Digital education in India has been gradually gaining grounds with increasing penetration of Internet and next generation entreprepreneurs are jumping to tap the $20 billion online learning market. While most of the online courses are currently positioned to help engineering, MBA, CA aspirants, Bangalore based InsuranceGurukul specializes in creating various engagement tools for smarter learning for insurance sector.
InsuranceGurukul intends to provide resources and tools that helps aspirants to succeed in the professional exams conducted by Insurance Institute of India. The portal also offers overseas certification program like CPCU, CII, LOMA etc.
Currently, InsuranceGurukul offers 3 courses – Licentiate prep exam, Associate exam prep and Fellowship exam prep. Licentiate prep exam covers areas like regulation of insurance business, practice of general insurance, practice of life insurance including basic feature.
Offered courses consist of solved papers, evaluation tests, preparatory tools with audio/visual presentation and all the courses can be accessible online. On pricing front, Associate exam kit costs Rs. 1599 (motor insurance and general insurance underwriting), while Licentiate (general and life insurance) packages costs Rs. 2000.
Apart from ‘direct to learner’ market InsuranceGurukul focuses on industry clients in Insurance and technology consulting sectors for all learning and development needs on licensing basis. The platform would allow deployment of white labeled training solution with both content and evaluation modules.
Speaking about opportunities in this space, Nidhi Matriya, founder, InsuranceGurukul, said “InsuranceGurukul would cater insurance segments with a cumulative market size of about INR 150 crore”. Nidhi points out that her past experience as an Underwriter taught her that even people working in Insurance companies pitching for Insurance Products do not have sufficient understanding of exactly what they are selling. “There is a severe talent crunch in the industry”, added Nidhi.
With a team of two members InsuranceGurukul aspires to be a one-stop portal for the learning needs of insurance professionals. “Besides learning courses, we will be adding insurance related jobs and webinars conducted by industry experts”, said Nidhi. The startup does not want to go beyond insurance space and will focus on insurance learning only.
In terms of traction, the startup achieved 350+ registered users and 35 paid users and expect the direct to learner sales to cross 100 transactions a month by April 2013. InsuranceGurukul plans to target IRDA’s exam aspirants as well, but according to the guidelines issued by IRDA in this regard, the company can only take it up after 3 years of its existence.
Estimates by management consultancy Technopak pegs the current e-learning market in India at $150 million, growing at 15% CAGR. The major players include Tutorvista, Extramarks, Mathguru, Studyplaces, 100 percentile and iProf.
Though the digital learning industry is growing in India, the strict guidelines by IRDA suffocates the startup ecosystem in learning as well as general aggregation/selling of insurance policies over Internet. [Read: Understanding Online Insurance Industry in India: Past, Present and Future [A Definitive Guide].
Recommended read: What’s wrong with the online insurance industry? A lot!
