ERP Insights >> Magazine  >> February - 2021 issue

Edtech Creating A Strong Hope For The Much Desired And Awaited Change

Author : Vipul Mathur, CEO, Mufti
Thursday, February 25, 2021

Vipul Mathur, CEO, Mufti

Mufti is second largest brand in menswear denim/casual area, having a national presence with 300 exclusive outlets and another 1000 point of sales.

Edtech startup ecosystem is one of the best things that have happened to the Education industry in recent times. It certainly can make learning, joyful and easier.

This technological innovation clearly has potential of redefining one of the largest industries of the country.

Edtech is expected to solve multiple problems:
1. Ensuring the quality content is available to very large masses, residing in rural India. And reduce the dependence on the knowledge and availability of the school teachers.
2. Delivering content in the interesting way and replacing detached monologue type teaching methodology.
3. Through video calling, reducing the need of travel and improving flexibility of time for problem solving conversation with the teachers.
4. Customizing the content and questionnaire as per the level of student and hence not creating undue pressure.
5. Specially helping those kids who are more comfortable with Visual or verbal style of learning.
6. Keep detailed record of performance and creating right nudges for the performance improvement
7. Helping student community interact with each other as a community and learn from each other.

However, the question is that what should be the good measure of success? And how effective is edtech in delivering the established objectives.

“Startups should look at creating business models and commercialization of the content generation. And good content generation should be encouraged, supported, monetized and promoted”

No of Downloads/enrollments or real usage in terms of hours it replaces of the classical learning?

Revenue earned or the delta in the understanding or the marks attained?

Width of content or the quality of content?

Perhaps the edtech can be split into two large bucket of consumption.

Organizations with the intent of catering to the rural India have found that their real consumers are teachers and not students. Which is helpful, but objective of catering to students is yet unaddressed. While the marketplace for content is a great idea as its helps in making education vernacular, in reality, the marketplace content generation is restrained by the lack of content generation capability of the masses. Startups should also look at creating business models and commercialization of the content generation. And good content generation should be encouraged, supported, monetized, and promoted. This could be the largest shift which the Industry may witness in times to come.

Organizations with the intent of catering to the urban students are expensive, and seem to have reasonably good quality content. However, the question which remains unanswered is whether this is reducing the overall study hours of students. With traditional home works and teaching methodology how are the start ups helping in making students life easier? I believe that collaborative effort of GOI and Startups in the area of design thinking, should address the problem in the long run. The education committee has just made the curriculum books available for free on Net. But that’s not sufficient. Content delivery, internal examinations, class rankings etc if can be online would lead to the real shift of medium from physical to digital.

Education system needs a serious overhaul and edtech is creating strong hope for the much desired and awaited change in the way country learns and applies it leanings in real life. Next generation is likely to witness more efficient way of learning. I wonder if edtech innovations can make it more human, and less taxing on students. A lot is yet to be seen in this space.

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