The Covid-19 pandemic has forced the states to shut down schools affecting millions of students, creating a huge demand for online learning. In its endeavor to ensure uninterrupted studies for students, Lido Learning, one of India’s fastest growing edtech startup is going to hire over 500 online tutors across the country in the month of April. Given this tough time of unprecedented layoffs and a massive economic downturn in India, Lido Learning is one of the few startups to ramp up its hiring across teams.
Recently Lido raised $3 Mn as part of a Series B funding round, with existing investors doubling down, and new investors including Picus Capital and Paytm president Madhur Deora, coming onboard. Lido is an ed-tech company that aims to disrupt the tuition space through live online tutorials with expert tutors, engaging content, immersive games and quizzes.
Speaking on the ramp up of hiring, Founder and CEO Sahil Sheth said ‘One thing I was sure about was that we needed to grow and expand faster than we had expected, to react to students across India having their studies interrupted by COVID-19. Whether it is through hiring tutors to meet the demands of an expanding new customer base, or hiring senior engineering talent to keep innovating on our platform, Lido is going full steam ahead. We expect our team to keep growing over the coming months, to keep pace with the huge demand for online learning.”
The need of the hour is to ensure uninterrupted online studies within the lockdown and social distancing mandate through expert online tutors. In order to support a large number of students who have been coming onboard, Lido has onboarded over 100 online tutors in the last couple of weeks, and plans to add another 500 more in the month of April.
Tutors have always been attracted to Lido’s teaching philosophy, and work from home model. These have become even greater selling points over the last few weeks as teachers look for ways to stay connected to students and their love of teaching.
Nancy, a Lido tutor from Chandigarh who joined last week, said “Lido’s timings are so flexible for a married woman. Their innovative teaching platform is easy to use, convenient and safe, for both students and teachers.”
Another tutor, Achyut Bharadwaj, a Lido tutor from Pune believes that online tutoring is the future and that Lido was the perfect platform for this. “LIDO provides everything we need. When almost every other professional is helpless, with Lido, I can keep working and pursuing my dreams while staying safe.”
For most companies, adding 300 new employees while working remotely would be a challenge, Lido’s tutor selection, training and evaluation program is designed to be entirely virtual. Talking about the training process, Lido’s Head of Tutor Operations, Venil Ali said, “Teachers are trained to adapt strategies for online learning, navigate our hi-end tech tools as well as build a community of teachers. We train our teachers on online pedagogy and get them familiar with using our technology. Our teachers leave the training excited and energised to teach online and they leave with a community of teachers to support them through the journey”.
Preeti Powar, a Lido tutor from Mumbai commended the training saying, “The training not only familiarized me with Lido’s platform but also helped me in learning how to build rapport online and how to use all the platform tools to create a positive classroom environment.”
Given its futuristic platform, engaging content and highly skilled teachers and mentors, Lido is eyeing for market leadership with the strong product and tech it has developed.
