Ruangguru

Ruangguru is an Indonesian education company whose app and website sell learning products to students from preschool and primary school through high school, plus university entrance preparation, with a separate line of courses for adults and companies. It is run by PT Ruang Raya Indonesia, headquartered in Jakarta, and was founded in 2014 by Belva Devara and Iman Usman. The about page describes Ruangguru as "perusahaan teknologi terbesar di Indonesia yang berfokus pada layanan berbasis pendidikan" (the largest technology company in Indonesia focused on education services), and the company credentials page widens that to Southeast Asia, noting operations in Vietnam, Thailand and Singapore. The site is written in Indonesian and the lessons follow Indonesian school levels: SD (primary), SMP (junior high), SMA and SMK (senior and vocational high school).

Learning products for school students

The core subscription is ruangbelajar, which the home page describes as adaptive video that adjusts to the student's pace, with practice questions and summaries. The FAQ adds that the app holds thousands of animated videos with summaries and exercises, taught in the style of Ruangguru's Master Teachers. The company credentials page lists the content as animated learning videos, quizzes, summaries and infographics, with personalized study recommendations "powered by Artificial Intelligence," interactive in-app study groups run by tutors and teachers, and gamified, social features.

The home page introduces several Master Teachers by name with their degrees and awards, among them Yosef for mathematics, Dita for geography, Dimas for physics, Dillan for English and Elsa for biology. Students of every level are covered: the FAQ says Ruangguru can be used from SD, SMP and SMA/SMK through university and by the general public, though SMK students get only some subjects for now. University students are pointed to ruangbelajar or Ruangguru Privat.

Live classes, tutoring and homework help

For students who want a teacher in the room, Ruangguru runs several formats side by side:

• Brain Academy Online: interactive online tutoring classes with live teaching by Star Master Teachers.
• Brain Academy Center: tutoring that combines face-to-face and online study. The home page puts it at more than 270 branches across Indonesia, while the company credentials page describes Brain Academy as a blended tutoring center "Located in 18 cities in Indonesia."
• Ruangguru Privat: private one-to-one lessons with "guru terbaik pilihan Ruangguru" (top teachers hand-picked by Ruangguru), described on the home page as lessons with experienced teachers drawn from top graduates.
• Roboguru Plus: homework and difficult-topic questions sent by chat to tutors the home page says are on standby 24 hours.
• Roboguru: a question and answer space where students ask questions of teachers and friends and collect Gold and XP rewards. The product menu also offers a service where students photograph and upload a hard problem to get the answer.

Alta School, also on the home page, is an interactive online school with live teaching and activities for developing talents and interests. The program page notes that Ruangguru also recruits teachers through ruangpengajar, which signs up teaching partners for its online lessons, Roboguru and Brain Academy Online.

Courses for younger children

The children's range is where the k12 listing earns its place. Dafa & Lulu teaches through animated interactive videos featuring those two characters, aimed at SD students in grades 1 to 6. Ruangguru for Kids offers online courses in early reading, writing and arithmetic (calistung), science and mathematics, and reading and writing the Qur'an, and the product menu also lists online courses for children aged 4 to 7 covering calistung, English and science. Alongside them sit specialist courses: coding and robotics for ages 5 to 15 through Kalananti, a mathematics and logic course for ages 5 to 14 that follows a Singapore curriculum, an abacus-based mental arithmetic course for ages 4 to 12, and a course in memory, focus and concentration. English Academy teaches English with a Cambridge curriculum and certified teachers.

Practice tests and exam preparation

Ruangguru's Tryout product simulates the PTS and PAS school exams and the UTBK university entrance test, scored with item response theory (IRT). UTBK Center prepares students for the UTBK-SNBT scholastic test, and a separate service prepares candidates for the SKD selection test of Indonesia's official service colleges. Schoters supports students applying to universities abroad, from registration to interview practice, and the Kampus Hub collects information on campuses and study programs. For schools, a Deep Learning program offers thousands of materials, questions with worked solutions and learning reports. For adults, the company credentials page describes Skill Academy as a certified upskilling and reskilling platform with hundreds of video courses, and ruangkerja as a mobile app in which companies give employees digitized training materials and employers follow their development on a dashboard.

Pricing, payment and access

The FAQ gives a price range rather than a price list: some products are free and some paid, with paid packages starting at Rp20.000 for Roboguru Plus and running to hundreds of thousands of rupiah for ruangbelajar, and the company notes those figures can change without notice. Each service has its own price and study period. The FAQ also says most products can be paid in installments, with several terms to choose from, and the home page offers a discount for entering a phone number.

The free part of Ruangguru is Ruangbaca. According to the FAQ, students can get "referensi, latihan soal, hingga tips belajar" (references, practice questions and study tips) there at any time, along with information about university.

Students register on the website through the "Langganan Sekarang" (subscribe now) button or in the app from Google Play or the App Store. The app also runs on desktop at app.ruangguru.com. One account works on a phone and a laptop at the same time with the registered email or phone number, but the FAQ advises against more than 2 devices at once. Support for complaints runs through WhatsApp, email and a call center, and a chat with an education consultant handles other questions.

Scale and track record the company cites

The about page claims more than 22,000,000 users and 300,000 teachers offering services in more than 100 subjects, and partnerships with 32 of 34 provincial governments and 326 city and regency governments. The company credentials page gives different figures: more than 4,000 employees and more than 100 school subjects for 17 million users. It reports that more than 92% of users say their academic performance improved after three months, that 80% of users live outside Jakarta, and that 70% of users in Indonesia come from middle-to-low income families with no previous access to after-school tuition.

PT Ruang Raya Indonesia states on the about page that it holds an Izin Pendirian Satuan Pendidikan Nonformal and an Izin Operasional Lembaga Kursus Pelatihan, the Indonesian establishment and operating licenses for a nonformal course and training provider. The awards the company lists include the Ernst & Young Emerging Entrepreneur Award 2019, the Atlassian Prize 2017 and a 2015 UNICEF Youth Innovation Forum "Innovation to Watch" mention, and both founders are named as Forbes Asia 30 Under 30 recipients in 2017. The company credentials page adds that Kiến Guru in Vietnam has connected 1 million students and that StartDee in Thailand reached the top 3 education apps on both app stores in its first week, and that the Ruangguru Foundation, set up in 2018, has reached 500K students and 15K teachers with free teacher training and free study materials.

Who it suits

Ruangguru suits Indonesian families who want one account to carry a child from early reading and arithmetic through the high school curriculum and the UTBK, with the choice to add live classes, a private tutor or round-the-clock homework chat as needed. Parents who want lower-cost help can start with Roboguru Plus or the free Ruangbaca materials before buying a full ruangbelajar package. Because the lessons, teachers and site are in Indonesian and built around the national school system, it is a poor fit for students following another country's curriculum, apart from the English Academy and study-abroad services. Buyers should also expect to check each product's own price and duration, since the site publishes a range rather than a full price list.