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Students Connect Online with Education Abroad

  • jim.pickell
  • | September 12th, 2008 | 4:39 pm

Learn As and Where You AreIt’s indisputable that the web is beginning to change the way we access knowledge. While many have been asking over recent years where are all the investments in online educational start-ups, several are starting to turn the corner.

Tutor.com, an early stage company that provides instant homework help, connected students to an expert tutor over 900,000 times during the 2007-2008 school year. On average, during any given hour on a school day over 200 students were online working with a tutor to get their homework done and get on with their lives. Tutor.com received of funding last year, lead by Intel Capital. Recently TutorVista, one of Tutor.com’s competitors, a Bangladore company, raised $18 million from Sequoia Capital and LightSpeed Venture Partners to fund its expansion into a hybrid (online-offline) education model. The company was reported to be in talks with strategic investors to raise another $15 million independently.

I recently had the opportunity to talk to Dr. John Stuppy, the President of TutorVista about language needs in India. John’s primary source of tutors are teachers with advanced degrees in India so he’s got direct experience on the market. I was not surprised by his comments. “Teach a common Indian worker 50 words of English and he can triple his income by becoming a taxi driver. Teach him 50 phrases and he can triple his income again by obtaining a front desk job.” This confirms our experience every day at Open English and represents only the beginning of global trends that I predict will exceed even the most aggressive growth projections by market analysts. I’m looking forward to watching these trends uunfold.

Click here for full press release on Tutor.com and here for article about TutorVista.com.

-jim pickell

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