Very warm welcome to everyone to the Education Innovation Awards 2022, organized by Entrepreneur India. My name is Bhavna Bhatia and I shall be your host for the day. The Education Innovation Awards in its second virtual edition recognises people in and around education for outstanding contributions in transforming education through technology to enrich the lives of learners everywhere. The event is supported by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, Government of India and National Informatics Centre. The event is hosted by Entrepreneur India. We'd like to thank all our partners for their association and support. And also we'd request all our delegates to keep posting questions through the Q&A option. We will try and answer most of the questions by our esteemed speakers if time allows. Well with this, it is time for me to invite Ms Ritu Maria, Editor-in-Chief Entrepreneur, Media India and Asia Pacific and Franchise India to give the welcome note. Thank you Ms. Maria for joining us. Over to you. Thank you Bhavna and a very good morning to all of you. And I've only welcome everybody to the Education Innovation Conference and Awards here today. Certainly this is the first education gathering that is happening in the new year of 2022. And we only look forward to the industry being, you know, more, so the new things happening in the industry as we go ahead. So I think that the pandemic and particularly the national education policy that was announced in 2020 have what such far-reaching changes in the entire education sector. So particularly in the K-12 if we look at a 5 plus 3 plus 3 plus 4 structure and the role of regulators and how, you know, they are powerful and yet more meaningful they are becoming with the policy. It's only tells us in long term that they are far reaching changes that will happen in the education sector than ever before. But however, you know, if you look at a pandemic and the way we have moved to online education to hybrid education. We also get to notice that there are no common template has come into existence when we want to educate students remotely. You know, the point is that sometimes we're getting them back to the classroom sometimes we are trying to create a hybrid model sometimes we're going virtual only, or sometimes even both. So I think we are probably suffering from a classic dilemma of short term challenges but I think in the long term certainly the future for education sector is only beautiful and bright. Now understandably 2021 was a major learning curve for students parents and educators whenever when as teaching moved online, but I think the second wave and now of course the third wave has bought the efficacy of the use of online as a great tool for getting education. And I mean not just at the school level but probably higher education level and even the lifelong learning level. Now the question is really not about giving digital education which was perhaps the haunting question from 2015 to 2018 19 about the adoption of digital education I think that part has already got settled. But however what we need to be able to comprehend now is how effective we can make digital education. So the transformation for educational institutions from here on is not going to be an interim activity or not something that they will only do because it is good to have but it is important to have. And that is where I think a complete journey for educational or hybrid education will continue or begin to evolve. As we try to look at this medium of education or online medium of education as the right way or an integral way of education structure. Now what is the end goal of doing all of this the end goal really eventually boils down to the fact that we need a student was more empowered with not school or the screen, but rather as I said in a hybrid system of education. It also means that the education will need to ensure that more personalized learning is there to happen and I you know it's important. I think the education online education space has given us that power that we are able to give that personalized data based understanding of a student can be created and therefore the education and the things that he needs to learn can be crafted according to the particular needs rather than one education delivery template for all the students. I'm particularly very excited to see this happening where in you know where student will stand the course of his or her learning in times to come. Now, while this is the scene on the K 12 education scene. On the other hand, particularly on the higher higher education side, I feel that there will be systemic changes that will be seen as I like to call it the post secondary education and you know because it is. I think the student who has really rejected the in the last two years and probably that's going to be the way forward is the time in the place based education model and at the companies of course further have gone away ahead and they are creating low cost degrees delivering competency based education and also you know focusing on growing populations that are under represented in the entire education sector, and therefore offering pioneering subjects and certifications which earlier we never used to see in universities or higher educational institutes, and probably that's going to be the wave of the future as students want degrees that will give them jobs in current digital environments. So overall I think the education just doesn't end after the school or the college anymore in an era where of of tech disruption that we are sitting in now lifelong learning is really the way to be. And I think if we want to safeguard our jobs for the future or want to be future ready, then we have to imbibe our students self in us, all of us need to do it, and keep on continuously learning new things in order to be relevant to the professional professional industry to the work industry in times to come. So keeping I think this large education scenario, which is changing very fast in mind. I would welcome you today at the Indian Education congregation here and we have education leaders who are going to be speaking during the course of the day. And some of them have really done some pathbreaking work in the tech sector and they're going to be telling us as to what is the future of education sector. And, but, you know, in one sense I'm looking forward to this conference and the speakers, giving us, you know, their insights because we have speakers coming from both the words of education both from the public side as well as from the educational institution side and they would, I think, probably from what they say is where we're going to get the right idea about how they are rewriting the dynamic new world, which is heading towards and which we are all heading towards and of course there's also going to be the education innovation awards, wherein we will recognize some of the most forward thinking organizations in the education industry today. You know, there are multiple sessions for you to look forward to and the top leaders who would join us and share their insights. You know, if you have questions, please keep on posting on the chat box, please do not wait for the session to end as we would be, we would be having many sessions and we would be very, very punctual about the time since this is the education sector conference. So I would suggest whatever suggestions questions you have please keep on adding it in the chat box so that we're able to take it up with the panel as we go along this conference, particularly if you have any questions that you would like to ask me. I'm always available on LinkedIn kindly reach out to me over there also I'm looking forward to spending a wonderful day with all of you. Some very productive discussions and some, you know, ideas that will of course cater the future of education. So have a wonderful day ahead and certainly, as I said, we've just started in January 2022 and this fall, probably the discussions here today will charter the course of how the education sector will be in the years here, particularly for this year and the future years to come. Welcome once again. Thank you so much, Miss Maria, always an honor and pleasure hearing you. Well, ladies and gentlemen, with this it is now time to have the opening keynote by WAMC Krishna CEO and co-founder with Antu on the topic access connectivity and opportunities for students and at tech founders reflection on the passion for and readiness to enact digital transformation for learners amid uncertain times. Well, WAMC Krishna is a CEO and co-founder with Antu India's leading online tutoring company, which enables students to learn life with some of India's best curated teachers. WAMC, along with his friends now fellow co-founders, Pulkit Jain and Anant Rakesh had founded their first education venture called Luxure in 2006. Luxure was subsequently acquired by Empty Educator in 2012. Post the acquisition they founded with Antu, which has now emerged as India's leading interactive online tech player across K-12 and competitive test prep. Well, with this it is time now to bring WAMC Krishna on the screen. Hello everyone. I am WAMC CEO and co-founder of Edantu and it's great to be here talking to all you folks. Education and tech especially has gone through a massive, massive upsurge in the, especially in the last two years. Tech