OYO Hotels & Homes and PlanetSpark join hands to promote education
PlanetSpark plans to launch 500 ‘New Age’ Learning Spaces for children across India in learning spaces provided by OYO
New Delhi, 3rd Sept,2019: OYO Hotels & Homes, South Asia’s largest, China’s second largest, the world’s third largest and fastest-growing chain of leased and franchised hotels, homes & living spaces and PlanetSpark, EdTech startup, have entered into a partnership to bring education closer to children. Under this partnership, OYO is offering space in OYO Townhouse across the country to PlanetSpark to set up more than 500 ‘new age’ learning centres for children across India. Under the “Learn At Your Nearest OYO” model, these spaces will cater to all the learning needs of neighborhood children studying from KG to Standard 8. Funded by FIITJEE, India’s largest test prep company, PlanetSpark is on a mission to organize and standardize after-school education across the country. With 400 learning centers across all the 7 Indian metros currently, PlanetSpark plans to scale-up and fulfill the demand that is being generated on its Mobile App and other digital platforms.
OYO’s mission is to upgrade all forms of real estate and thereby provide quality living spaces to travelers around the world. Since its launch back in 2013, OYO Hotels & Homes has brought about a change in the budget hotel franchising and leasing segment, giving Indian consumers an opportunity to experience standardized hospitality at affordable prices. Through this initiative, OYO is taking a step forward in its mission by offering these quality spaces to promote education.
“Through our interactions with OYO team we realized that OYO too had plans to scale up their supply over the next few months. We, therefore, felt that instead of putting in our efforts separately, it will be beneficial to join hands to have a force multiplier. Also, we only wanted to partner with a trusted brand where parents can send their children without any safety concern” said Kunal Malik, Co-Founder of PlanetSpark.
On this partnership, Ankit Tandon, Chief Operating Officer, Operated Business, OYO Hotels & Homes said, “We are happy to partner with PlanetSpark and bring education closer to children by offering quality spaces. We hope that our standardized and appealing interiors and modern amenities along with the quality education offered by PlanetSpark make for a great learning atmosphere and experience for the students.”
The PlanetSpark learning platform has a publicly available App, where parents discover gamified learning content loaded with thousands of learning games, cartoons, videos, quests, and quizzes. The gamified
content stack is customizable and can be adapted to student learning patterns. PlanetSpark plans to use learning centres housed in OYO Townhouse as “A Student can learn anything” model by taking the immersive education experience under the expert guidance of teachers in every corner of India. The learning spaces inside the OYO Townhouse will have appealing interior design, child-friendly furniture, PlanetSpark’s engaging content and certified tutors, thus creating a truly standardised experience.
PlanetSpark Co-Founder Maneesh Dhooper says, “In K8 space, an inspiring learning space in the neighborhood is a ‘must have’ for the parent and currently no organized player exists that solves for this need. The new initiative with OYO is already a big hit with the parents and we are witnessing a major spike in enrollments”.
About PlanetSpark:
Founded in 2016, Gurgaon-based PlanetSpark is the brainchild of Maneesh Dhooper and Kunal Malik
which connect parents and qualified tutors through a full stack platform. Drawing its inspiration from child cognitive psychology, and learning pedagogy, PlanetSpark is making students fall in love with academics in an engaging and gamified fashion. With over 300 experience centres, PlanetSpark is revolutionising the K8 tuitions by leveraging the hyper-casual games to help children learn. PlanetSpark is funded by FIITJEE, India’s largest test prep company. For more information visit https://www.planetspark.in.
About OYO:
Opening its doors in 2013, OYO Hotels & Homes is the world’s third-largest chain of hotels, homes, managed living and workspaces. The portfolio combines fully operated real estate comprising more than 23,000 hotels and 125,000 vacation homes. OYO along with Vacation Homes categories managed by the company under OYO Homes, Belvilla, Dancenter, Danland and Traum-Ferienwohnungen brands can be found in more than 800 cities in 80 countries, including the U.S., Europe, U.K., India, Malaysia, Middle East, Indonesia, Philippines, and Japan. For more information, log onto https://www.oyorooms.com/
About Kunal Malik: Kunal Malik, the Co-founder of PlanetSpark, is an ex-Unilever business leader with
diverse experience in business partnering, supply chain and sales across different locations, including the Unilever Goa factory. Kunal is an engineer from DA-IICT, Ahmedabad and an MBA from XLRI Jamshedpur.
About Maneesh Dhooper: Maneesh Dhooper, the Co-founder of PlanetSpark, is also the founder of skill
development venture, Jobingo. During his stint as the AVP of Education & Business Services, UrbanClap, Maneesh led the education services business and scaled it to 4 cities, across 5 categories. An engineer
from NSIT and an MBA from XLRI Jamshedpur, Maneesh has led the Africa University at Novartis Switzerland.
