Gone are the days when education was a sheer matter of books and notes. When you hear the classroom, do you picture a room filled with bespectacled teens immersed in their assignments? Well, not anymore! The face of education has now totally changed. Edtech companies have given it a new direction, a new dimension. The way schools buy educational technology has brought up evolution in itself. This has led more and more EdTech companies to embrace the SaaS model, all thanks to its sundry benefits.

Educational Technology – ‘EdTech’, helps ameliorates the overall teaching and learning process and augments the performance of the education system. Here is a list of 48 such SaaS EdTech companies that are booming the market and wooing the customers more than ever.

Why are SaaS Edtech Startups booming?

According to a report from KPMG and Google, the market of EdTech companies is expected to have a market share of 1.96 billion dollars by 2021.

If a single sector has been benefited by the technology the most-it is the education sector. Edtech startups are gaining prominence for the fun and interesting way they have made learning and skill development. The COVID-19 pandemic has brought in unprecedented changes in education, the rise in edtech startups and companies are more so.

• Untapped opportunities are plenty in this field.
• Higher ROI with respect to investment
• Need due to changing learning dynamics
• Demand for a lifelong learning experience

The size of the Edtech market by sector

Here is a list of top such SaaS EdTech companies that are booming the market and wooing the customers more than ever.

1. Grammarly
2. Teachoo
3. Outschool
4. Prerply
5. Labster
6. Lessonly
7. Panorama Education
8. Kahoot!
9. Accredible
10. Creativelive
11. McGraw Hill Education
12. BeRecruited
13. Duolingo
14. Coursmos
15. Remind
16. Flipgrid
17. Applyboard
18. Seesaw
19. Sapling Learning
20. Udemy
21. Dreambox Learning
22. Clever
23. Schoology
24. Voxy
25. Rosetta Stone
26. Smart Sparrow
27. NextLesson
28. Open Sesame
29. Versal
30. Brightwheel
31. FrontBench
32. Udacity
33. Guild Education
34. Knowbox
35. eduZilla
36. Playablo
37. Honorlock
38. Univariety
39. BYJU’S
40. Coursera
41. Unacademy
42. VIPKid
43. Yuanfudao
44. Age of Learning
45. upGrad
46. MasterClass
47. Chegg
48. Simplilearn
49. Course Hero
50. Babbel
51. K12
52. Khan Academy
53. SkillShare

1. Grammarly

Location: San Francisco

Grammarly is an online proofreader/editor that automatically detects grammar, spelling, punctuation, word choice, and style mistakes in the user’s writing. Founded in 2008, it developed this AI-powered Chrome extension.

It comes in two plans as of now. The basic version is free and the premium version halts in three subscription plans. Further, it automatically detects the mistakes and alerts you followed by a score.

2. Teachoo

Location: Pune, India

Several online courses are offered by Teachoo, an education platform (a SaaS Edtech) that caters to English-speaking students in India. Math, Microsoft Excel, and tax preparation are currently available courses.

3. Outschool

Location: San Francisco, CA

Outschool (SaaS Edtech) has developed a learning environment with a live, small-class format for homeschooling. Students and parents can select from more than 1,000 live lessons created for kids, such as anthropology, ballet, art, and STEM skills. Five hundred thousand students have taken 140,000 classes throughout the organization. Teachers have reportedly made $45 million from the platform, and Outschool is currently valued at $3 billion (about $9 per person in the US).

4. Prerply

Location: Brookline, Massachusetts

Find tutors in various languages using Preply, an online tutor marketplace renowned for its SaaS education. For individuals who would want a tutor to guide them along a more planned path, the Preply platform also offers a “structured learning” alternative. Preply uses rankings in addition to a machine learning algorithm to rank tutors. Over 100,000 students (about the seating capacity of the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum) are enrolled in the platform, according to the company.

5. Labster

Location: Copenhagen, Denmark

For doing VR experiments, Labster offers a number of virtual labs. Students specifically practice lab procedures virtually using VR and AR technologies. The main advantage is that kids may rehearse in a secure setting. Additionally, preparing students for actual lab work. Currently, Labster’s platform hosts more than 150 virtual labs and boasts more than 1,000 university customers.