has been there for over a decade. We have been talking and implementing a lot of technological innovations around education technology. It started off with as early as when radios and televisions came about to as recent as when smart classes and all these new innovative stuff was being experimented in schools. But very honestly, I would say I really saw as an entrepreneur being in education for over 16 years. I saw the adoption of educational technology and tech for the consumer side, peaking out in the last three, four years and COVID has further accelerated it, even beyond proportions. So that's a great thing. And as an entrepreneur myself, I think it's a wonderful, wonderful time to be in this industry and doing some innovative work in the space. As with Antu, I remember clearly, we started with first live online class way back in 2014. And personally as an entrepreneur, nothing is more satiating and satisfying to see a category which, you know, when we created becoming mainstream. And now not just B2C private tech companies, but even schools and colleges all adopting and doing life classes during the COVID times. So those are the exciting stuff. But I'd say it's very, very, very early. Many people ask me this, like, you know, is this the peak of a tech and after COVID will it go down? Very honestly, guys, I can tell you that with stats first, even right now with all this stuff which we hear around a tech and a tech adoption. We all the online education companies combined and I can talk to you about the K-12 numbers. And I'm very sure that similar numbers would be post K-12 as well. But in K-12, out of the total available target group, which is around 80 to 90 million households who have access to internet, who can afford devices, who have an household income of, you know, of greater than an amount which provides this affordability. That 80 to 90 million households, the tech overall online education is probably somewhere on the, you know, middle single digit penetrations, right? And that's today. The total DG is actually even beyond that. There are around 8, 200 and 80 to 300 million kids households in India just in K-12, right? So if you look at from that perspective, online education and tech is so under penetrated, even as of today. And that I see is the massive opportunity and a place of innovation for all the tech companies, including with Antoine, all the other tech companies that there is almost 95% of the teachers still remains untapped, untimely treated. And that is where I see the next wave of innovations coming up, wherein you need to reduce the cost. You need to think about more innovative models because not all, you know, people would require same set of offerings, right? So offering innovations, prize innovations, model innovations, all of those things are something which you will see coming up in the next two to three years. So it's far from over. In fact, just got begun. And if, you know, if you look at Southeast Asia and the kind of tech penetrations there are, it's massive. It's higher 20% kind of a penetration ongoing. So India is an infancy. I think we are just got started. COVID has really gave us a big boost to the brand awareness of this category. But I think the job is way far ahead to like, you know, in front of us. I think all education companies and more education companies will see doing a lot of innovative stuff in this, right? That's on one. The second thing which for me personally, you know, is very exciting is to see the impact of education and tech, especially going into the tier two, tier three, tier four. That's fun. It's already there. It's already happening. But again, the impact purely because of the device affordability and internet penetration is still limited out there, right? And I think that is where the impact of tech is going to be more felt. Not saying that in metros and top 10, top 15, top 20 cities, it won't be there. It is there. But still fundamentally, you have an access there. If you go out, you still have teachers, you still have access to some good content. But in tier three, tier four locations, even if you are wanting to do this, or if you're ready to pay, even then you do not have access to good teachers, good content. And that is the next area where I see not just a massive penetration to happen, but also impact to be much more there as compared to probably the, you know, the metros in the top 10, 15 cities. So that's going to be a trend which we will see, right? And a sub trend of that would be more penetration into vernacular languages as a consequence of this. So largely today, even today, I would say tech, including with Anto is majorly focused on, you know, the top languages, like in the English and a few other top languages. I think vernacular is one big area where for a diverse country like India, you know, for education to happen at a last mile, we have to go there. And that is a second probably a wave where you will see a lot of, you know, innovations and product iterations to happen with respect to not just, you know, online education, but even in offline sort of setup. So that's the second way. The third wave, which I think is very interesting, and this is purely because of COVID, I would say, it was not big before that, but in COVID, I'm sure as all of us would have witnessed a lot of schools, a lot of colleges, a lot of formal educational institutions have been forced to adopt educational technologies. And even after COVID, I don't see that trend completely getting shut off. Because schools have experienced this, they have been exposed to this and a lot of innovative hybrid models will emerge. So that's the third wave, which I feel we will see in the next two to three years. Where in as the COVID receipts, it will not happen. Definitely schools, I think the students are going to go back to schools. There's no two ways around it. I get asked this question quite a lot that will, you know, will this thing continue to operate in a complete hybrid or online method for formal schools? It won't be at all, right? Because there are a lot of reasons behind it. Cognitive skills is not the only thing that schools are responsible to generate. There are a lot of non-cognitive skills also, which comes from social interactions, games, arts, a bunch of stuff. What I have seen personally is online education are great in doing cognitive skill development stuff, which is, you know, clearly around academics and related activity. But when it comes to social, physical, those things will still require that offline play. And that is where schools, that's the responsibility of schools in which ways and that is where they do a good job as well. And that yet cannot be, you know, completely replaced by online. So hence it would happen that the students will go back, but will it be 100%? That is something which is very interesting and needs to be seen. Because what I believe is because they are now exposed to educational technologies, there will be a lot of innovative solutions wherein let's say 60% or 70% in school and 30% even at home. There is some stuff going on, homeworks, other engagement activities. Because the schools are now exposed to these tools, I really see them continuing to use this to making their own systems and processes more efficient and, you know, at the end of the day, adding more value for the student. The framework to think about it, at least in my opinion, is to keep the student in the center and think about what is best for him or her and designing solutions around that. And that is something to watch out for. One of the classical problems and the challenges which I see a lot of educational companies and offline companies making is imposing solutions on a child, right? I think technology is just an enabler. What is important is to think student first, you know, in all these circumstances and situations and design a solution around students. It can have an online component, it can have an offline component, it can have a technology component, it cannot have a technology component, doesn't matter. But the framework which ultimately succeeds and does great is having the student in the center and designing stuff around it. So I can give you an example on this way back in 2014 when Vedanto was starting its, like, you know, doing life classes. I mean, we were laughed about on this because at that time, almost everyone was doing asynchronous recorded video content delivery. And the reason why we did this is not because we wanted to do it. It's just because having been in education and being a teacher before that for eight, nine years, another founders realized that if you want to create a pure online scalable solution which creates learning outcomes. Yeah, it has to be an interactivity led, right? It has to be an interaction. And that is why the solution was designed. So I am a big believer of this and my also suggestion to all the future edupreneurs, both online and offline, is to have that framework in mind and that always serves them. It was lovely interacting with you all and all the best for all your future endeavors. Thanks a lot. Well, thank you so much Mr. Krishna on that wonderful note. All right, so ladies and gentlemen, we do have our next session all set. We're looking at talking about the school ed tech solving India's core education problem. We are joined by Sumit Mehta, CU and co-founder