Students who cannot afford the hefty fee charged by coaching centers for coaching classes for MBA, IBPS (Bank PO), SSC CGL (Staff Selection Commission) and other entrance exams, can now breathe easy.
A new app ‘Prepathon’ launched by Pagalguy.com (PG) allows students taking prep courses to have a virtual coach 24/7 free of cost.
The ‘Coach’ provides interactive learning, places the learning according to the students need, coaxes him or her to complete the course, thus ensuring higher engagement and interest of the users, higher absorption of knowledge and hence higher success.
“PG has been able to achieve this with human and technology interplay. So if there are 10,000 students taking short courses via the app, there will be a coach for all. This app will help students who cannot afford the hefty coaching class fees,” said Allwin Agnel, CEO of PG and a Wharton Alumnus.
The beta version of the app was launched during the last week of July and it has already seen more than 50,000 downloads and 75,000 questions are being answered each day. Agnel said Pagalguy plans to add 20 more courses under this app including IIT entrance.
“The biggest challenge for an educational website or app is completion rate. In case of some well-known educational providers the completion rate is as low as three per cent,” Agnel said, adding that as far as ‘Prepathon’ is concerned, the coaches hired by the company coax the students to complete the course.
“We have hired full-time coaches, who will help students to answer a question by providing them with various permutations and combinations. That’s the power of the App,” he said.
According to the company, there are 800,000 plus registered users, 120 million page views in 2014 and is estimated to cross 200 million views in 2015.
The portal receives over 700,000 unique visitors each month, 4 million plus posts, becoming not only the world’s largest forum for aspiring students, but also India’s largest educational website altogether.
PG founded in 2002 became profitable since 2006. Asked if the ‘Prepathon’ app would continue to be free for users, Agnel said there are no plans “as of now” to charge a fee from the users.