The summer exam season kicks off this week and a new tutoring business offering students one-on-one cramming lessons with teachers in India is banking on a surge in demand for its round-the-clock service.
TutorVista broke into the UK market last year after enjoying rapid growth in the United States and it is hoping this GCSE and A-Level season will bring many new British students. Today it will announce a new partnership with Letts revision guides giving last-minute crammers a free trial of its online teaching scheme.
Using an interactive whiteboard, text and voice chat, tutors based in India are available 24 hours a day on TutorVista to give personalised lessons. A subscription costs £49.99 a month for unlimited sessions, a price the company says makes it a "non-elitist product".
"You pay £35 to £50 an hour in London and you have to be available for the tutor," says TutorVista's UK manager Martin Baker. "The whole idea of the model is that it becomes as natural as paying your satellite TV subscription."
He says it is scale that makes TutorVista able to undercut British tutors. The Indian company has 500 tutors on its books and is adding 150-200 a month. It has the capacity to add 500 a month.
Many are female teachers who gave up teaching in schools after having children. They find that the TutorVista model and time differences with the UK allow them to fit in caring for their children during the day with teaching over the web from home in the evening.
The average age of tutor is 45 and they all have either a full teaching qualification or masters degree in their subject and are trained in the national curriculum. Mr Baker stresses TutorVista's low-price model does not rely on low salaries. "They are paid a third more than the average rate of a teacher in India, but it's still a low-cost model," he says.
TutorVista was created by Indian entrepreneur Krishnan Ganesh who began his career with call centres. He started out by founding Indian IT services company IT&T and took it public in 2000. Started in 2005, TutorVista is his fourth business and he has so far raised $14.25m (£7.20m) in venture capital backing.
TutorVista is certainly aiming high. Within three years it wants to have more than 10,000 students in the UK from about 250 now. At the moment it focuses mainly on science and maths teaching but the next move is language lessons.