lead. Sumit being the co-founder and chief executive officer of the India's foremost player in school ed tech category with a network of 1.2 million plus students across 3000 schools and adding 300 schools a month currently. But with this, I'd like to welcome Sumit on the platform. Thank you, Sumit, for joining us with this, the stage and screen is all yours over to you. Thanks, Bhavna. Are you able to hear me clearly? Yes, we can. All right. This is great to be here on in the education innovation summit. Let me just share a few slides and talk about how school ed tech is solving India's core education problems. Could you enable screen sharing? Can we get the team to please enable the screen sharing for Mr. Mehta? Yes, so look, I guess a lot of investment and interest has happened over the last few years on ed tech in India. And interestingly, a lot of that interest has gone towards what I call consumer ed tech, which is supplemental education. And the whole idea there has been to circumvent schools and go directly to students with the belief that it's almost impossible to transform schools in India because it is a 70, 80 year old problem. A lot of people have tried it in the past and a new wave seems to assume that through tuition, homework, help and test prep, we will be able to give our students a leg up. And our thought and our learning has been that that's important but not sufficient because while what it does is it gives students what I call a bandaid and sometimes a leg up in terms of clearing the important entrance exams. It doesn't solve the core fundamental problem in India, which is that India has one of the largest school going student population in the world. I sometimes joke that if Indian school going students were a country by themselves, they'll be the fifth largest country in the world. That's how big the Indian school going population is. But the challenge is that the quality of schooling which is made available to these 270 million students is not up to the mark. And the opportunity which is the other side of the coin is that these students end up spending 6 to 7 hours in school every day. And I sometimes wonder that if we are able to ensure that those 7 hours, those 6 hours are spent meaningfully in learning the essential mindsets, habits and life skills that students require to succeed in life. The potential and the possibility of what we can do for the country is sometimes mind numbing. And that's why I feel that school at Tech has the potential to really make a big difference in core education. Like I said, despite 270 million kids going to school, a lot of innovation that we've heard about and celebrated has happened outside of schools and colleges. And a lot of the companies we've celebrated in the past have actually worked outside the institutes, whether it is higher education or even K12. And the intent really is that we improve students' skills in math science, get them to do better in CET, JEE, NEET and that's enough. But however, when you look at a lot of these solutions, the thing that has bothered us in the past is that a lot of focus is on user adoption, engagement. The typical tech measures, basically measuring how many students are free and how many students are paid, how much time do they spend on the app, are they coming back and attending the next session. So adoption, retention, engagement, these are the metrics that are typically both monitored and shared. And learning outcomes seem to be conspicuous by their absence. And that surprises me because what we have learned over the last 10-15 years is that in education and in tech, Saraswati precedes Lakshmi. And what I mean by that is quite a profound insight that just like when you go to a restaurant, ultimately if the food is not good, you're not going to come back again. Similarly, in education, if the learning outcomes are not there because that's the core purpose of education. If students are not learning, they're not developing the mindsets and skills that they require to succeed in life, they will not pay fee, they will not come back. And if that doesn't happen, the company's commercial success is going to be under question and if that's under question, then investments and valuations will be under question. So all the Lakshmi metrics of commercial success always follow the Saraswati metrics of learning outcomes in education. And in the short term, through glitz and glamour and publicity, one might be able to get good adoption. But in the long term, ultimately parents and students have to see a meaningful difference in their learning ability, in their learning outcomes for sustained success in tech. And if this has to happen, ultimately schools are critical because like I mentioned earlier, a child spends six hours in a school every day.  So the research on this is pretty solid that for a child to achieve success in life, board exam results are important but not sufficient. A child requires what we now call 21st century skills, whether it is collaboration, critical thinking, communication and even mindsets of grit and perseverance. This is what helps a person succeed in life. And school is the perfect laboratory, crucible, whatever you want to call it, to develop these skills and mindsets. And these skills and mindsets cannot be done through a one-hour online class. And that's why it is critical that we transform our schools because the potential that a school has to develop a whole child to do deep impact cannot be matched by supplemental education. That's why school at Tech. Now there are three important words in school at Tech. There is school, there is ed and there is Tech. And sometimes in Tech, we tend to just focus on the Tech part, but we need to understand that in this term school at Tech, there are three real important entities. So let's just explore them one by one on why they are important because that will be really helpful for us to appreciate why school at Tech is important to solve India's core education problem. So let's take school first. The real challenge that Indian schools have, you know, and India has the largest number of schools in the world in 1.5 million. Even if I leave out the million government schools, the half a million private schools in the country. Unfortunately, the challenge in these schools is that most of them are afflicted by poor teacher skill. India conducts like a national teacher eligibility test every year and you'll be surprised or maybe not surprised to know that close to 90-95% of our teachers fail this test. You know, we all know the quality of our B.A. program which prepares teachers for teaching and the quality of that B.A. program is neither consistently high across all B.A. institutes and the B.A. program also, you know, for the longest time has not been upgraded. So what it leaves us with is that majority of our students are faced with a teacher in the class who herself requires major upskilling, major empowerment. You know, they're stuck with 19th century tools and they're preparing kids for the 21st century and that equation in itself is a recipe for disaster. And therefore schools require major reimagination in terms of how do they upgrade teacher skills because that one lever can actually make a massive difference in how schools can fulfill the need of preparing students for tomorrow. The second challenge is that, you know, because India has so many schools, the consequence of it is that each school is small enough and therefore does not have the capacity for innovation. If you travel to schools in tier two, tier three, tier four towns, you will see that they're basically a combination of different lecture halls connected through a corridor.  A lot has not changed. A teacher is still standing in front of the blackboard and, you know, giving a 40-minute lecture and then turning her back towards the students and writing answers of the book back questions on the blackboard. And students simply copy those question answers in their notebook and they commit it to memory and when there is exam time, they reproduce those answers. And this charade of learning continues, you know, year on year till the student either hits the board exam or a job interview. And that's when they realize that the 10 or 13 years of schooling that they went through really hasn't amounted to much because they haven't developed core concepts. They haven't developed core mindsets and skills. And fundamentally, you know, school is different from a consumer attack where it is about beaming a class. It's a complex ecosystem. You know, there are multiple stakeholders. There's the teacher, the principal, the school owner, parent, student. And there are different layers of operations, you know, the teaching learning process, the school operations process, the parent engagement process. So it's not an easy one to solve, but unless we reimagine how schools are going to run in the country, we will not be able to truly unlock the potential of our country. So that's the opportunity and that's the challenge in schools. Now let's talk about the the Ed part. Ed requires major transformation. The data is out there for all of us to see. We all know that the one time India participated in PISA, it ranked 72 out of 73. It was a matter of national embarrassment and we stopped participating as if, you know, closing our eyes to the problem will make the problem go away. Well, it doesn't. Asad does this assessment every year to show that grade 5 students who can do grade 3 math are only 28%. Grade 5 students who can read grade 3 English are only 50%. And I'm only talking about academic learning outcomes. You know, readiness for life is actually absent from most of our schools and curriculum. So what we teach and how we teach requires major transformation in our schools. So that's the Ed part. And lastly, if I talk about tech, tech has been largely absent from our schools, you know, apart from the hardware based smart class solution, schools have been resistant to resistance to tech because the teacher skill has been poor to accept it. And, you know, school themselves have been small enough to absorb any major technological innovation. So they're stuck with traditional teacher training, traditional books, lecture based teaching, lecture halls for classrooms. So not much seems to have changed in the classroom of a traditional school in the last 60, 70 years. And that's why if you put this thing together, you know, school requiring the imagination, education requiring transformation and tech requiring adoption. That's what we basically brought together as lead. The hard thing was that, you know, if you have to really transform schools, you have to start with the outcome.  