6. Lessonly

Location: Indianapolis, Indiana

Software called Lessonly can help businesses train their employees internally. For the B2B market, it is a learning platform. Additionally, the company provides interactive tools that assist staff rehearsing real-world scenarios.

7. Panorama Education

Location: Boston

Panorama Education, a data analytics company, focuses on surveys that measure school climate, teacher engagement, student satisfaction and other aspects in K-12 schools.

The team designs the surveys (which can be taken securely via mobile) and administers them. The company then helps the more than 11,000 schools that use its services to analyze and act on the amassed data.

8. Kahoot!

Location: Norway

Kahoot! reviews assignments, homework and review sessions into fun, micro- quiz episodes. These questions are ideally shared on the screen. And the students who get it right earns the first points. The competitive element has not only made a hit with kids, but also in business meetings and trivia settings.

9. Accredible

Location: San Francisco

Accredible is a certification provide that is known as a verifiable repository of human capital. Founded in 2013, it has issued 5000 credentials for its professional clients.

Students can add recommendations to their certifications as well as have their credentials recorded. Pricing plans depend on the number of credentials per year and add-on features available for enterprises.

10. CreativeLive

Location: Seattle

CreativeLive provides video classes for the art lovers. And covers subjects like sound design, photo editing and wedding photography. Aside from this, with the help of live-streamed class format, students can get answers to questions in real time.

11. McGraw Hill Education

Location: Ohio

McGraw Hill Education creates science-based learning experiences such as SmartBook, a reading tool whose content adapts to its users. Additionally, the company makes eBooks, mobile applications and digital curricula.

12. BeRecruited

Location: San Francisco

BeRecruited is the largest college recruiting network that serves more than 17 million high school athletes and over 30.000 college and university coaches throughout the USA. It allows access to follow school programs; customizes a user profile and monitors its popularity among coaches.

13. Duolingo

Location: Pittsburgh

Duolingo’s free app helps users learn more than 30 languages, from Spanish to Esperanto, via game-like instruction. Users score points and execute timed challenges to ascend to new levels. Further, a recent study found that students learned roughly as much from 34 hours of Duolingo as they did from a first-semester Spanish course.

14. Coursmos

Location: San Francisco

Coursmos provides an online micro-learning platform designed for learning and teaching micro-courses, typically no longer than three minutes each. The platform hosts lessons in the areas of personal development and business as well.

15. Remind

Location: San Francisco

The Remind’s app allows the teachers and the student’s guardian to send text and voice messages without actually exchanging phone numbers. Further, it skirts the privacy hassle of providing any contact details. Also, with 31 million monthly users, the platform makes communicating school-related deadlines and objectives simpler.

16. Flipgrid

Location: Minneapolis

Flipgrid works much like a discussion board. Instead of posting written responses to prompts, though, students post short videos. They can also put together longer video presentations and receive video feedback from their teachers.

17. Applyboard

Location: Ontario

Applyboard helps college students and high school kids throughout the world to study in North America. Also, ApplyBoard’s tools help streamline the application process, too, providing secure storage space for transcripts and other key documents.

18. Seesaw

Location: San Francisco

Seesaw developed a learning app that enables students to document what they learn in schools by capturing photos and videos of physical work, or by adding digital creations. Founded in 2014, it makes it easy to get student work in one place and give parents a window into the classroom.

19. Sapling Learning

Location: Texas

Sapling Learning bolsters students’ understanding of tough segments, like calculus and physics. Also, the interface asks questions in a variety of styles, including multiple choice, free response and ranking problems. Along the way, it offers relevant hints, feedback and clarification too.

20. Udemy

Location: San Francisco

Udemy is one of the top edtech companies in the world where tutors are able to create a course, add it to a library of 65,000+ courses, and earn money from student tuition charges. Further, an instructor shares its revenue with Udemy. Founded in 2010, it allows monitoring user adoption and overall user activity.

