The best tuition for your child is here

Mou Chakraborty
Kolkata, July 10, 2007

You can stop worrying about finding the best tutor for your child. TutorVista, an online tutoring brand, is bringing the best-known teachers from Doon School, Delhi University or the IITs to your house in Kolkata.
All you need is a multimedia PC with a broadband internet connection and a headset.
“We launched this in the US 18 months back and in the UK three months ago. This month we have launched it in India,” said Krishnan Ganesh, an IIM Joka alumnus and TutorVista owner.
Parents can log on to www.tutorvista.co.in, choose the subjects for which the child needs tuition and subscribe by paying online through credit card. Various packages are available; the lowest one costs Rs 499.
The website offers tuitions for all subjects taught in Class VI-X under CBSE and ICSE. “We will soon offer tuition for Class XI and XII students. In three months we will offer classes for five state boards, including the West Bengal Board of Secondary Education,” said TutorVista’s owner.
Once the student is registered online, a software called Webex has to be downloaded. The student can then choose their teacher and a tuition slot from various routines available online.
“Webex enables students to talk to the tutor through the computer’s microphone, type notes using a chat facility, and share documents,” said Ganesh.
The online teacher will cater to not more than five students at a time. Online and offline study material and online tests are expected. Individual question sessions apart, once a month a special one-hour session allows parents to discuss their child’s progress with the teacher.
Those not satisfied with the service, can contact a help line.
TutorVista has 620 Indians teaching British and American students. With the Indian operation beginning in August, the company plans to hire 400 more teachers. “We select our teachers very carefully. Well-known retired teachers or even working teachers, housewives and unemployed youth having a good academic record can work for us,” said Ganesh. A full-time teacher can earn about Rs 14,000 a month.
The teachers are trained on how to handle online classes and need to pass a test before taking classes online.
Sriparna Mitra, who teaches history at a famous school in Kolkata, has taught about 60 students from the UK and US in the past three months. “The software is easy to handle. There is almost no gap between teacher and students,” she said.
Customised courses for GRE, GMAT and TOEFL are next on Ganesh’s agenda.
mou.hindustantimes@yahoo.com