An online tutoring marketplace is a platform that matches a student with a live tutor for a subject or an exam, schedules the session, and runs it over video with a shared whiteboard. The tutor and the student are in different places, often in different cities. The platform takes the payment from the family and pays the tutor a share.
How does matching work? The student or a parent says what is needed: the subject, the class, the board, such as CBSE, ICSE or a state board, the language, and the times that suit them. The platform lists the tutors who fit, with their ratings, experience and price. Some platforms let the family choose. Others choose the tutor for them.
Say a Class 10 student in Mysuru is struggling with trigonometry, two months before his board exams. His mother books a package of eight one-hour sessions with a mathematics tutor who teaches the CBSE syllabus in English and Kannada. Each session costs ₹600, so she pays ₹4,800 in the app, through a payment gateway. The tutor lives in Hubballi.
Each session is held in the platform's online classroom. It works like video conferencing, with a shared whiteboard added. Both can write on the same screen. The tutor draws a right-angled triangle, and the student works out sin 30° on it. The platform records each session, so the student can watch it again before the exam. After each session, the family rates the tutor, and the tutor writes a short note on what the student should practise.
At the end of the month, the platform pays the tutor. Say the platform keeps 30% of each session fee. The tutor then receives ₹420 for each session, which is ₹3,360 for the eight.
This is the marketplace model. The platform does not employ most of the tutors. It lists them, keeps their ratings and takes a commission. Some platforms instead hire their tutors and train them, so that the quality is more even. Engineers in India also build tutoring platforms that match students in the United States with tutors.
How is it different from online coaching for competitive exams? Coaching teaches one fixed course to a whole batch, in a live online class. A tutoring marketplace gives one student a tutor for exactly the topic that student needs, at a time the student chooses.