COVID-19 pandemic has left an imprint on education: Abhyank Srinet

More than a year into the COVID-19 pandemic, some countries have resumed daily life but businesses and education remain heavily impacted. It has brought about technological changes. COVID-19 forced schools and classrooms to go remote overnight, with edtech companies recording unprecedented surge in users.

Abhyank Srinet, Founder, MIM Essay in an interaction with MyBigPlunge believes the education industry has adapted to new ways of industry, thus now reaching out to a much wider audience, increasing its reach and database massively:

Since 2020, education has been brought to a grinding halt by the COVID-19 pandemic. And this has brought about the emergence and adoption of edtech. What is MIM Essay’s take on this? 

Since 2016, we at MIM Essay have had a digital-centric approach. Thus we never had an offline setup. What covid19 has done is it has greatly shuttered down the physical office approach because people can’t go and visit offices. Therefore, they don’t have any option but to rely on more technical, Ed-tech approaches. Since most firms moved their databases to digital, we saw broad ed-tech adoption and a remarkable uptake rate. However, those who already had a digital-centric approach like us have shown a sharp rise in every aspect. So all in all, the education industry has adapted to new ways of industry, thus now reaching out to a much wider audience, increasing its reach and database massively. As a result, a lot of Ed-tech companies like ourselves have not only grown by 2 X in this pandemic but grown globally as well.

Students are not able to enroll in the schools/colleges/universities of their choice due to changes and hurdles which have been driven by COVID-19. How is MIM Essay handling this? Has the company been hit by the pandemic in terms of helping students in getting into the schools of their choice? 

Mostly, the education business, particularly the study abroad section, works one year in advance. So when the initial COVID wave hit- people hunker down, they were quite a spectacle about how things will work in the next 2-3 months, but things started getting better with time as soon as the vaccine came out. Thus, while we saw the first two months negatively impacting things, but the whole COVID situation began to get progressively better in the same year. And more importantly, we’ve always been focused on the tie-up with A schools as they have handled the whole crisis in a way better because of the brand they are. Even students could pay for online classes and wait for one semester in general; they provided students with best brand and quality, and by quality, we mean by being vigilant in dealing with problems and providing visas and giving a great networking experience. So, fortunately, we increased our revenue by over 66 per cent and crossed over a million dollars in revenue instead of getting hammered.

What are some of the changes taken up by the company?

We at Mim Essay spent the first two months getting to know our audience, conducting extensive consumer research, and developing some of the greatest in-house tools available. Because we’ve always been digital-centric, we’ve been able to double down on our approach. We did this by expanding our paid-out methods; we devised growth hacking strategies and developed various lead magnets, all of which assisted us in scaling even more. So we were already on the right track; all we had to do was double down on it, and we were able to increase and develop much more than the prior year.

With countries opening up schools, are things taking a downward turn for the edtech sector? Please elaborate.

Definitely, it’s a good thing that more schools are opening. Now, because most of these schools have already implemented seven or eight Ed-tech strategies, many new software tools, grading tools, and communication tools have been implemented, which have now become a part of life and which students have grown accustomed to, so returning to pen and paper and traditional strategies may not be a wise decision. So they may be a rough trip soaked for the next year, But it seems that things will work out .They will coexist symbiotically and flourish together.

Can the edtech sector work side-by-side with physical schools? How?

They are symbiotic and can work effectively together. Bringing up an example, back in 2015, it was unfathomable to pursue MBA through an online media. But now, with the mass adoption of the digital-centric approach, several HR companies are accepting online MBA culture. Not just this, some countries provide visas even if a person has done his MBA through an online medium. Even though government agencies accept it at a very slow pace, it is undoubtedly a good sign. So ed-tech and cyber can go hand in hand, and this pandemic has given it a much-needed boost, and they can coexist.

What is the outlook for the Edtech industry in the post-COVID world 2021 onwards?

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The outlook is pretty positive, especially because the Ed Tech industry has grown, because there was mass adoption in the past one to one and a half years. So people are getting used to it, and things are becoming a habit. And once a habit is ingrained, people don’t go back. Therefore we can see people are making themselves more comfortable with online content, which only a year and a half ago seemed inconceivable. Of course with things as they are now, offline and online platforms have learned to co-exist together. And there is certainly no route back to the offline base. People expect to merge items in order to increase comfort and reliability.

MIM-Essay is a bootstrapped startup with the objective to get students enrolled in the best schools worldwide. With a success rate of 97% we have helped more than 5000 students make it to top schools like HEC, INSEAD, LBS, Oxford, Columbia, Duke and Ivey Business School, and many more. Being an Ed-Tech, a key feature that sets MIM-Essay apart is the Comprehensive FREE Profile Evaluation Tool, enabling students to get a complete analysis of their study abroad profiles’ strengths and weaknesses in less than 2 minutes.