Reducing educational inequalities in our society

App enables self-study, with 10,000+ questions, chapter summaries, and videos

Of the 265 million students in India, close to twenty percent drop out before Grade 10 mostly because of educational inequality. Lack of access to good quality educational resources is one of the key facets of this inequality, leading to significantly lower educational success and social mobility for the impacted students. While students with access to paid online courses and/or teacher support can make progress, millions of students without these resources fall behind.

To address this gap, Vedanth Nandivada, and Siddanth Nandivada, Grade 12 and 9 students respectively, built a free Android app called “IndiaExamPrep” (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.indiaexamprep.app ). The IndiaExamPrep App helps students prepare for Indian exams (CBSE / State syllabi) on their own, by first reading the summary of each chapter and then answering chapter-wise questions without the help of teachers. Additionally, for Grades 9 and 10, chapter-wise videos are available too. This provides students with a great way to learn step-by-step by repeating the practice tests till they are comfortable with each chapter. In addition, the app can also help organizations assess performance to identify high-scoring students for awarding merit-based scholarships or offering additional support in the form of teaching assistance to those scoring low.

“There are so many students in India who don’t have access to high-quality education that can help them understand concepts taught in class. Digital solutions can play a big part in helping them learn and score better. While there are many free open-source apps available, they do not cater to the Indian syllabi completely. Commercial apps are, of course, too expensive for many,” said Vedanth Nandivada, who along with his younger brother Siddanth and family resides in Bangalore.

To build the app, Vedanth and Siddanth went through NCERT books, Exemplar websites, and YouTube, and collected chapter summaries, relevant videos, and more than 10,000 Indian CBSE and State Boards questions for Grades 6 to 10 organizing them by subject and chapters. They then programmed the app to enable advanced quizzing. They have made the IndiaExamPrep app available in English, Kannada, Telugu, Tamil, and Hindi using Machine Learning. The IndiaExamPrep App has a 4.6-star rating in the Android Play Store with over 70 reviews and many testimonials on YouTube. The App has over 17,000 downloads and 6,000 hours of usage.

Vedanth and Siddanth are hoping that free apps like IndiaExamPrep will help in reducing educational inequalities in our society. They are working towards improving the content of the app, while also creating awareness so that it reaches more students who can benefit from it.