Online classes for kids are lessons in coding, maths or other skills that a teacher gives to a child over video, one to one or in a small group, and that parents buy directly. A live online class is one in which the teacher teaches in real time and can see and hear the child. The subjects are usually ones that schools teach little of, such as coding, or ones in which parents want extra help, such as maths.
These companies sell to parents, not to schools. So each company must find each family itself, through online advertisements, school events and parents' recommendations. This is expensive. The amount that a company spends to win one paying family is called the customer acquisition cost, and in this business it is high. A family keeps paying only while the parents see the child improve. So the companies send regular progress reports and show the projects that the child has built.
Take, for example, a 9-year-old in Kochi whose parents see an advertisement for coding classes. They book a free trial class. A teacher meets the child over video for 45 minutes. She shares her screen with a block coding editor, a tool in which children build a program by snapping together blocks such as "move 10 steps" and "if touching the wall, turn around". By the end of the class, the child has made a cat walk across the screen and turn at the edge. After the trial, a counsellor from the company calls the parents and recommends a course of 48 classes.
Say the course costs ₹28,800, or ₹600 a class. The parents can pay all of it at once, or in monthly instalments. They pay on the company's website through a payment gateway, which accepts UPI, cards and net banking. Some families pay through an EMI, a fixed monthly instalment of a loan, offered by a lender that partners with the company.
Each class runs on a video conferencing system, often built into the company's own app. The software books each class into a free slot in the teacher's calendar and the child's calendar. It records the class, so that a supervisor can check its quality and the parents can watch it. After each class, the teacher writes a short note for the parents. Every few weeks, the child presents a project, such as a small quiz game, to the parents on a video call.
How is this different from an online school? Online classes add one subject to a child's ordinary school. An online school replaces the school altogether. It is also different from an online coaching platform, which prepares older students for entrance exams such as JEE and NEET, and from an online tutoring marketplace, which matches a student with a tutor for a subject.