Oxford University Press India forays into paid digital content targeted at schools

Oxford University Press (OUP), India has embarked on a plan to roll out paid digital content offerings in the country. It made a start on Tuesday with the launch in Hyderabad of its first offering, an online English learning and assessment product targeted at schools called "Oxford Achiever".

"This is for the first time that we are introducing paid digital offerings. Though we have been, in recent years, offering digital content but these were not paid offerings and were complementing our print offerings and were mainly meant for the teachers," Managing Director Ranjan Kaul told Business Today.

The company plans to launch three paid products this financial year apart from apps for its Hindi-English dictionary and its atlas, Kaul said.

Apart from Oxford Achiever, the other two products are Oxford Maths, a learning solution in mathematics, and Oxford Educate Premium, course-specific digital textbooks with animation, analytics and assessment.

Oxford Achiever would cost schools Rs 450 per student per year. Each student would get a separate login, and the offering would cover six core English skills of listening, speaking, reading, writing, vocabulary and grammar with features that allow performance tracking. According to a company official, such digital products have a huge addressable market in India considering that there are 1.4 million schools including 400,000 private ones that may opt for such products.

The official said the key differentiator from OUP is that while there are digital learning products in the market, there are hardly any comprehensive learning and assessments offerings that can find use both for the students and the teachers.

Kaul said the company plans to launch new paid digital offerings every year starting 2015. He said that while the first offering of Oxford Achiever was for the English language, it could now be leveraged for other languages and subjects with a similar offering. "We would be happy if around 150 schools opt for it in the first year," he said.