Building an Edtech Startup: Essential Tech Capabilities

Published on Aug 31, 2023

Updated on Nov 3, 2023

The 21st century has seen a sweeping transformation in the education sector, driven primarily by technology. While established companies are leveraging legacy modernization strategies to upgrade their existing systems and meet the current user expectations, startups are harnessing innovative technologies to deliver an enhanced customer experience to their users. As per HolonIQ, the global edtech market, valued at about $227 billion in 2020, is predicted to burgeon to a whopping $404 billion by 2025. Such staggering growth signifies not just a shift in education dynamics but also burgeoning opportunities for innovators and entrepreneurs aiming to redefine learning.

What is an Edtech Company?

An edtech, or educational technology company, stands at the intersection of education and technology. It harnesses the power of modern tech to enhance, streamline, and democratize the educational experience. Be it primary schooling, tertiary education, or corporate training, ed-tech solutions have permeated every segment, making learning more accessible, interactive, and efficient.

Laying the Groundwork: Setting Up an Edtech Platform

Creating an ed-tech platform is akin to building a vast ecosystem where each component has a unique role. Let’s delve deeper into some of these fundamental steps:

Learning Portal Development

The heart of an ed-tech startup is its learning portal, the digital space where knowledge is disseminated. A well-designed portal is intuitive, user-friendly, and adaptive.

How it Works: Think of this portal as a digital school. Just as a school has classrooms, a library, and a playground, the portal offers courses, resources, forums, and interactive tools.
Features: Key features may include a dashboard, course listings, progress trackers, and communication tools. More advanced platforms may integrate AI-driven recommendations, VR classrooms, or AR-based tools.
Examples & Tech Used: Platforms like Coursera and Udemy are stellar examples. They leverage tech stacks that include React for frontend development, Node.js for backend processes, and cloud services like AWS or Azure for scalability and data storage.
Optimizations: The portal must be optimized for various devices, ensuring seamless access on PCs, tablets, and smartphones. Speed optimization is crucial, as slow-loading pages can deter users.
Challenges & Solutions: One major challenge is ensuring data security, especially with increasing cyber threats. Solutions include robust encryption, two-factor authentication, and regular security audits.

Course Creation and Curation

Content is king in the edtech realm. However, creating high-quality, engaging, and diverse content is a herculean task.

Nature of Content: Courses can range from video lectures and eBooks to interactive quizzes and hands-on projects.
Tech Involved: AI plays a pivotal role here. For instance, AI-driven tools can help in content personalization, while software like Adobe Premiere Pro or Final Cut Pro is essential for video editing. For interactive content, tools like Articulate Storyline or Adobe Captivate are popular choices.
Examples: Khan Academy is renowned for its vast array of video content. They use a mix of animation software and e-learning authoring tools to create engaging lessons.
Challenges & Solutions: Ensuring content remains updated and relevant is a challenge. AI can assist by analyzing user feedback and performance metrics to highlight areas needing revision.

Management Systems

Behind the scenes of any edtech platform is a sophisticated management system that ensures smooth operations.

Functionality: This involves everything from user registration and course enrollment to payment processing and data analytics. It’s the administrative backbone of the platform.
Tech Involved: Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems are commonly used. Platforms like SAP or Oracle offer comprehensive solutions. For more edtech-specific needs, Learning Management Systems (LMS) like Blackboard or Canvas are prevalent.
Challenges & Solutions: Integration can be challenging, especially when incorporating third-party tools or platforms. Using APIs and ensuring they’re updated can help alleviate integration issues.

For startups dreaming of launching the next big edtech platform, having the right tech partner is crucial. With rich experience in developing tech solutions across sectors, Mantra Labs can be the architect of your edtech vision. From designing intuitive UI/UX to integrating cutting-edge tech tools, Mantra Labs offers end-to-end support, ensuring your edtech platform isn’t just another website but an immersive learning experience.

Edtech Platforms

One such exemplary platform is “Mindspark” by Educational Initiatives (Ei) India, a testament to how technology can be leveraged to create a transformative learning experience. Let’s break down this success story:

Mindspark isn’t just an online learning platform; it’s an “adaptive self-learning platform.” This distinction means that the platform doesn’t just deliver content but adapts it according to the learner’s requirements. It ensures that a student weak in algebra but strong in geometry isn’t forced through the same learning path as others.

Mantra Labs, with its technological expertise, played a pivotal role in bringing this vision to life. Here’s a deep dive into the tech stack:

Backend Development with PHP
Frontend Development with Angular 7
Mobile Application with React Native
Database Management with MySQL

Key Features

Adaptive Learning Paths: As students interact with the platform, Mindspark adapts, offering customized challenges and resources.
Cross-Platform Availability: Whether on a laptop, tablet, or smartphone, Mindspark ensures learners can access content anywhere, anytime.
Real-Time Feedback: Instant feedback helps students understand their mistakes and rectify them immediately, promoting active learning.

