generation Better!

Being a prominent teacher for the last 20 years, the conventional methods of education are what was always considered Mr Gupta’s forte. However, with a wish to serve the future generation in a better way by providing quality education, he came up with the idea of Virtual Teaching through the usage of computers, laptops, Mobiles, and Tablets.

Eventually, running conventional classes along with the virtual classes had constraints.

Talking about his prestigious online or virtual education venture, Mr Gupta says, “At the start, we tried to balance the conventional classes and virtual education. It turns out to be a very tedious process. So, we decided to quit the concept of conventional classes and started solely focusing on virtual education.”

Being a start-up in its early years, Mr Gupta struggled with maintaining and attaining stability for the platform. Amidst all this, to avoid any financial complications, Mr Gupta sold his properties to overcome the liquidity crunch and became a sole proprietor. After stabilising M-Learning, the platform then successfully opened its doors for effective learners.

The platform started providing effective learning solutions for schools, students, and individuals across India, right from class IX to XII and various other entrance exams.

Asserting a special note on what MLearning provides to its students, Mr Gupta says, “Additionally, the company provides complete printed study material along with video lectures. The insightfully and meticulously designed study material is simple to understand, easy to follow, comprehensive and perceptive so as to enable the student to understand the concepts much better than any other study material out there in the market.”

“Our learners are self-motivated, self-devoted, and self-dedicated. We simply need to serve content-rich stuff. The institute records video lectures of the professors with deep Knowledge and experience of the subject and target examination in a real classroom environment. With minimum editing, these masterclasses are then published on M-Learning App. Mr Gupta says that such lectures are heavily admired, used, and referred to by their limited category of users, who are none other than the country’s top intellectuals,” Mr Gupta further adds.

On a Visionary Mission

The mission of M-learning India has always been to provide the best learning options to its students who wish to make a space for themselves in the competitive world. Talking about the institute’s mission, Mr Gupta elaborates, “M-Learning India includes- student counselling, aftersales support, technical support, as well as updates of course materials (if required) for students of classes 8th, 9th, 10th, 11th, 12th (CBSE & State Board) NTSE, and IIT-JEE & NEET entrance exam contenders.”

Interestingly, understanding the demography and economic instability in India, M-Learning has been developed in a manner to suit the student’s needs. Highlighting some of the interesting facts of M Learning, Mr Gupta says, “M-Learning videos also play in an offline mode hence no internet connectivity is required to study them, making them time-saving and cost-efficient. The benefits of the product include the comfort and convenience of studying anywhere, anytime for the student. The student can play, pause and replay the video as per requirement.”

“No holidays, no missing lectures, and everyone is a front-row student. Parents can look after the ward’s studies with better results. Synchronisation with school studies, dummy schools will go out of trend, and one can prepare the students for competitive exams as well,” he further adds.

M-Learning is one of the few educational institutes that realised the need for tech-oriented study options, eliminating the need for books which was a boon during the covid times. Initially, they began by teaching the entire syllabus of the subjects on tablets. M-Learning moved on to delivering the study materials on hard disks and shipping these hard disks to the students. Soon, owing to the difficult pandemic lockdown experiences, they developed the most advanced and techno-friendly platform for preparing aspirants for the IIT, NEET and School exams – M-Learning India App for Android, Windows and iOS. M-Learning moved still further to launch live classes via the internet for optimum lecture delivery and best understanding. They also formulated an online doubt forum where students could feed their queries and would receive solutions and answers from leading faculties of the country. Subject doubts and difficulties can be cleared simply using this forum, an enterprising initiative for today’s students, by M-Learning.

Instilling the Values of True Student-Teacher Relationship!

The way education is perceived in India has changed drastically over the years. The recent covid times are adding more to the technological boost in the education space. However, M-Learning has always been keen on the unique relationship a student has with a teacher.

Talking about that and the learning model at M-Learning, Mr Gupta says, “M-Learning focuses on providing a coaching classroom feel, the watching, listening, and attempting experience; hence no animations, hi-tech software, or hi-tech multimedia have been used in the videos. This also avoids unnecessary distractions caused. The one and only focus is enhancing the learning process of the student, encouraging and motivating him to build his conceptual strengths, stretch his capabilities and achieve greater scores.”

