Virat Kohli, Anushka Sharma motivate students via Unacademy amid lockdown

NEW DELHI: E-learning platform Unacademy has roped in celebrities and key influencers such as cricketer Virat Kohli, actor Anushka Sharma, politician Shashi Tharoor and civil servant Kiran Bedi in a campaign, Legends of Unacademy, to motivate students amid the ongoing national lockdown.

Unacademy caters to students between the age of 16 and 32 years preparing for competitive exams.

Legends of Unacademy aims to build character, motivate, create self awareness and provide life lessons to its users with the help of celebrities coming for live sessions. According to market estimates, Unacademy may invest ₹4-5 crore for this campaign.

In the second edition of Legends on Unacademy, Kohli and Sharma shared their experiences and lessons with students in a 50-minute long live session on how to stay motivated and pursue dreams. The duo detailed various incidents from their lives, highlighted the challenges they faced during their journeys, and shared their learnings. The session was attended by 50,000 students.

"As an institution which is driving learning in the country, we have realised that we need to motivate students from people who they admire and seek advice. Students will get inspired knowing that the personalities they admire are also going through similar hardships and how they keep themselves motivated," said Karan Shroff, vice president-marketing at Unacademy.

With complete shutdown and no sign of colleges resuming classes soon, Unacademy has witnessed huge growth in learning online. The platform is being used by nearly seven lakh students everyday.

The platform has taken multiple initiatives after the lockdown was announced. Apart from launching the personal growth property, the company has offered free live classes and opened its platform to 600 education institutes, which are conducting classes.

Unacademy crossed one billion minutes of content watch time on its platform and across its YouTube channels in March.

According to Shrenik Gandhi, chief executive officer (CEO) and co-founder, White Rivers Media, this campaign is a great strategy.

"If you go back to Diffusion of Innovations theory by Everett Rogers, I believe, this is a strategy to attract 'late majority' and some 'laggards' on the platform," Gandhi said.

It shall help penetrate an audience set, which fears the usage of technology and the fact that learning can happen digitally. This will enable better adaptability, more stickiness and discoverability of content on the platform, he added.