Watermelon Express now BenchPrep, publishing academic prep texts to iPad

Educational app maker Watermelon Express has shifted gears and entered the electronic textbook market. The Chicago-based company, now known as BenchPrep, has over 75 educational apps in the App Store, most of which were interactive textbooks and test prep materials made for larger, more traditional textbook publishers, like educational publishers McGraw Hill and John Wiley.

BenchPrep CEO Ashish Rangnekar told VentureBeat that a single, stand-alone free BenchPrep app made more sense than multiple educational apps, hence the shift in business to interactive prep textbooks for the iPad. Rangnekar also noted that the future of educational materials isn't limited to e-textbooks on the iPad. "Our definition of content is much broader than the textbook," he told VentureBeat; he said that in addition to books, BenchPrep will eventually branch out into other electronic educational materials, such as videos and presentations.