Delhi-based Earth Education Valley launched EduKart, an online education platform, in November 2011 and has since seen more than 8,000 enrollments for free and paid courses offered by the site. The company offers both short certification courses and degree programmes for which it has partnered with institutions such as the London School of Business & Finance, Indian and Mobile Association of India, Mahatma Gandhi University and Retailers Association in India. The model is similar to Mountain View, California-based online education company Coursera, except that not all courses at EduKart are free. Last week, we chatted with Ishan Gupta, CEO of EduKart, on the company’s progress so far, how the business model is evolving and where it expects to be in 12 months. Scroll down for a summary of the interview (in the video): Ishan Gupta and Mayank Gupta have been buddies since they were engineering undergraduates at Delhi University. This was through an education company that Ishan started while on campus (Mayank joined the company). They subsequently went their separate ways to Stanford University and IIM Kozhikode respectively and then worked at multiple places (Facebook, One97 Communications, Educomp, Studyplaces) before teaming up again in 2011 for EduKart. The idea for EduKart was formed out of what the founders saw as a burning need “to democratize education in India and bring more flexibility into the system”. For instance, if a student is pursuing an engineering degree and wants to look at a course in digital marketing there aren’t too many options to do…
