Mettl bets big on MOOCs assessment
The New York Times dubbed 2012 as the year of the MOOCs, or massive open online courses. Today, MOOCs is the hottest topic in education. According to the Time magazine, free MOOCs open the door to Ivy League education for the masses.
Mettl, an online assessment and testing platform to measure, analyze and improve people skills, has now ventured into the MOOCs arena. Founded by Ketan Kapoor and Tonmoy Shingal in 2009, Mettl focuses on the science of assessments and combines it with advanced technology to deliver valid and reliable tests.
"In the case of MOOC, multiple choice questions don't work. You need more hands-on assessment to check the right skills," Kapoor said in a phone interview. According to him, assessment is a direct need for the MOOCs industry.
"Our platforms fit into the needs of MOOCs. We don't leave any scope for cheating or copying," he said. Mettl is providing its product for MOOCs to publishers such as Wiley, Pearson, McGraw-Hill and Macmillan, he added.
"We are positive that we shall be able to solve the remote proctoring problem and disrupt the online learning and assessment space," Kapoor said.
Going global
Mettl's assessment platform is also ideal for companies that want to hire managers for a new job, measure existing skills and track their employees' skill levels. According to Kapoor, Mettl can measure the "hard" skills which are directly applicable to a job rather than just the knowledge which you have acquired by rote learning.
Its services include creation and management of multi-competency assessments, hands on testing, simulation-based measurement of skills, automatic invigilation, actionable analytics and easy and efficient content upload.
Mettl works with some of the top names across multiple industries, including IT, telecom and banking. Companies such as Wipro, HCL, Accenture, Cognizant, Capgemini, SAP, Oracle, Ericsson, EXL, Monster, Indiatimes, MakeMyTrip, Cleartrip, Playdom and InMobi, among others are some of Mettl's key clients.
"We grew six-folds in 2012. And this year, we hope to beat that growth rate," Kapoor said. The company has over 100 clients.
The next logical step for the company is to go global. "While it is good to have competition, no one is as far ahead as us in this space. We are at least two years ahead of others," he noted.