Entrepreneur Mallika Valluru came up with the idea of creating simulation labs for school students, after watching a simulation show at a museum in Washington, D.C. She started her education start-up, Radius EduTech—along with Siddhartha Malempati—in November, 2018.
The company created interactive content for smart classrooms, offered 925 modules in maths, science and social studies, and supplied projectors, boards and tablets to the schools. “We wanted to scale up, and have the projectors and smart boards in more classrooms. We also wanted to expand to more schools,” said Valluru.
But with the Covid-situation, the start-up was also hit. That is when the company came up with a new business model. Radius introduced a new learning management system, along with a low-bandwidth videoconferencing tool— Octa. Their platform allowed students to sit in virtual classes, listen to video lessons, do assignments and also experience digital simulations. The application also catered teachers to keep track of academic progress of students.
The platform now has a reach of more than three lakh users.
“Our revenues before and after pandemic are more or less the same, but our reach has increased multi-fold,” said Malempati.