Tinkerly – An Edtech Startup based on STEM Learning | Coding for Kids

Tinkerly is an edtech startup founded in 2015 by IIT-Delhi & XLRI alumni, Sharad Bansal, OP Godara, Kapil Arya & Vivek Pathak who have come up with a unique initiative of mixing the fun and hands-on Robotics/AI learning experience to kids in monotonous Online coding classes by incorporating STEM educational kits as a part of our play-based curriculum.

Tinkerly – Startup Insight

Startup Name	Tinkerly
Founded	2015
Headquarters	Jaipur
Industry	Education
Founders	Sharad Bansal, OP Godara, Kapil Arya & Vivek Pathak
Website	https://tinker.ly/

Tinkerly – About the company and how it works

Tinkerly was founded in 2015, with the initiative to make kids ready for the future by making STEM learning easy, engaging, and accessible to kids at a very early stage of their lives. Tinkerly is an IIT Delhi, and XLRI alumni-backed company that helps kids aged 6-16 develop STEM as a hobby and develop the right learning skills for future workplaces. The company has 50000+ kids using their app Let’s Tinker and has been featured in a Forbes web-series hosted by popular author Chetan Bhagat. Recently NASSCOM featured Tinkerly among India’s top leading start-ups in the field of Artificial Intelligence. Their courses have benefited over 250K students across India, Middle East, and North America.

Tinkerly – Founders and team

Tinkerly is founded by 3 IIT Delhi alumni (Sharad Bansal, OP Godara, Kapil Arya) and 1 XLRI Jamshedpur Alumnus (Vivek Pathak).

• SHARAD BANSAL- He is the CEO and co-founder of the company and looks after the marketing and finance in the company. 
• VIVEK PATHAK- He is the MD & co-founder of the company and looks after Supply-side, talent acquisition, and strategy management.
• OP GODARA- He is the COO & co-founder of the company and leads the Sales and Business Development department
• KAPIL ARYA- He is the CTO & co-founder of the company and heads the Technology, Content, and R&D at Tinkerly.

Some of the team members of Tinkerly include:

• SHALINI SINGH- Associate Business Manager, B2B Sales
• SANDEEP JANGIR – Head Designer
• ARPANA SWARNKAR – Sr. Software Developer
• RANVEER SINGH- Accounts Executive
• PALAK SHARMA- HR Executive

Tinkerly – Mission and Vision

Tinkerly aims to create an education system where the students will have the freedom to explore their creativity and ideas through practical learning and application.

The company is on a mission to make the STEM education (Coding, Robotics etc.) fun for children making it their hobbies and careers for which they are passionate about.

Tinkerly – Name, Tagline, Logo and its Meaning

The Brand name of the company is Tinkerly which was originated from the word ‘Tinker’ means an attempt to repair or improve something and the suffix ‘ly’ means having the qualities of… so together ‘Tinkerly’ means having the qualities of tinkering (i.e. improving).

Tinkerly – Business and Revenue Model

Initially, Tinkerly started as an edtech company that set up Tinkering Lab or Innovation Lab in schools along with providing a coding curriculum as per NEP guidelines. The company is a registered vendor on ‘Govt. E-Marketplace(GeM)’ to set up Atal Tinkering Labs sponsored by NITI Aayog. 

In the year 2021, the company ventured into Direct-to-Consumer(D2C) offerings like online Live Coding/Robotics Classes and STEM Kits. The model is simple. The company delivers a hybrid method of teaching school-age kids online. It promises them not just to learn how to code but to do more with applications of programming into hardware gadgets like Robotics, AI, and IoT.

Tinkerly – Revenue and Growth

For the last 6 months, the D2C segment is growing 80% month-on-month both on no. of active users and revenue fronts. From its current ARR of $600K, Tinkerly is on its path to comfortably achieve the milestone of $1mn ARR $1mn from the consumer model alone by December 2022.

Their Let’s Tinker platform has 50k+ online learners, over 12k monthly active users, more than 1000 paid users on the app and over 7000 teachers on the platform. Additionally, Tinkerly provides STEM labs/Tinkering Labs and Coding curriculum solutions to Private schools and serves Large scale Govt orders through partnering with 700+ schools across India.

Tinkerly – Funding and investors

In its latest round in Sept 2021, Tinkerly raised INR 6.5 cr. led by Navneet education along with participation from existing investors. With this round the total funding of the company has reached INR. 10 cr backed by Sucseed angel network(SAN), Keiretsu Forum, Rajasthan Angels(RAIN) and Navneet Education- India’s leading publication group.

Tinkerly – Awards

Tinkerly won many awards for its great performance in the Edtech field.

• Forbes Education Evangelist of India 2019 
• Nasscom featured among India’s leading AI Startups 2020
• ‘Best Solution in STEM Education’ – by GESS Leadership Award 2019
• Among Top 20 Startups in Intel-DST Innovate for Digital India Challenge

Tinkerly – Competitors

Direct Competitors- Avishkaar, SP Robotics, Wiingy and Indirect Competitors- Whitehat Jr, Brightchamps, CampK12.

Tinkerly – Challenges faced

Like most education B2B companies, 2020 was a tough year for Tinkerly as well. Being in the B2B space, when COVID-19 induced lockdown shuts down schools across the country, Their business got affected as well equally.  As a result of COVID led disruptions, most edtech companies were either shutting down or bringing their offerings online. But as they say, things happen for the good. It made Tinkerly prepone their plans to go direct to consumers, and opened doors to a huge opportunity of serving millions of students globally. 

Another challenge comes when schools reopened, the cost of acquiring a new customer from the premium income segment grew almost 3 times. Tinkerly’s strong presence in tier 2/3 indian cities with vernacular course offering gives them an edge over its competitors.

Tinkerly – Future plans

Tinkerly aims to make coding courses fun and accessible to every child in the world irrespective of their socio-economic status. There is a report which says only 17% of Indian students study in English Medium schools and about 49% in Hindi medium schools? The thing is that currently, all coding courses in the market are available only in the English language. 

To address this problem, the company launched courses in Hindi a few months back. They are gaining massive traction from tier-2 towns. 

The startup is currently aiming to expand deeper in the Indian affordable market segment which in coming years they plan to replicate in a global affordable and non-english speaking audience. 

They are looking to raise fresh funds from $5-7 mn to invest on product development, increase consumer awareness, and look for expansion in new geographies with vernacular content. This will help to create a strong glocal (global with localized enhancements) brand.

Tinkerly – Latest news

https://viestories.com/this-startup-takes-learning-beyond-screens-tinkerly/ – Viestories

Tinkerly – Watch More

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