With Genius Teacher, Advitiya Sharma Aims to Make Every Child a Genius

After resigning from Housing.com in March 2016, Advitiya Sharma launched his next venture in April end named "Genius Teacher" in the education technology sector focussed on kindergarten to class eight students. The startup will run micro schools with about 5-8 students and the institutes will be aggregated and hyper-local in nature. The company will also separately train teachers to utilise technology and optimise for time.

Sujata Sangwan Interacts With Advitiya Sharma, Founder, Genius Teacher And Spoke To Him

Who are the other founding team members?

Genius is building an A+ team of entrepreneurs, technologists and educators. There are many A+ people (even from Silicon Valley) who are contributing to Genius. We have launched the product in just 30 days, and that’s a very big achievement. We’ll be announcing our A+ founding team soon.

What is your Product or Service / Offerings to Customer?

We’re going to work with Entrepreneur Teachers, help them run “Genius Micro Schools” in their home. We’ve designed a Technology that can customise itself for the learning needs, interest and pace of every child. It will create a knowledge graph of every child and change the content, practice, homework for every child. And will optimise the learning of every child.

Genius Micro Schools will be an evolving classroom, to help children be ready for the fast changing world.

What were the challenges while setting up this startup?

Technology has revolutionised all fields, but not education. The reason is that technology is reactive, not proactive. It can not generate the curiosity, or inspire a child to learn as a teacher can. Technology can't replace the learning that comes from peers. It can't give children to work on real-world projects. All these aspects are critical to the learning experience of the child.

It was this insight that technology alone is not enough, which was the biggest challenge. Genius Micro Schools is a hybrid of an amazing classroom experience, with revolutionary technology that customises itself to the learning needs

Who are your competitors?

No one is following this approach in India. All Ed-tech start ups have tried to remove the teachers, not work with them.

We are inspired by AltSchool and Montessori school system, and will revolutionise education the only way it can be revolutionised.

How is your business model different from the existing ones?

No one is following the Genius approach in India. They are relying 100% only on technology to solve education. Technology as we know today is reactive, but learning needs you to be proactive. Genius has chosen a middle path. We’re going to work with Entrepreneur Teachers, help them run “Genius Micro Schools” in their home. We’ve designed a Technology that can customise itself for the learning needs, interest and pace of every child. It will create a knowledge graph of every child and change the content, practice, homework for every child. And will optimise the learning of every child.

Who are your clients? How do you look at expanding?

Parents who believe that their child is meant to be a Genius, not just another brick in the wall are our clients.

We will launch our Parent product in the next 2-3 weeks, to begin student registrations.

Also our Genius Teachers will be our brand ambassadors in localities, and educate parents about the Genius Micro School revolution.

The best and worst memories while setting up …

We've launched the product in the just 30 days, these have been an intense 30 days. Launching the product and getting such a phenomenal response from teachers feels great.

Your Marketing Plans so that world know you ...

We are going to rely on our product and Genius teachers to spread, our vision by word of mouth. Brands in Education are not built by spending money on TV adverts, but by word of mouth.

So we're focused on giving Teacher, Parent and Students a phenomenal experience, through our Genius Micro Schools. Hopefully that will be enough :)

What’s your plans for funding?

We’ve got inbound interest from some investors, but we plan to boot-strap initially. Our model is very cost efficient and will generate profits from the first class!

We want our partners to really care for the education process, and realize that it will be a long-term game.

What is the next big thing in pipeline?

We will be launching the Student registration product in the next 2-3 weeks. That will inspire every parent to enroll their child with the Genius Micro School in their locality.

What is the market size and market opportunity?

There are over 200 million student in K-8 in India today. NSSO research found that over 89% of families are dissatisfied with schools, and spend a massive 12-15% of family income on after school education!

Families with annual income > $10,000 ~ 15 million. So the market potential for Genius is huge ~ $15 billion.