How to Start Online Tutoring: Vedantu or Your Own Platform?

I filled out the Vedantu tutor application form on a Sunday evening in March, double-checked every field, uploaded my degree certificate, and waited.

Three weeks later, nothing. No rejection email, no "under review" message, nothing. I checked my application status page so many times I started to wonder if the page itself was broken.

That's not really a complaint about Vedantu specifically. It's just the part of this story that nobody mentions when they talk about "online tutoring as a side income."

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Why I even considered tutoring in the first place

I'd been helping my younger cousin with Class 10 Maths for about two months, basically as a favor. Her marks went from the low 50s to the high 70s in two test cycles, and her mother mentioned it to a neighbor, who then asked if I'd be willing to take her son too.

That conversation is genuinely how this started. Not a plan, not research, just one parent asking another parent.

I said yes, mostly out of politeness, before I'd thought about logistics at all.

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The Vedantu application, and the silence after

I want to be fair here: I don't know if my application is sitting in a queue, got auto-rejected for a reason I can't see, or is genuinely still "in review." The portal gave me no clarity either way.

What I do know is that while I was waiting, that one referral turned into an actual paying student. The neighbor's son started in the first week of April at Rs 600 per session, twice a week. That's Rs 4,800 a month from one student, while my Vedantu status was still sitting at "Submitted."

About five weeks after applying, I got an automated email asking me to "complete a demo video." I never finished it. By then I had three direct students and honestly didn't see the upside anymore.

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What direct tutoring actually looked like in month one

Here's the part I think gets oversimplified in most posts about this topic. "Find students directly" sounds easy when someone says it in one line. In practice, my first month looked like this:

Student 1: the neighbor's son, Class 10 Maths, Rs 600/session, twice weekly. Found through a personal referral, zero marketing involved.

Student 2: a Class 9 student whose mother was in the same parent WhatsApp group as my aunt. I posted a short message there (not an ad, just "I'm tutoring Maths and Science for classes 8-10 if anyone's looking") and got two replies within a day, one of which converted. Rs 500/session, once a week.

Student 3: this one came from Student 1's mother mentioning me to her sister. Class 8 Science, Rs 450/session, once a week.

Total for the month: roughly Rs 5,400. Not life-changing, but it covered my phone recharge, internet bill, and left a bit over.

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The technology problem nobody warns you about

My first session was a disaster, and not because of teaching. I didn't own a laptop stand or a tripod, so I propped my phone against a 1-litre water bottle on my study table, angled toward a whiteboard I'd taped to the wall behind me.

It worked, mostly. Except twice during that first session, the phone slipped and the student was staring at the ceiling for a few seconds while I scrambled to fix it. Mildly embarrassing, but the student's mother laughed it off and said her son does the same thing during his own video calls.

I used Google Meet because it's free and the student's family already had it installed. For the whiteboard, I used a basic notebook initially, then switched to a free digital whiteboard app around week three once I realized handwriting on paper and showing it to camera was slower than typing or drawing digitally.

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So which is actually better: Vedantu or going direct?

Honestly, I think the framing of "versus" is slightly misleading, because they solve different problems.

Vedantu (and platforms like it) solve the discovery problem. You don't need to find students; the platform brings them to you, in theory. But you give up a chunk of the fee, you're on their schedule, and based on my experience, the onboarding process can be slow and opaque. I never got a clear answer on what stage my application was at.

Going direct means you keep the entire fee and set your own hours, but you are doing all the finding yourself, and that depends heavily on whether you have any kind of existing network. My first three students all came from one initial referral. Without that, I genuinely don't know how long it would have taken.

What I'd actually suggest, if I'm being honest, is not to wait on a platform response before starting. Apply if you want to, sure. But also mention to two or three people in your immediate circle that you're tutoring. That's literally all it took for me.

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What changed by month three

By the third month, I had five students instead of three, bringing in around Rs 9,200 a month. One of the original three stopped after exams ended, which I hadn't planned for. Online tutoring income tends to dip after board exam season, since a chunk of demand is exam-driven.

I also raised my rate slightly for new students, from Rs 450-600 to Rs 550-700 per session, after realizing parents weren't pushing back on the original rates at all. That's a small thing, but it added up.

The Vedantu application, by the way, is still sitting there. I checked again last week out of curiosity. Still says "Submitted." At this point it feels less like an open door and more like a forgotten browser tab...