CHENNAI: In 2015, four school friends got together for a purpose. They wanted to redefine the way students learn. Booksbeka.com was an outcome of their joint desire to cater to the academic needs of students. The website is primarily known for selling second-hand books at affordable rates. It also offers a platform to buy new books and sell back it to the company.
“Every year, nearly 15 lakh students graduate from engineering colleges across India. In 2016, it was found that only 50%-60% of students complete the course and graduate as engineers. Recently, Dharmendra Pradhan, Union Minister for Skill Development said, ‘Just seven per cent of engineers are capable of tackling core technology jobs, and un-employability will be the biggest obstacle for the growth of the country’,” shares Kaushik HA, CEO, Booksbeka.com.
“We observed that there is a constant increase in the prices of textbooks, along with increase in piracy through photocopying. All these concerns coupled with students losing interest in learning made us analyse in detail about the problems that plagued students,” explains Kaushik. The other founders, Venugopal S, design lead; Roopak K, business development; and Pruthvi R, marketing, along with Kaushik identified three problem areas that affect students in higher education — lack of visualisation in learning, traditional methods of teaching, and no practical learning.
Taking their initiative a step ahead, they created Vrook, a web and mobile application, to provide immersive and interactive learning experience through Virtual Reality (VR) and 3D visualisations. VR in education enhances the learning experience by bringing learning to life via a virtual environment. The founders believe that the more a learner is able to participate in life-like engagement, the easier it is to connect to the subject.
Vrook’s mission is to simplify higher educational content through visualisation and emphasise on practical learning. Their product is delivered and consumed through VR modules and VFX and animated videos.
They have monthly subscription where students enroll and pay to view courses. They also want to partner with colleges for adoption of videos and virtual reality. “In future we want to introduce Learning 4.0 in colleges by implementing VR labs, immersive video platform and assessments to assist professors in teaching and students in learning. We are looking to implement this in top universities of Bengaluru,” he explains.
There are 3,600 engineering colleges across India which the team looks at as their market. “With the growing need of quality education in the engineering sector, we aim at producing skilled engineering students through emerging learning technologies. We are looking for a further funding of `2 crore for the same,” he adds.
The aim and goal of Vrook is to shape the future of learning through VR. It will change the way educational institutions adopt learning practices in colleges. VR enables institutes to deliver learning experiences that no longer depend on lectures. Immersive experiences will make difficult concepts easier to learn and visualise.
All you need to know
Startup: Booksbeka Online Solutions, Ed-tech Startup
Website: www.vrook.co , www.booksbeka.com
Funding raised: Undisclosed seed funding by 1Crowd and are looking for a
`2 crore further funding