21. Dreambox Learning

Location: Seattle

Dreambox Learning aims to make math accessible and exciting. Further, their technology tracks students’ problem-solving approaches, constantly re-sequencing problems and recalibrating difficulty based on student performance.

22. Clever

Location: San Francisco

Clever is a cloud-based data storage medium app for third-party e-learning systems and schools/districts. It’s a bridge between schools’ Student Information Systems and online learning applications. Also, it is engineered to be a secure and convenient way for districts/schools to grant access and send data to third-party eLearning applications.

23. Schoology

Location: New York City

Schoology learning management system emphasizes fun and synergy b. The system allows kids to work and chat together. It also offers teachers a one-stop portal for administrative tasks, including lesson planning, grading and quiz administration.

24. Voxy

Location: New York City

Voxy renders mobile-friendly English-language courses zeroed in on towards a variety of contexts.  Its curriculum is tailored to goals like passing the Test of English as a Foreign Language (also known as TOEFL). Also, it includes higher education and corporate environments.

25. Rosetta Stone

Location: Arlington

Rosetta Stone strives to teach multiple languages seamlessly. Also, through Rosetta Stone’s software and web services, students can gain proficiency in 30 languages, including English. This curriculum also blends listening, speaking and writing. Not just that, it frequently circles back to foundational concepts.

26. Smart Sparrow

Location: San Francisco

SmartSparrow developed an online learning design platform enabling customers to create interactive and adaptive e-learning courseware. Moreover, the company provides a dynamic, drag-and-drop authoring tool. And empowers teachers to build their own course and define personalized learning paths for their students.

27. NextLesson

Location: San Francisco

NextLesson offers teachers 10,000 standards-aligned projects and lessons that are based on real-world problems solving through topics students care about, such as movies, sports, and celebrities. It was founded in 2013 and utilized by over 2 million students and 75.000 teachers in school districts nationwide.

28. Open Sesame

Location: Portland

OpenSesame’s team helps companies select and integrate appropriate courses into pre-existing training platforms. It also matches companies with e-learning courses that are relevant to their employees. Drawing from a library of more than 20,000 courses on subjects from manufacturing to healthcare.

29. Versal

Location: San Francisco

Versal is one of the most popular EdTech companies that provides a cloud-based e-learning platform designed to create and deliver training content using pre-coded solutions. Further, Versal serves for over 150,000 educators. All plans provide unlimited access to mobile-ready courses; peer-to-peer learning and multi-author course creation.

30. Brightwheel

Location: San Francisco

BrightWheel offers a mobile app for iOS and Android devices to help teachers keep parents informed by sending them updates about their kids throughout the school day. Further, the product is targeted at preschools and daycares and used for tracking attendance, recording activities, communicating with parents, etc.

31. FrontBench

Location: India

Frontbench is a platform that offers free resources and opportunities for users. They can gain expertise in any domain including campus placement, hackathons, developer clubs, open source programs, conferences, and more. The main aim behind starting the enterprise was to bridge the gap between job seeker knowledge and industry expectations. This led them to create a service that catered to conducting high level programs on technical subjects, management, marketing, administration and more.

32. Udacity

Location: Mountain View

Udacity is a skill building edtech platform. It is a fast and effective way to learn important skills necessary for getting a job. It is for lifelong learners who look to build the resume they want. The powerful and flexible digital education will help learners be read for tech roles that are in high demand. Udacity enables high degree of engagement and quality learning for students. The startup also offers career team support for students to establish that they are placed in their respective fields.

33. Guild Education

 Guild education is a platform that offers access to a network of learning providers and universities for educational programs, coaching support, and tuition management. It manages employee experience, upskilling, academic networking, and even facilitates custom degrees. Every corporate employee, as per this edtech company, will receive dedicated coaching to meet brand goals. Employees can network with a custom range of universities to invest in themselves and improve performance.