Outcome

Mindspark, with its potent combination of educational insights and cutting-edge tech, has set a new standard in the edtech arena. Its success underscores the importance of a tailored learning approach and the role technology plays in achieving it.

The edtech landscape is brimming with potential. With the right idea, the right tech capabilities, and the right partner in Mantra Labs, transforming the world of education is not just a possibility but a palpable reality. As the lines between traditional and digital education blur, now is the time to ride the edtech wave and make a lasting impact.

Let’s take a trip back in time—2008. Netflix was nothing like the media juggernaut it is today. Back then, they were a DVD-rental-by-mail service trying to go digital. But here’s the kicker: they hit a major pitfall. The internet was booming, and people were binge-watching shows like never before, but Netflix’s infrastructure couldn’t handle the load. Their single, massive system—what techies call a “monolith”—was creaking under pressure. Slow load times and buffering wheels plagued the experience, a nightmare for any platform or app development company trying to scale

That’s when Netflix decided to do something wild—they broke their monolith into smaller pieces. It was microservices, the tech equivalent of turning one giant pizza into bite-sized slices. Instead of one colossal system doing everything from streaming to recommendations, each piece of Netflix’s architecture became a specialist—one service handled streaming, another handled recommendations, another managed user data, and so on.

But microservices alone weren’t enough. What if one slice of pizza burns? Would the rest of the meal be ruined? Netflix wasn’t about to let a burnt crust take down the whole operation. That’s when they introduced the Circuit Breaker Pattern—just like a home electrical circuit that prevents a total blackout when one fuse blows. Their famous Hystrix tool allowed services to fail without taking down the entire platform.

Fast-forward to today: Netflix isn’t just serving you movie marathons, it’s a digital powerhouse, an icon in platform engineering; it’s deploying new code thousands of times per day without breaking a sweat. They handle 208 million subscribers streaming over 1 billion hours of content every week. Trends in Platform engineering transformed Netflix into an application dev platform with self-service capabilities, supporting app developers and fostering a culture of continuous deployment.

Did Netflix bring order to chaos?

Netflix didn’t just solve its own problem. They blazed the trail for a movement: platform engineering. Now, every company wants a piece of that action. What Netflix did was essentially build an internal platform that developers could innovate without dealing with infrastructure headaches, a dream scenario for any application developer or app development company seeking seamless workflows.

And it’s not just for the big players like Netflix anymore. Across industries, companies are using platform engineering to create Internal Developer Platforms (IDPs)—one-stop shops for mobile application developers to create, test, and deploy apps without waiting on traditional IT. According to Gartner, 80% of organizations will adopt platform engineering by 2025 because it makes everything faster and more efficient, a game-changer for any mobile app developer or development software firm.

All anybody has to do is to make sure the tools are actually connected and working together. To make the most of it. That’s where modern trends like self-service platforms and composable architectures come in. You build, you scale, you innovate.achieving what mobile app dev and web-based development needs And all without breaking a sweat.

Is Mantra Labs Redefining Platform Engineering?

We didn’t just learn from Netflix’s playbook; we’re writing our own chapters in platform engineering. One example of this? Our work with one of India’s leading private-sector general insurance companies.

Their existing DevOps system was like Netflix’s old monolith: complex, clunky, and slowing them down. Multiple teams, diverse workflows, and a lack of standardization were crippling their ability to innovate. Worse yet, they were stuck in a ticket-driven approach, which led to reactive fixes rather than proactive growth. Observability gaps meant they were often solving the wrong problems, without any real insight into what was happening under the hood.

That’s where Mantra Labs stepped in. Mantra Labs brought in the pillars of platform engineering:

Standardization: We unified their workflows, creating a single source of truth for teams across the board.

Customization: Our tailored platform engineering approach addressed the unique demands of their various application development teams.

Traceability: With better observability tools, they could now track their workflows, giving them real-time insights into system health and potential bottlenecks—an essential feature for web and app development and agile software development.

We didn’t just slap a band-aid on the problem; we overhauled their entire infrastructure. By centralizing infrastructure management and removing the ticket-driven chaos, we gave them a self-service platform—where teams could deploy new code without waiting in line. The results? Faster workflows, better adoption of tools, and an infrastructure ready for future growth.

But we didn’t stop there. We solved the critical observability gaps—providing real-time data that helped the insurance giant avoid potential pitfalls before they happened. With our approach, they no longer had to “hope” that things would go right. They could see it happening in real-time which is a major advantage in cross-platform mobile application development and cloud-based web hosting.

The Future of Platform Engineering: What’s Next?

As we look forward, platform engineering will continue to drive innovation, enabling companies to build scalable, resilient systems that adapt to future challenges—whether it’s AI-driven automation or self-healing platforms.

If you’re ready to make the leap into platform engineering, Mantra Labs is here to guide you. Whether you’re aiming for smoother workflows, enhanced observability, or scalable infrastructure, we’ve got the tools and expertise to get you there.

Building an Edtech Startup: Essential Tech Capabilities

What is an Edtech Company?