Banking on moms
A new-age fun-learning platform, Yellow Class, offers 3-12 year-old kids a range of extra-curricular classes on dancing,drawing, personality development and creative writing, etc. All for free.
Launched in June 2020, the ed-tech start-up at present has over two lakh users from across 52 countries, and aims to reach out to 50 million mothers in the next five years. “We have an extremely agile team of parents-founders, and working mothers at key leadership positions to execute interactive digital classes,” says Anshul Gupta, CEO and Co-Founder, Yellow Class. Excerpts:
When did you conceptualise Yellow Class?
I got the idea during the lockdown in April 2020, when there was an explosion in adoption of online classes among kids of all ages. We came across a handful of mothers on a WhatsApp group looking for extra-curricular classes for their kids outside the school’s framework, and saw an opportunity there. We started with a few dance and art classes on Zoom. The response was overwhelming — the mothers’ community kept growing, prompting us to keep adding more classes. Soon, we developed our own custom platform.
What is the present status?
Today, we have over two lakh mothers across multiple social media channels. Thousands of kids attend our online hobby classes on drawing, painting, craft, dance, GK, etc. The classes are held in ‘one-to-many’ format wherein each live class is attended by up to 2,500 kids. They interact digitally through comments and emojis, and our coaches answer their queries. All the classes are free. We will soon build an additional layer of premium services and programs.
What about educators?
We have worked with close to 30 educators. Only some of them work with us full time. The rest are on contract for a limited period. Many of them have other professional commitments, but work exclusively with us for teaching.
How many kids have benefited so far?
Over 50,000 kids have taken classes with Yellow Class on our platform, and many more do so on our Facebook and YouTube pages.
How many total programmes are there, and how are these designed?
Currently, Yellow Class is working on five programmes. In the next two months, we will launch over 30 more programmes, including some in Hindi. All these are designed by Yellow Class experts in partnership with the mentors who take these classes.
How do you plan to reach out to 50 million mothers?
By building a large, mutually supportive community of mothers who use Yellow Class to access growth avenues for their kids. Our online community is being built organically where current members bring in new members through referral and word of mouth. ‘Mothers’ is a deeply connected community offline, and we tap into it to build awareness about Yellow Class.Plus, we plan to hold contests, and have DIY videos and guidance facilities on our platform, all of which will bring in more into our fold.