UrbanPro.com (Thinkvidya Learning Pvt Ltd), SME Business of the Year Award Winner 2023

Business Name: UrbanPro.com (Thinkvidya Learning Private Limited)

Founder’s Name: Rakesh Kalra

Location: Bengaluru, India

Establishment (Year): 2011

Category: Education and Training/ Coaching

Sub-Category: Educational

Website: www.urbanpro.com

Social Media: LinkedIn

Company Detail:

UrbanPro is India’s largest online marketplace for students to find qualified and verified Tutors and Coaching Institutes for over 1000+ categories. With over 80 Lakh registered students and 26 Lakh registered Tutors and Coaching Institutes, UrbanPro currently powers an estimated over 10 Lakhs new engagements every month between Verified Tutors & Students. Top 10% of its active Tutor Partners currently earn over ₹35000 per month, making UrbanPro a reliable source of monthly recurring income for several passionate and dedicated tutors in India.

UrbanPro’s dedicated platform for tutors to conduct online live classes called UrbanPro Tutor Partnership Program has evolved into a highly robust and scalable business model that helps students find the most qualified and popular tutors by booking demos directly with them for the time slots most convenient to them. The Student NPS (Net Promoter Score) of this platform averages over 55 while the Tutor NPS for their top 10% Tutor Partners continues to improve month-on-month with the growing traction that the platform has been getting resulting in a higher number of students coming back to it for repeat engagements. The NPS scores continue to validate the success of this platform in becoming India’s only profitable edtech marketplace operating in multiple categories.

Recently in 2022, UrbanPro launched its platform for students and tutors outside India and it aspires to replicate the success of its marketplace model built in partnership with reliable Tutor Partners across multiple geographies.

Unique Selling Proposition / Competitive Advantage:

UrbanPro is India’s largest online marketplace for students to find qualified and verified Tutors and Coaching Institutes for over 1000+ categories. With over 80 Lakh registered students and 26 Lakh registered Tutors and Coaching Institutes, UrbanPro currently powers an estimated over 10 Lakhs new engagements every month between Verified Tutors & Students. Top 10% of its active Tutor Partners currently earn over ₹35000 per month, making UrbanPro a reliable source of monthly recurring income for several passionate and dedicated tutors in India.

UrbanPro’s dedicated platform for tutors to conduct online live classes called UrbanPro Tutor Partnership Program has evolved into a highly robust and scalable business model that helps students find the most qualified and popular tutors by booking demos directly with them for the time slots most convenient to them.

The Student NPS (Net Promoter Score) of this platform averages over 55 while the Tutor NPS for their top 10% Tutor Partners continues to improve month-on-month with the growing traction that the platform has been getting resulting in a higher number of students coming back to it for repeat engagements. The NPS scores continue to validate the success of this platform in becoming India’s only profitable edtech marketplace operating in multiple categories.

Recently in 2022, UrbanPro launched its platform for students and tutors outside India and it aspires to replicate the success of its marketplace model built in partnership with reliable Tutor Partners across multiple geographies.

Achievements and Milestones of the Company:

UrbanPro was founded in 2011 by Rakesh Kalra and Bhavana Kalra. Prior to that, Rakesh had worked as VP of Technology for Care.com which went on to get publicly listed on NYSE in 2014. In the year 2015 it secured its first round of institutional funding from Nirvana Venture Advisors and since then it has made strong investments in building a safe and secure marketplace focused on enabling students and tutors to discover and interact with each other. It has now become a steady source of recurring income for thousands of top tutor partners allowing them to become more focused on helping students get the best learning outcomes. In the year 2019, UrbanPro hit its EBITDA profitability milestone helping it build its own cash reserves for future growth. In the year 2020, with the pandemic making it difficult for tutors to generate a steady income, UrbanPro launched a free service for individual tutors to offer live online classes to their own students - using UrbanPro Live video and UrbanPro Calendar making it super-easy for tutors to add their students in multiple batches for live online classes powered by Zoom. It also allowed them to share their content and class assignments with groups of students. It also launched UrbanPro SecurePay allowing tutors to collect payments conveniently from students.

By the year 2023, UrbanPro has achieved the EBITDA profitability milestone once again and is currently on-track to achieve a 35% growth over last year with more than $1 Million in Annual Gross Payments collected from students by UrbanPro. By 2024, UrbanPro aspires to become a global marketplace for tutors and cross the milestone of $10 Million in Annual Gross Payments collected from students for online Live Classes.