Overcoming the Modern Challenges

The perk of having a passionate leader is that they never choose the easy way out. With such dedication, before releasing the product, Mr Gupta performed an accuracy check for his products. Experimenting with 6 of his brilliant students, asking them to study through the video lecture series.

Proudly sharing the response of his students, Mr Gupta says, “The feedback was outstanding; the students felt that the teacher was teaching them one on one. The course video was very descriptive and was 100% time efficient as compared to the conventional class experience.”

The past few years have been very crucial for the education sector of India. For example, in places like Jammu & Kashmir and a lot of remote areas, children have not been able to study and pursue careers they have dreamed of even though they have the potential to do so, sometimes due to lack of internet availability & speed. M-Learning realised this unfortunate situation and was very considerate and empathetic about it. The lack of internet access made situations worse for the IIT and NEET aspirants. These students were supplied with meticulously prepared hard disks with the entire syllabus required for the entrance exams by M-Learning. In turn, many aspirants not only prepared for the exams but also cracked them with flying colours.

Today, M-Learning has crossed international borders; they shipped harddisks with recorded lectures for IIT& NEET aspirants so that they could prepare themselves for the entrance exam through well-enabled offline learning. M-learning India reached students in various countries like Canada, Oman, Indonesia, the USA, the UK, Qatar, UAE, Nepal & Bangladesh. The students were also introduced to the Subscription model of the mobile application for easy study and practice.

M-Learning has posted many study-learning videos on YouTube, which are free to access. IIT & NEET aspirants, as well as school children, can avail of this free service and learn their subjects via Youtube. Over 300k subscribers have already utilised these videos for learning. Another very significant aspect of M-Learning is that the content designed by them is very comprehensive; all practical theories, practice problems and even illustrations related to the various subjects, right from class 8 to 12 and even for IIT & NEET entrance exam preparations, are optimally included.

Capturing the Core-Essence

Inducing quality learning methods, motivating students and building a strong student base across the country and the world, M-Learning has captured the core essence of the modern-day teaching-learning era–Education.

Highlighting some of the major benefits that M-Learning specialises in and its journey, Mr Siddharth Gupta, Director – Academics, says, “MLearning has 25 well-informed, talented production partners with 10+ years of experience in the field and is engaged in the recording of video lectures. These are not professional actors; they are experienced teachers, and they have taught the respective topics more than 50 times in conventional classrooms.”

Further explaining the entire operation of the M-Learning ecosystem and maintaining a quality education atmosphere, Mr. Gupta says, “The video lectures are delivered in such a manner that it explains the entire concept effectively with appropriate illustrations wherever necessary, whereby there is no room for doubts or confusion. The company and production partners share a healthy rapport, more like an author and a publisher. Interestingly, the production partners are paid half-yearly royalty at a high scale depending upon the sale of the subscriptions.”

Changing the Perspective of the Education Space

M-Learning management, in its journey of being one of the finest virtual education providers in the country, understands that a change of perspective is much needed in the education space in India. That is the reason M-Learning follows a virtual office culture, where the entire team works under one roof.

In addition to this, the company has seen a drastic transformation in the revenue aspect, where they initially had INR 32,000, and as of last financial year, they have grown to INR 2,29,00,000. Having a unique subscription model, Mr. Shankey Bansal, Director – Marketing & Outreach, avers, “Our courses are such that any student who is focussed towards his studies can start it for as low as INR 1999. In the last quarter of 2022-23, we are introducing live lectures which can be accessed from any corner of the country and beyond through the internet. The introduction of 5G & the coverage of 4G in our country is only going to boost the consumption of videos/live streams in India.”

Setting the Pieces of the Next Game!

M-Learning, after conquering a major market share in the industry now, has already accelerated the roadmap for the future, showing the pinnacle of excellence and enthusiasm. Briefly talking about the future of the company and its vision, Mr Sachin Mandwariya, Director – Technology, says, “MLearning has launched a ‘Video Streaming Mobile Application’, has offline recorded videos, capability to go live, accessibility on all Operating Systems and for the convenience of the student now displaying on TV as well. Along with this, we have added a ‘Doubt Discussion Forum’, where the students can interact directly with the mentors. Most important of all, we are continuously innovating in the space, and we are sincerely adding effort to make education more economical & easily accessible to every student across India by fulfilling their dreams and ambition.”