But fundamentally, the school processes, the teaching learning processes would not change. The school tech approach that lead has been driving across the country is giving a mastery guarantee for schools saying, if you implement the system, the learning outcomes in your school will increase by 20 to 25% in a proven manner. And then whatever is required to be done to achieve that, the system will take care of it. Now, that's a pretty radical proposition, never been done before in B2B school at Tech across the world. But thankfully, you know, we've been able to deliver on it. When students come to a lead powered school, they come with 1.7 years of gap in their English levels, which is the data that you see on the left part of your screen. And then across 24 months, we are able to reduce that 1.7 years gap to zero, because ELGA, which is the English Language and General Awareness Program that lead implements, is a skill-based program which accelerates students' English skills and gets them to grade level. Now, when you're going to an English medium school, this is amazing because now you're able to read math and science and social studies in the medium of your instruction. And that's why ELGA reducing the English skill gap in 24 months is magical for schools. Now, if you look at the graph on the right-hand side, when we start working with the school, a typical class composition is that only 29% of students are above the 70% mastery mark. And in 6 to 9 months, we're able to radically change the classroom composition by having 70% of students above the 70% mastery mark. And that has a big impact in the classroom engagement, classroom participation, because now a majority of the people are above the 70% mastery mark. Now, these are outcomes that we have consistently been able to deliver across schools. And my reason for sharing this is that if we are able to really transform student learning in schools, then we're talking about real transformation. And this happens on the back of teacher transformation. The solution that LEED provides to teachers really upgrades their skills. So, you know, if you look at when the teachers begin teaching the LEED system, their rating in terms of performance is like a 2 out of 5. But one year post-LEED, they move to 4 out of 5, which is again amazing for a school because ultimately we all know that the quality of learning cannot exceed the quality of teaching. So therefore empowerment of teachers is very important. And this reflection features feedback which continues to improve. So, fundamentally what we've been able to implement is an integrated system which has a comprehensive curriculum stack, a pedagogy which is tailored for high learning outcomes, a tech system which is enabled for scale, an excellent outcome for all stakeholders. And if we do that, I mean, it's not done for one, two, three schools. This is a system now which is working at scale. And a scale that is unprecedented, you know, 5,000 partner schools, 2 million students across 500 cities. And my hope is that if we are able to have more innovation flow to school transformation because there are one and a half million schools in this country, half a million private schools, we are still serving only 1%. You know, in the long term, we want to be able to serve 20%, 60,000 schools in the country. But there is more innovation required to ensure that our schools become better because if our schools become better, then our students will become better and nothing can be better for the future of our country than transforming schools. And that's why I continue to say that, you know, school tech is critical to improve the core education in the country. That's what I wanted to share, Bhavna. I would love to take any questions from the audience if there are. Sure. So, Sumit, just in an interest of time, we've got a certain set of awards. We'd love to, you know, have your presence with. So could we get on to that because our winners and everybody are waiting in the back. I'm happy to go by what you would like to do, Bhavna. Sure. Thank you, Sumit. So, ladies and gentlemen, with this, we're going to be starting with the first set of awards. So I'll just request the team to kindly do the preset now on the screen. And let's see who the winners are as in interest of time. Let's get on to that right now. So, ladies and gentlemen, as you can see on the screen, we've got our first category, which is display, which is ed tech deployment of the K-12. And that goes to lead school. So congratulations, Sumit. Heartiest congratulations.  Over to you. Thanks, Bhavna. Like I said, I think this is really good, strong validation for, you know, what I was saying, which is that ultimately, if India has to do well, its schools have to become better.  So I would dedicate it to our school partners, students and teachers who given it their best in delivering strong outcomes for students across the country. Absolutely. Congratulations to you and your team, Sumit. And let's move on with this to our next category, our next preset planes. So ladies and gentlemen, the best classroom tech solution of the year hardware and that goes to Glovis Infocom Limited. Congratulations to the entire team of Glovis Infocom Limited. And could we request our dignitary to kindly join us on the screen, which is Kiran Dam, who's a CEO. Kiran Dam, congratulations to you and your team with this. We request your acceptance, please. Thank you so much. I really appreciate this award because awards are a great motivation. We are trying to do our bit. So a big thanks to the jury first and foremost for giving us this honor.  And last year we did 10,000 smart classroom solutions, Pan India, which included the rural areas as well, because our strength is that we want to make technology accessible to one and all. And we are trying to make that accessible. We are trying to transform the classroom environments into a highly immersive and engaging atmosphere. So thank you so much for this honor. Absolutely. Congratulations on that. Well, ladies and gentlemen, with this we move on to the next category. The next preset, please. Well, the best e-learning blended or flip solution goes to Birohan. Congratulations to the entire team out there. And may I request Nalin Saluja, founder and CEO of Birohan, to kindly join us on the screen now. Hi, everyone. Thank you so much for the award. I think it's an amazing validation again from entrepreneur India to recognize the work that Birohan's been doing. And I think along the lines of what Sumit was saying earlier, Birohan is the in-institute solution for the higher education industry and we could not agree more on the importance of live interactions in the classroom and the importance of a teacher. That's what we are leveraging to transform higher education, focusing on the healthcare sector to begin with. And thank you so much for the award. Thank you. And congratulations to the team out there. Well, ladies and gentlemen, now with this, let's move on to the next one, which is emerging technology solution. And that goes to Edu Brisk. So congratulations to Edu Brisk on that. And may I request Saju Arvind, CEO of Edu Brisk to kindly join us now. Thank you. Good morning to all. I'd like to thank Edu Brisk and the members of the jury for giving us this honor. As one of the speakers told today, it is not an easy journey to bring in technology innovation into schools to make the schools invest their time, energy, money in upskilling the teachers to get into analytics-based interventions, ICTs, then data science and neuroscience elements. So I would like to specially thank the partner schools across seven states and India and Middle East, who not only joined us early on, but gave us the constant feedback to make it suit to a school environment. So once again, thank you. And I would like to thank the member team of Edu Brisk team who believed in this vision and mission and to make quality education affordable, equitable. Thank you. Right. Congratulations on that. Well, with this for the final award in this