Amazon Academy Formally Launched in India, Aims to Help Students Prepare for JEE Exams

Amazon India on Wednesday formally launched Amazon Academy as its edu-tech venture in the country. The new offering, which is essentially the rebranding of the JEE Ready app that debuted in December 2019, is currently designed for engineering college aspirants preparing for the IIT-JEE and other engineering entrance exams. It is touted to offer curated learning material alongside live lectures and assessments in Math, Physics, and Chemistry. Media reports suggest that the Indian subsidiary of Amazon has been piloting Amazon Academy in the country for a few months.

Learning material and exam content available through Amazon Academy has been developed by expert faculty from across the country, the company said in a statement. The content resources available through the platform will help students prepare for BITSAT, VITEEE, SRMJEEE, and MET exams — in addition to Joint Entrance Examination (JEE) engineering exams.

Amazon Academy is claimed to have specially crafted mock tests with over 15,000 handpicked questions, along with hints, from industry experts. It also hosts live All India Mock Tests (AIMT) at scheduled intervals. Further, students can also schedule lessons or access daily practice problems. There is also a six-week crash course option for the next JEE Main exam.

To help engineering students improve their results, Amazon Academy provides access to track progress over time and identify strong as well as weak areas. It also gives insights on the overall test-taking strategy.

The platform also allows students to assess their test performance through personalised reports with chapter-wise time and strength analysis. There are also options to look at the current progress and compare performance with other JEE aspirants who have attempted the test in the same time slot on Amazon Academy.

Amazon is initially offering the content through Amazon Academy for free, though it may introduce a pricing structure over time — depending on the success of the platform.

“Our primary focus has been on content quality, deep learning analytics and student experience. This launch will help engineering aspirants prepare better and achieve the winning edge in JEE,” said Amol Gurwara, Director, Education at Amazon India. We reached out on plans to offer edu-tech content for non-engineering disciplines, but an Amazon representative said the company has no further information to share at present.

Amazon Academy is available in beta through the Web or via the Android app that is listed on Google Play.

In addition to Amazon Academy, Amazon is currently in development to launch its childhood-to-career programme Future Engineer in the country. It was last month spotted hiring for a manager to lead the initiative, with plans to make it operational sometime later this year.

According to a report by Omidyar Network India and RedSeer, the edu-tech sector for students between grade 1–12 in India will grow six fold to $1.7 billion (roughly Rs. 12,439 crores) by 2022. Big tech companies including Google and Facebook are also eyeing at the sector, with the latter already invested in Bengaluru-based startup Unacademy.

What will be the most exciting tech launch of 2021? We discussed this on Orbital, our weekly technology podcast, which you can subscribe to via Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, or RSS, download the episode, or just hit the play button below.