Amazon pushes into education with India academy platform

By Kate Birch
The retail giant enters India’s US$180 billion education sector with the unveiling of an Amazon Academy in India...

Amazon India has announced the launch of the Amazon Academy , an online test-prep platform designed to help students in India get into prestigious engineering colleges. 

The online educational offering, which is initially being offered to students for free, has been designed specifically to prepare students in India for the competitive JEE (Joint Entrance Examination) for entrance to engineering colleges. 

“Amazon Academy aims to bring high-quality, affordable education to all, starting with those preparing for engineering entrance examinations,” 

Amol Gurwara, Director, Eduation at Amazon India, said in a statement. “Our mission is to help students achieve their outcomes while also empowering educators and content partners reach to millions of students.”

Curated content by experts

Available via a new Android app and a website, the platform features live lectures, step-by-step solutions for practice, assessments in Math, Physics and Chemistry, and mock tests specially curated by industry experts, with more than 15,000 handpicked questions. The mock tests, which are both live and timed, have been designed to closely mirror the JEE exam experience. 

The platform allows students to track their progress over time, identifying both strengths and weaknesses, as well as gauge their ranking in mock test performances with other students. 

All learning material and exam content available on the platform has been developed by expert faculty from across the country, states Amazon India. 

“Our primary focus has been on content quality, deep learning analytics and student experience,” stated Gurwara, adding that this launch “will help engineering aspirants prepare better and achieve the winning edge in JEE”. 

Amazon eyes education and India

This move into India’s educational space enables Amazon to take on top edtech companies including Unacademy, Vedantu and Byju’s and tap the country’s US$180 billion education sector which has is increasingly going online. 

Amazon has been scaling up its operations in India over the last few years, opening a huge new office in Hyderabad in December 2019, reported to be the tech giant’s single-largest building in the world.

This isn’t Amazon’s first foray into education, having launched other educational platforms and initiatives. While Amazon Ignite connects educational content creators to Amazon customers, AWS Education was designed to help users understand Amazon’s cloud platform. 

Back in December 2020, during the height of the pandemic, Amazon launched free online maths and coding resources for students, from expanding its range of free online STEM activities for children, to expanding its educational platform Maths4All to second school students, teaming up with The Open University and maths sites Conquer Maths and Cazoom Maths for the new secondary content. 

Commenting on the move back in December, Amazon UK country manager John Boumphrey said: “At Ama zon, we are passionate about education and learning”. 

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