The COVID-19 outbreak that hits the world made various sectors of people’s lives chaotic. One of the sectors affected by this situation is education. Various countries are taking policies to change the face-to-face school system to an online school system (study at home) to minimize the spread of COVID-19. Indonesia is also among the countries that enforce similar policies.
Based on data published by the Indonesian Ministry of Culture and Education in 2021, Indonesia has students studying in Elementary, Junior, and Senior High School amounted to about 45.6 million [[1]]. By this situation comes up with a question, is Indonesia, as a developing country, ready with an online school system with so many students? Whereas good learning relies heavily on good communication between students and teachers [[2]]. To answer this challenge, a start-up company in Indonesia engaged in education, namely PT Ruang Raya Indonesia, being an innovative leading market with the application name is Ruangguru.
PT Ruang Raya Indonesia (brand name Ruangguru) is a start-up company focused on education, founded in 2014 by Muhammad Imam Usman and Adamas Belva Syah Devara. Ruangguru is an online learning platform where students can learn from anywhere and anytime, as long as they are connected to the internet. Ruangguru currently has more than 22 million users and manages 300 thousand teachers who offer services in more than 100 subject areas [[3]].
Ruangguru is one of the most frequently used Indonesian students’ applications to learn during this pandemic because of the momentum of online learning that is being faced by the community recently. Moreover, Ruangguru also has many services that facilitate students, such as virtual classroom services, online exam platforms, subscription learning videos, private tutoring marketplaces, and valuable educational content that could be accessed either through websites or applications to pamper its users.
Ruangguru, with all the efforts, has won various awards such as Solver of MIT, Atlassian Prize, UNICEF Innovation to Watch, Google Launchpad Accelerator, and ITU Global Industry Award. By March 2021, Ruangguru was named in the top 50 of the world’s most innovative companies in 2021 by FastCompany and ranked 2nd in the education sector [[4]].
The achievements that Ruangguru has achieved are not solely benefited due to the current pandemic conditions. Ruangguru has a business core to improve people skills for having 4C, namely Critical Thinking, Creativity, Collaboration, and Communication [[5]]. Ruangguru engages students’ need to study this 4C concept through virtual tools. It is ready to face this online systems school more than any schools in Indonesia, which mostly do not have great online systems learning, while many schools are still not ready yet for this situation, Ruangguru is one-step-ahead to counter it [[6]].
There are three products that have been provided by Ruangguru where are related to the 4C concept. They are Ruang Belajar, Ruang Belajar Plus, and Ruang Baca. Ruang Belajar provides videos that can teach the student and stimulate them by visual learning that could give completeness and coherence and their role as platforms to inference [[7]]. Moreover, by this platform, teachers could hone their teaching creativity and abilities in making learning material through content offered by Ruangguru, such as learning videos and in-app activities [[8]].
Ruang Belajar Plus also provides grouping learning where students are taught to collaborate and communicate with their friends to create a positive learning climate and classroom cohesion [[9]]. Group communication could develop deeper learning themes and improve their hard skills such as writing and communication. Lastly, Ruang Baca is where students are stimulated by reading to enhance their critical thinking skills. Literature really could help those who scored low in the pretest and train students to have better analysis [[10]].
On the other hand, Ruangguru can survive to this day due to its robust business model. Ruangguru has two roles, first as an educational marketplace, and second as a place that employs teachers online for students in Indonesia through websites and mobile applications. For the revenue systems, it is applying a fee collection of 20% transaction value based on the number of hours listed in the Ruangguru platform. It is also an essential component that has the role of the rating system applied to teachers. This rating system is applied to reduce the potential occurrence of transactions outside the system (back door transaction). Moreover, to get more revenue streams, Ruangguru also cooperates with the government through the PRAKERJA program to empower as many students and communities as possible in Indonesia. As a growing start-up, it also gets funding from several parties. In 2017, Ruangguru received funding from UOB (United Overseas Bank) Venture to develop its applications and products si it can be more beneficial to the world of Indonesian education.
In conclusion, this essay acknowledges that Ruangguru has the perfect chance to be shine during pandemics with its excellent business core. Ruangguru has the futuristic concept of education where people can learn anything from anywhere and anytime, leading to support independent yet justice learning for all. This start-up can fulfill its philosophical name, Teacher’s Room, where students can learn with their own pace, time, and place.
By Ryan Jonathan, Indonesia