set, let's find it out. The new age institutions providing online degree and that goes to SVJN School of Global Management. With this, I'd now like to invite Dr. Christopher Abraham, CEO and head of Dubai campus to kindly join us. Thank you very much for this honor. Yes. Yes. Can you hear me? Yes, we can. We can. Thank you so much for this honor, humbled, of course, and privileged to receive this on behalf of the school. I think for the last 18 years, we've actually started making a lot of innovations. Much before COVID, we had invested in technology and online. In fact, the cutting edge technology called ELO, which I think has been recognized, talks about a very key element in online learning, which is engaged learning. So how do you use technology to engage students? I think it's the number one prerogative. So we are honored to receive this award. And we want to thank the jury and of course, entrepreneur magazine for recognizing us and certainly would go a long way in making many more milestones. Thank you very much. Absolutely. Thank you so much, Dr. Christopher. With this, Mr. Mehta, just your words towards the end of our first set of awardees whom you witness. Any thoughts on that, please? I think, like I said, education requires as much innovation as it can get. And I'm really glad to see so many companies attacking the challenge of improving schools and higher ed institutions. I continue to believe that we have to make our institutions stronger and better. Whether it is schools, colleges and universities and the more innovation that flows there, the better it is for the country. So all the best to all the winners. This was really exciting. And let's continue doing the good work. Absolutely. Thank you, Ms. Mario. Your thoughts, please? I just want to congratulate all the winners. And I think some wonderful work happening in the ethics space. And thank you, Sunita, for joining us and congratulations on your award too. Thank you. And congratulations to everyone now. Well, ladies and gentlemen, with this, it is time now to move on to our next discussion. Once again, congratulations to all the winners. And thank you, Sunita, for joining us. Well, with this, ladies and gentlemen, it is time now to move on to our next panel, which is building an effective learning ecosystem scalability and personalization. How to balance the two, making education non-linear and flexible. Well, with this, I'd like to welcome to the session, first up, our moderator, who's going to be Ms. Rithu Mario, editor-in-chief entrepreneur media, India and Asia Pacific and franchise India, who's going to be the session chair and the moderator of this panel discussion. We're joined by our speakers, Akshaya Chathamweli, CEO and co-founder, leverage edu, Hari Krishnan Nair, co-founder, create learning, Ashutosh Kumar, CEO and co-founder, testbook.com, Akshaya Munchal, founder and CEO, hero, a wide, we've got Falhoon Kumpali, the co-founder, upgrade and Kashi Abdelal, co-founder and CEO of SimplyLearn. Well, with this, I'd like to humbly welcome all our panelists on the stage and screen. And Ms. Mario, over to you to take on the live rain and take forward the discussion. Thank you, Bhavna. And what a stellar panel to be speaking to here today on this Monday morning. So thank you very much for joining us, everyone. Of course, given the diversity of this panel, I would like to keep our discussion focused more on higher education and lifelong learning and therefore would request all our audience to stick to questions which would pertain to that and also to the kind of work that is being done by our panelists. So indeed, higher education, I think, saw its very first changes probably somewhere in the 19th and 20th century when, you know, industrial revolution was in place and, you know, the industries at that point of time that were emerging required a certain kind of talent pool for the businesses that were being built. And I think the next set of revolution has come now, which is in the 21st century, when higher education is again being transformed and this time it is to serve the needs of a global digital knowledge economy. And now, given that scenario, I'm going to ask my panelists to share their thoughts. I'm going to start with Akshay Chathruvedi first. Akshay, most welcome to the panel. Hi, Ritu. Hi. So, you know, something I'd like to know from you is that how do you think COVID has changed the approach towards higher education for Gen Z, really in the COVID times? What has changed permanently from their perspective? What are their current priorities today as students when they look at wanting to take higher education and they come to your platform for it? So, let's start with that and maybe, you know, I'll pop some more questions to you. Sure, Ritu. No, thank you. Thank you so much for having me here today and great to be on stage with such a distinguished panel. I'll keep it brief.  We help about close to 20... We helped 23,000 students last year head abroad and largely I think one... I would essentially flip your question as well. I'll talk about what changed and what did not change as well. What changed was that students are now way more outcome focused than they were before, right? There's a very clear understanding that I am not pursuing higher education to collect a damn degree or certificate in my hand. I needed to be more outcome focused. I needed to essentially have employability at the end of it. I'm pursuing higher education because I want to read somewhere. So in fact, on our platform, we have about close to 400-plus counselors as well and our counselors now essentially tell students that boss, if you're putting 15 lakh rupees, 20 lakh rupees, 25 lakh rupees to go to one of these countries, be it Australia or UK or Canada or the US, these are the four different kinds of jobs that peers like yours have already got in the last one or two years. This is what you can also get. You'll get financing. And this is what you can actually see yourself making by the end of two or three years. So I think it's very, very important that we as education companies, we as I would say, I call ourselves a mobility company, not just another tech company, because essentially helping people kind of be mobile between destination A to B. So I think that the understanding about being more outcome centric and also having a more proactive approach to jobs than a reactive approach. I think in India traditionally we have had a more reactive approach where we have the college view placement. You just have to kind of wake up, put on a tie, sit for interviews, all of that. I think that to a more proactive approach kind of looking for jobs and keeping yourself ready also for all of those things. I think that is one big change that I've seen. One big change that I've not seen is that which a lot of people thought would happen but has not happened is that people still prefer campuses. There is a very small section of people who kind of move the online and say that okay, online is a better way for me to kind of go about these things. But for a mass long tail, for a large majority of, when I say Bharat, or when I say Bharat I also mean to say the large majority of other emerging countries in South Asia, South Asia, large parts of Africa, they still wanted campus experience. They want to be at a campus. They want to essentially be in a classroom. They want to talk to the professor after the class finishes out. They want to do those part time jobs. And I think that is something that in 2020 when we launched a lot of these online programs through Leverager 2 for a lot of these universities, about 100 plus universities, that was an absolutely damn show. And as soon as kind of those visas started picking up and the flight started and we started okay, bang, this is 300% up back again. So I think that is something that we also realize and we've witnessed that people do not care as much about just sitting in front of a screen and learning a lecture. I think that can happen on YouTube and a lot of other platforms as well. But a select set of people who want to kind of go to college, they look at both of those things in campus experience. And then essentially, of course, want to have a more reactive approach to jobs and a more clear understanding that what I really want out of college and that outcome based counseling should be given to me on day one so that I can take a better decision. And do you think that, I mean, given what you just said that people want to, students want to go back to campuses, do you think that the future of higher education is hybrid? Of course, of course. So I think it's a mix of both online and offline. Even these people who have essentially gone abroad, they still have a couple of classes which happen online. So I think it's largely 20, 25 online and 75 offline. And there's a very clear understanding on what can be offline and what can be online. For example, if an assistant teacher is essentially coming in and solving doubts for you, that can be online. You can essentially do it in your room, you can do it in your library, you can essentially do it in a remote way sitting out of your home country. But if it's a classroom experience where there are a lot of practical teaching happening where you would require essentially to spend time with the, I would say, focus groups, you would essentially