34. Knowbox

Location: China

Knowbox is a Chinese edtech startup in the K-12 segment creating collaborative spaces for students and teachers. It works both ways. Teachers can assign, correct, and look into homework. Students can learn and do the homework. They offer services under two wings- private learning and family counselling. With AI-based content, they plan to build an intelligent education experience for users and enhance user experience. There is information for both parents and students. Their range of products include smallbox which is a mobile app for teachers to correct homework via photos.

35. eduZilla

Location: India

eduZilla is a SaaS edtech company that offers an effective tool to manage the life cycle of students from lead management till the end of course. It helps private businesses such as coaching classes, professional course providers, and more. It offers an educational software that makes management of students and business operations much easier. It allows for easily scaling operations to multiple locations.

36. Playablo

Location: India

Playablo is an online platform built for schools. Assessments are gamified and can be integrated with lesson plans. It allows students to learn online in a hassle-free, interesting manner. Teachers can run classes online and improve their awareness to digital mediums. An interesting concept here is to use game techniques for engagement, learning, or motivation.

37. Honorlock

Location: India

Honorlock offers online exam proctoring for schools and colleges. The simple, affordable platform is built to hinder cheating, reduce scheduling, and detects mobile usage during exams. Artificial intelligence identifies acts of dishonesty and alerts the team. The company also values student privacy and institution above all.

38. Univariety

Location: India

Univariety is India’s largest career guidance platform for schools. The EdTech company offers alumni management, university management, admission counseling, career counseling, and admission help for students in the K-12 bracket. Through an online platform, students can connect with their alumni for career questions or campus queries.

39. BYJU’S

Location: India

BYJU’S is accounted as India’s largest ed-tech company and is also credited as the country’s most adored school learning app. This was launched in 2015, and ever since then it has left an indelible impression for the competitive exams’ aspirants (JEE mains, IAS, etc.). As of now it has over 50 million registered students and over 3.5 million subscribers.

40. Coursera

Location: California

Coursera is an open online course provider. It works with organizations and universities to offer online courses, degrees and certifications in a multitude of subjects. They have also collaborated with over 200+ leading companies like Google, IBM & Stanford too.

41. Unacademy

Location: India

Unacademy is an online educating technology based out of Bangalore. It offers popular courses for competitive examinations across the country. With their daily live classes, you can chat with the educators, learn and answer live polls. This online learning app allows you to take any number of numbers from a sea of topics.

42. VIPKid

Location: China

VIPKid is an innovative online platform that enables unprecedented knowledge transfer accessible by clubbing in young learners and teaching educators through a one-to-one online class. In simpler words, you can see it as one global classroom connecting the young citizens of the world together.

43. Yuanfudao

Location: China

Yuanfudao is accounted as China’s leading online education technology. The company has always been committed to using scientific and technological means to enhance the learning experience, stimulate learning interest, cultivate scientific learning habits, and allow Chinese students to more easily obtain high-quality educational resources.

44. Age of Learning

Location: California

Age of Learning is a comprehensive and advanced digital learning resource for the children aged 2-8 years. It has been designed to aid and prepare them for the kindergarten and ensure third-grade readiness. Further, it blends education best practices, innovative technology, and insightful creativity to bring learning to life for children across the U.S. and around.

45. UpGrad

Location: India

upGrad is yet another online higher education technology in India. With this, you will find access to dedicated student supports, real industry projects and attain one-on-one industry expertise from enriching mentors. Here, you will come across many free courses too and you get to gain certification in a multitude of areas.

46. MasterClass

Location: California

MasterClass is an American online education subscription platform. Herein, the students can have access to the lectures and tutorials that have been pre-recorded by the experts in across a multitude of fields. It has its own streaming platform on YouTube, where the students can enhance their skill-set on any given topic.

47. Chegg

Location: California

Launched in 2005g, Chegg is an American education technology platform that offers digital and physical books on a rental basis. You will come across many online earning opportunities in the field of tutoring and solution authoring as well. Aside from this, you will be assured to find 24×7 help for your homeworks too.

