Classplus, a mobile OS that enables coaching institutes to take their brick and mortar setups online, has partnered with poverty-alleviation NGO Magic Bus in an effort to provide online education to underprivileged young people enrolled on the Magic Bus Livelihood Programme.
The Noida-based edtech company has equipped Magic Bus with its platform, enabling its youth to engage in an online learning experience during the lockdown. Magic Bus’ life and employability skills’ trainers are now leveraging the platform to share assignments, broadcast messages, deliver learning content and evaluate students’ performances online. The app is set to benefit more than 2000 youngsters across 22 states in locations as remote as Kurnool in Hyderabad, Ambadi and Shahpur in Mumbai and Thane.
Magic Bus is one of the largest poverty-alleviation programmes in India, impacting 3,75,000 children and young people in 22 states and 80 districts. It equips children and young people in the age group of 12 to 18 with the skills and knowledge they need to grow up and move out of poverty, build their employability skills and join the organised sector. With the help of Classplus, the Mumbai-headquartered NGO has been able to train youth from marginalised backgrounds during this time of crisis. According to a release statement, the first batch of students will graduate soon and the placement process will begin post that.
Commenting on the association, Mukul Rustagi, Co-Founder and CEO, Classplus, said,
“Classplus is providing its technology stack to the trainers at Magic Bus allowing them to upskill their students online across the length and breadth of the country. This is our small contribution towards meeting students and teachers’ needs in these difficult times. Magic Bus has been doing inspiring work in the field of education and their journey of serving the critical sections of society is very close to our heart. If we can help them grow in today’s internet age, it will be a great purpose to our existence in the ecosystem! Our journey to helping those in need doesn’t end here, we are looking for further opportunities through which we can contribute to the society.”
Thanking Classplus for helping them reach out to the underprivileged youth, Jayant Rastogi, Global CEO, Magic Bus, said,
“When Magic Bus decided to quickly move to a digital platform to skill our young people during the lockdown, Classplus became one of our online learning solutions. We thank Classplus for helping us reach out to our youth. The product is user friendly, easy to use and feature rich. It has allowed us to manage our online classes in the most efficient and transparent manner.”
In India, over 70 million students take tutoring every year with offline coaching institutes capturing a bulk of that market. Classplus aims to streamline this massive and fragmented market by helping tutors run all their communication, payments, assessments and online learning programmes on a full-stack mobile solution that doubles up as their online content repository. Classplus is the market leader in the segment with more than 3500 coaching centres and over one million students on-board. It recently raised $9 million in its Series A round from RTP Global, Sequoia Capital India’s Surge, Blume Ventures and others.
About Classplus:
Classplus enables offline coaching institutes and tutors to take their classrooms online on a mobile-first product. It helps tutors to run all their communication, payments, online assessments and video learning on a single platform which acts as a single-touch ecosystem for the students. This solves the dire need for the students who want to experience an online learning experience in tandem with the classroom experience with their tutors. The product was launched in 2018 by Mukul Rustagi and Bhaswat Agarwal. With 3500+ coaching centres and 1M+ students across 70+ Indian cities using Classplus, they are the category leaders in the segment. The company is backed by leading VCs across the globe, including RTP Global, Sequoia Capital India’s Surge, Blume, and Times Internet amongst others.
About Magic Bus:
Magic Bus was founded in 1999 by Matthew Spacie. From 3000 children in 1999 in Mumbai, it has transformed over one million children and young people living in poverty, taking them from a childhood full of challenges to a life with meaningful livelihoods. Magic Bus is one of the largest poverty alleviation programmes in India, impacting 3,75,000 children and young people in 22 states and 80 districts of India, in this year alone. It delivers sports activity-based sessions in close to 2000 communities and 1000 schools in both urban communities and remote rural areas. Since the Livelihood programme began in 2015, the NGO has 42 Livelihood centres. Through these livelihood centres, 30,000 youth have been trained and more than 70% placed in jobs in the organised sector with an average salary of INR 10,287. Magic Bus also works in Nepal, Bangladesh, and Myanmar with 6000 children in 40 communities and 31 schools. It has networking and fundraising offices in the US, UK, Singapore and Germany.