spend time on multiple projects where it is a more experiential learning in some sense. I think there you would need an offline experience and network always and always and always from something which is online. Also I'll kind of just add to that. Learning is one part of it. The other part also is that, like I said, what I'm really kind of going to get out of it. So if I'm going to that country and if I really want a job, if I want to move to UK, if I want to move to Australia, if I want to move to the US or Canada, I want to do a couple of those part-time jobs or internships or kind of assimilate myself into that economy, talk to people, local people in that country in that city, all of those things as well. And hence it makes more sense for me to be on campus to be doing other things as well, not just the learning part. But I think that is how we have essentially at least witnessed things move in the last two years. Sure. Thanks, Akshay. I'm going to come back to you. In the meantime, I'm going to Hari. So Hari, welcome to the Education Innovation Summit today. So at great learning today, when the focus is moving from higher education, particularly from your perspective at great learning, when the focus is moving from higher learning to lifelong learning, the idea is to really be students. Everybody needs to be a student at every point of time. So what are the trends that you have noticed particularly with the demographics of the student enrollment that you are seeing at great learning? And particularly with the collaboration models that you have with universities for executive programs. So do you see them being more hybrid or do you see them being more online going forward? Sure. First of all, thanks, Brithu, and the team for inviting people to this panel discussion. And it's good to see a lot of known faces and friends from the sector. So big hello, shout out to all of you there. I haven't seen you guys for a couple of years, otherwise you would see each other on conferences like these. But I hope you're all doing well. Coming back to your question, Brithu, so broadly the question is two parts, right? One is in terms of the trends, learning and if we just suppose that with demographics. And the second part is what's the future when it comes to executive and lifelong learning? Is it online or is it hybrid and so on? So let me take the first part. So we've now at great learning, we've been in this field of lifelong learning and executive education for more than eight years. And of course, the advent of COVID accelerated the curve in terms of interest that we saw from the market in terms of people wanting to learn. The demographic change that we saw was that pre-COVID, mostly, most of our learners used to be in the 25 to 35 year each practice. That's where we would get most of our learners for our various programs. But over the last two years, we have seen that while that segment has grown, but we have also seen a lot of adoption in the other two segments, which is let's say 22 to 25, which is what we call as early career professionals, people who are in there, let's say just into their first job or in the early years of their first job. And even people with more than let's say 15 years of experience. Of course, their learning requirements are very different. The kind of programs that they're looking for, the kind of learning outcomes that they want are all very different, but there is adoption. So what has really happened here in the last two years is that everyone today or most of the knowledge professionals, most of the working professionals, realize that this career journey that they are on is a continuous journey where they have to continuously upgrade their skills. So there is no stoppage to learn. The skills that you have today may become less relevant or definitely will become less relevant in let's say four or five years and you'll have to go back and supplement those skills and acquire either adjacent skills or higher order skills and so on. So it's a continuous journey and more and more professionals realize that and that's why they are coming back to options like great learning and everyone else, looking to see what else should they be learning. And as I mentioned earlier, in this journey of theirs, what is also very clear is that as they gain more and more experience in the industry, the learning outcomes that they are looking for are very different and let me just quickly kind of give an example for that. So what happens is that when somebody is early in their career, like an early career professional, their first and foremost objective is getting a better job. They are looking to switch their job or switch their career. So everything that they want to learn is from that perspective that if I do this, if I do this program, if I acquire this skill set, will I get a different job? Will I be more employable and so on? But as you gain more experience in the industry with, let's say 10 years plus of experience and so on, those learners when they come to us, what we realize that their primary motivation is not about a new job. It is about how can they be better at their current job? They see all of these opportunities within their organizations where there are new projects getting implemented or new teams getting built. So there are these opportunities for them to grow, take more leadership roles, but for that they need to be more skilled and that is their perspective. So obviously what you learn and how you learn and the skills that you develop also change and that's the basis with which we also create programs. So the 50 plus programs that we have at different universities, each of those cater to a different learning outcome or different learning objective and primarily catering to a different audience, depending upon what they're looking for. To your second question or the second part of your question with you about in this area of lifelong learning and executive education, is the future online or hybrid? See here, unlike full-time education, here the challenge is that time is always a constraint amongst all other constraints that working professionals have. So they have to take out time to study or to learn in conjunction with the time that they have to take out for their professionals and personal lives. So that is where online kind of trumps over. So which is why we are seeing a massive adoption. I believe we will continue to see an adoption when it comes to online learning. Having said that, there is always an audience and especially senior professionals who do value classroom learning as well. So post COVID in what we really foresee is that of course most of the market would be going online but there will be that niche segment, a premium segment that would want to learn in a classroom environment but limited exposure which means like maybe 25% or 30% of the learning happens in classroom or weekends and this happens online and there will be an audience that would value that kind of learning as well. Sure, thanks a lot Hari. I'm going to come back to you again. I'm going to come to Ashutosh now. Ashutosh at Testbook, you know you focused always more on government jobs and they have always been I would say in one sense very highly sought after in India but I think since 2014 when Testbook was incepted to now what kind of change have you seen in terms of people's outlook for taking government jobs? I mean given the fact that there's so much happening in the economy at the same time. So do you think that overall with the government's notion towards privatization and you know they're taking a big step towards it and you know they're looking at a lot of temp positions rather than more permanent positions in the larger state protocols. Do you feel that there is some change that is happening on the government job side which are trends that you observed? First of all, thanks Ritu and the interpreting team for having me here. Ritu, I guess there is a, let's say the reverse side of the thing which is happening in India. So when the pandemic happened and then there was a lot of job cutting was happening in different organizations we will got more awareness, more aware about the government job opportunities because if you look at on average people take three to four years to take a government job even if they just have to pass the attitude test. So the question is why take three to four years to sort of crack the government job? It's finally because of the huge competition there are more than 50 million students fighting for a really 5.6 lakh jobs, right? But the biggest motivation or intent for the users there is the job security.  