48. Simplilearn

Location: India

Simplilearn is a bootcamp and certification course providers. Here, you can get access to the latest resources, articles, videos, and eBooks in line with your nature of interest. It has also partnered with the world’s leading companies and universities such as Microsoft, Purdue University and IBM, to name a few. Get classes, certifications, courses and stellar career support.

49. Course Hero

Location: California

Course Hero is an educational online platform that provides instant access to thousands of study resources, guides, course notes, and aids in test preps. With this, you are assured to get 24×7 homework help and browse over millions of textbooks and solutions online.

50. Babbel

Location: Germany

Babbel is a German subscription-based language learning application. Its e-learning platform can be available in various international languages including Spanish, French, German, Italian, Russian, etc. Babbel amalgamates efficient education methods with the ‘state of the art’ technology.

51. K12

Location: Virginia

K12 Inc. Is a for-profit education company that offers online schooling and curriculum. Basically, it is an educational management company that renders online education which has been designed as an alternative to the traditional form of public-school education. It caters to education for students from kindergarten to 12th grade.

52. Khan Academy

Location: India

Khan Academy is a free online education platform that has produced over 6000+ video lessons teaching a huge spectrum of academic subjects. It is a non-profit organization with a mission to provide free education to anyone, anywhere.

53. Skillshare

Location: New York

Skillshare is an American online learning platform which can be availed on a subscription basis. Most of the courses here zero in on the interactions rather than the lecturing part. Discover from a wide horizon of courses and get personalized on-demand learning as you learn.

Tips for growing EdTech Companies

In the past few years, online market has seen a surge in EdTech startups in most of the tech-based countries. Most of these startups are coming from countries like USA, India and UK. Each of these startups promise to change the landscape of education patterns for the better. But the competition is immense and hence, you need a cutting edge strategy to grow your EdTech business. Below are the few tips that you can implement in this business.

Have a good understanding of education sector

Before you jump on to create the right product for your edtech startup, make sure that you have good understanding of the current market. You should be aware of the problems and challenges being faced by this industry. If you go by your own understanding then you might be making a mistake of solving the problems that are already solved. In that case, your product would be no different than the myriads of products that are already available in the marketplace. Identifying the unique competitive advantage is a must to grow your business.

Choose the right pricing model

While freemium is the most preferred way of generating traffic, it can be detrimental to the business if those users don’t convert into the paid ones. Before you decide on the right pricing model, make sure you to do a proper research on all the available pricing models in the market. The pricing slabs you choose must account for all the incurred cost and leave a substantial margin for the business to sustain in the longer run. How to increase the margin over the time for long-term users is also something you must think upon and implement.

Build unique and creative product

Engaging students online is a totally different ball-game than in a physical classroom. Make sure your teachers understand this and bring in the nuances of teaching online to drive proper engagement. There are different exercises you can engage them with that work exceptionally well for startup in education sector.

And to stand apart from your competitors, you need to build unique products. Just following the top edtech companies would not fetch you results as the administrators would rather choose a trusted brand than a new startup for the same product. Investors would also be interested to know what unique elements do you bring to your product that can bolster their confidence in investing in your product.

Be prepared for the future; rather create it

Education technology companies are booming like anything in the current marketplace. But know that this is just a beginning of a new era. Education system is going to change forever with the upcoming technologies. With so many Education startups functioning today, it is common to have a blurred vision of the future. Be aware of it and challenge your creativity to come up with new ideas that nobody has thought so far. Do proper market research to understand the underlying gaps that you can fill through your futuristic product.

That’s a Wrap

EdTech companies play an increasingly crucial role in revamping the overall customer experience. Nonetheless, technology will never replace the greatness of a teacher. However, equipping technology in the hands of a great teacher is transformational.

Still, the future of Edtech companies stays in flux. When it comes to student-facing technologies. For example, where’s the line between teaching kids tech literacy and fomenting tech addiction?

Also, will there come a point when Edtech ditches kids altogether to focus solely on the recurring revenue-generating corporate clients?

Time will tell!

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