Even though the privatization is happening but it's still there are a lot of opportunities to take it which is in the very different organizations and every year a lot of election movement is happening in India a lot of new vacations are coming up. So we have not seen such trend people getting skeptical about the government job when they're getting more like the mainstream towards the government job because the COVID has something where they have been able to see how the private companies have reacted over. So we know that in the COVID days almost two years people were fired people were jobless but people who were working in the government job were sort of getting the salaries and they were able to sort of manage the entire family and everything. So that piece is not there but definitely from a user perspective in this COVID era there has been a huge you can say a shift in the behavioral change in terms of online versus offline. So when we started with who I remember that time when we used to talk about that you know he placed the offline question so people used to laugh at us and then that was not possible and then from the user perspective that the main behavior that we were able to see that they want just the assessment piece on online that said the exam had moved online but when the geo came when the smartphone became cheaper and during the COVID day when they were able to sort of see that they're now able to access a good top quality teacher sitting at their home at least one fifth of the price that's where like say and then in terms of outcome the platform that has to be able to sort of prove that like say even if like say you are going through online programming like say 4 to 5 months of the program your score has been improving by let's say 40% 50% as a very clear clear membership happening and seeing in the dashboard. Those are the things which actually build a strong trust among the users around the online product and the services which is available but even if there is a huge things have got a lot of things happening from privatization etc. but we have not seen any such like say the scaredness or something from the among the users so far. I think the love of government jobs in India it's so high that the market would never probably change too much. Thank you Ashutosh. I'm going to switch to Akshay now. So Akshay I know at Hero Wired you're doing some great work in terms of helping the tech talent needs to get developed and you know particularly in current situation when digitization is the order of the day that we are so short of tech talent in this country that everybody is feeling the heat not just the tech company everybody who is also looking for some kind of digital transformation to happen in their organizations. So you know how are you looking to close the gap so from that perspective are you working with NASCOM or some other bodies to see how this gap could be closed and also you know any kind of hybrid initiatives or virtual only initiatives that you're taking to see that this gap is closed faster for India. Great question Thanks for having me on the panel. Let me give a perspective on where the skill gap is coming from. I've been on both sides you know I've run an university as well running now Hero Wired. If you look at India as a country there's a huge employability paradox as per government's own reports anywhere between 70 to 75% of engineers are unemployable. There was a survey which Fikki and Mackenzie did years ago which pegged the number way higher. They were talking about upwards of 90% So on one hand you have a problem in the engineering institution. Now I'll talk about engineering largely because that's a large recruiter for companies. There's a huge problem on the engineering side. At the same time you look at demand for tech talent. Most companies where the new age old age manufacturing services are unable to fill the tech demand. Now we need to break the probability paradox otherwise what's going to happen is we continue having graduates come out for not getting commensurate jobs and what Hero Wired is really trying to do is how do you be a bridge between the two? There's a problem at its root. Once people graduate they join companies, yeah you still need to train them, upskill them. That's a continuous learning process. There's something which Hari also mentioned about demand in industries changing so quickly that people in companies also need continuous learning. At the same time by working in colleges, universities we are trying to train people even before they graduate so that at least the input which comes into the corporate world is far more suited and if you look at global data while in India if you talk about the government figure which I shared 70-75% of people are unemployable, the moment you take the figure from China or US or Thailand there's a huge difference there they talk about sub 20-25% of engineering being unemployable. What is really happening is now it's a very complex problem to solve because I also run a university it's not that colleges or universities don't know what is happening. Most colleges and universities know that here are the skills we need to train our learners on but there are challenges to that I don't know if you're aware UGC last year came out with a new ruling that for universities we can only hire non-PhDs to teach earlier we could hire non-PhDs but we could not promote them they had to remain assistant professor 1 AP1 throughout their journey now you can't even recruit non-PhDs so if I have to train somebody in some of the new skills you know talk about AI, ML, data science blockchain, crypto India doesn't produce enough PhDs in these areas all of these areas PhDs were not offered in this area until about 10-15 years ago so where do education institutes find talent to train in such areas so that's a genuine problem there on the education institutes side there is shortage of talent especially in these areas which I spoke about you're competing in the industry if you have somebody who's run a PhD ML would they work for an education institute or would they work for one of the big tech firms so you have a challenge there of lack of trained manpower secondly education institutions the way they run it takes time to introduce anything new so that is really what Hero Wide is trying to do we are trying to take some of our programs offer them in colleges and universities so that by the time the learner graduates he or she is adequately trained for what the industry wants sure thanks in fact we have a question also on the same lines do you think that Indian state-owned universities are really equipped for hybrid tech capabilities particularly with the professors being recruited in some other era how do you think there's sort of going to be part of the time machine I think it's a great question but most institutions didn't have a choice you were really forced into it whether you were a state university or you were a private university or a college or a school there was no choice so what most universities did was they ran boot camp for their faculty how do you familiarize yourself with Zoom or Google Meet or some other learning platforms so most state universities also have gone through that is that a preferred mode of teaching is a different question altogether if I'm a traditional teacher I'm used to walking in the class looking at the learners writing on the board here people have learners all over the country they could have bad internet connection don't have access to good laptop or desktop so they have far more challenges than just saying that our faculty equipped but it's a problem on both sides I totally agree with you but I'm going to come back to you as more questions are popping in but I'm going to jump to Falgun and Falgun we've been seeing upgrade almost all the time on TV so great work and you know I think keep up the good word out there but you know overall what are you seeing the change what kind of changes are you really seeing in the higher education sector with the advent of online education what kind of ROI in online education is something that students look for when they opt for a hybrid or an online degree and you know one area I feel that might become the contention of future is the price was that is likely to start once we are really out of the pandemic zone at least to some extent you know how do you think that the online degrees are going to be at par in terms of pricing with the price that is going to be charged by universities or even Ivy League colleges how are the parities going to come forward in the times to come thanks for the pleasure to be here and hi to the rest of the panel nice seeing you all again to start off I think there are multiple elements in the question that you are so I will start with what are the changes that we expect to see and what are the trends that we are seeing the first is obviously everybody talked about hybrid learning in some form or another and I think all universities have started to embark on that journey because they were forced to we thought that look it is going to happen over a 10 year horizon where universities will start doing online and hybrid but Covid has accelerated that process and I think universities have been forced to do it students have been forced to do it parents have been forced to accept it and I think we have seen massive strides in that and I think that will continue while I think a binary outcome of fully online students hybrid is going to serve the purpose in some form or way for a much larger set of students and that's where we are working very closely with universities to see how we can help them accelerate this hybrid journey in order to deliver strong outcomes for students so that the experience is not compromised outcomes both in terms of learning outcomes and in terms of career outcomes for students so that I think is going to be a massive trend for the next couple of years where we all work with established universities to see how we can create an ecosystem and infrastructure which is extremely strong in the hybrid space to deliver the same kind of experience and outcomes the second key trend that we see is global and I think education for the longest time has been a cottage industry with local universities having local catchments and while that is still true but I think we see that changing massively especially while we work with multiple Indian universities we are trying to see how we can get them into very interesting markets like Bangladesh Southeast Asia, Africa, Middle East where our universities can start building acceptance and credibility and similarly the other way around where I spent almost three months in the US in 2021 and a month in UK and I see that a lot of these international universities have now started to focus on the opportunity of international markets not just for attracting students on campus but also delivering online and creating an impact in these markets so you will see a lot of global universities with very strong supply of strong value propositions and programs with aggressive pricing in markets like India Southeast Asia, Africa etc and that I think goes both ways Indian universities have the opportunity to grow global and global universities will come to India and some of these other markets and I think that competition will play itself out and it's going to be exciting for all of us now finally on your point of price wars I personally do not believe that there are going to be any price wars I personally believe that in education especially in higher education the single most important thing is as I said the outcomes that you can deliver to students both learning outcomes and career outcomes and in the long run we are able to do that consistently the university or one of us I think is going to establish our strong signal for the student to communicate to a potential employer to communicate to society to say that look I am great at what I do if I have done something in data science from this university or this particular partner you can take it for granted almost that I am a great data scientist so that kind of signal and that kind of consistent delivery of outcomes is going to be very important for all of us and that's where all of us are putting in a lot of work and in education as I said more than price it's always about ROI so when we launched the first program at up grad 7 years back we launched a a PG program in data science with trip lighting Bangalore it was fully online 9 months and it was priced at 2 lakhs and this was 2015 every single person I spoke to said you are out of your mind because nobody is going to pay 2 lakhs for an online program but that has changed we have over time over the last 7 years I think increased the price of the program to 3, 3 and a half lakh now and it has consistently been only a function of the value we are able to deliver to the student if you are not able to do that then obviously there will be pricing issues and all of that but even at that point of time and even today what I tell my team is that if somebody is telling you that look this program is too expensive for me but if that same student today gets an admission letter from an IIT asking him to pay 3 lakhs or from a Harvard asking him to pay 2 crores they will pay it without blinking an eye but they think 3 lakh up-grad program is expensive which just means that they think that we are not delivering the value or there is no ROI in this and that is work for us to do so as long as all of us are able to focus on delivering that value and ROI I don't think is going to at least for me I hope it doesn't go into a place where it becomes all about pricing I hope it goes into a place where it becomes all about the value that we are able to add where we are able to deliver first sure you are right absolutely and I think probably the online campus recruitment would also probably play a very big role in times to come and the kind of and I mean for what is always work big for campuses to get established over these long journey of years is that what kind of recruitment and what kind of package was offered to a student who was coming out of there and I think eventually we will see that in the online campuses as well you know as we go ahead I'm going to come to you Kashyap so you obviously have a global presence it's simply learn and you know so you know if you have to look you've obviously been observing startups both not just in India but also outside India particularly edtech has been a revolution that is happening globally so you know what are the learnings that you have taken from global edtech startups and what changes are happening in that part in different parts of the world which I think Indians can learn from and I'd also like to ask you a financial question which I've refrained myself from now though I should be asking into this panel is do you think I mean you know we've seen so many IPOs happening all over the place for startups do you think edtech also needs to step forward and start doing IPOs and if at all it's a good idea to do IPOs outside India maybe in the New York Stock Exchange or some other part of the world Thanks Aitu I'd like to be part of this panel and a great group to brainstorm and discuss with so it's really good being here I think let me take the question in two parts I'll answer the question on IPO first and then maybe get to what are the observations on the international market my feeling is more that IPO is a matter of time I think a lot of companies on this panel itself are all thinking about it planning for it in fact if I think back two, three years back I and a few friends we used to have a lot of discussion that there is so much of private equity funding on the consumer internet side in general why are none of those companies listing and lot of it was to do with listing rules in India the requirements that a company needs to meet to basically list on the public markets but I think a lot of that is changing we've started seeing the huge rate of listings with Micah, ATM and Zomato and so on I don't see this stopping it's a great trend for the country and I definitely see that the tech sector will join the trend it's a matter of time maybe like three to four years hopefully there should be multiple IPOs whether in the Indian stock exchange or NASDAQ I think that time will tell that's more a financial decision for most companies to figure out I think coming back to the first question globally what are the trends that we see on the tech side there are I would say two major trends and I would basically make these observations in two buckets one is the skilling space that professionals looking to acquire certain skill sets and what exactly are they looking for and what's driving the market and the second one is more on the higher ed and university side than what are the trends that we are noticing one on the skilling side I think historically one of the things that has happened is both the side people once they do their graduation or post graduation and join a particular career track there is a tendency to not switch over too much because there is the entire thought process of some costing that I've spent five years in a particular area if I'm in sales then I've done sales and if I move to some other profession or some other role then I will not get credit for my experience but one of the things that the entire the access to information is driving is both the side people are very very aware on what are the trends in the market so if there are certain skill sets which are in huge demand if they are seeing salary differentials they are getting to see that if two people started with a similar salary package and seven years down the line depending on the domain which is doing much better there is a huge differential that starts forming people are actually a lot more open to actually taking things in their own hands building the skill set that is needed and switching careers so we see that as a huge trend globally that basically people are very clear saying that what do I want to do for the next ten years I might have done something for the last five years that's fine if I'm doing really well and if I've got a path in front of me then I'll continue doing that but we see huge demand on the skilling side with people looking to acquire skill sets that are going to accelerate the next phase of the journey so automatically it drives more and more research around digital skilling, new edge tech areas like blockchain, AI machine learning and so on and that's one huge trend which is only accelerating so I think that's one thing that we are noticing speeding up the second thing is again I think a lot of people spoke on the panel about outcomes we see very very strong focus on outcomes, people are not looking at learning for the sake of it when it comes to a new skill set and therefore they are looking for programs that can actually deliver learning and career outcomes and they are ready to pay a premium for it so one of the big changes that we've seen over the last five, seven years is that probably if I were to think about 2013, 2014, 2015 time frame people would be more focused on looking for e-learning programs where they can learn on their own look at a few videos dabble in a little bit of stuff thought process was still that if I'm in a job then my company should train me right but now if I look at last three years there is a very clear focus that I need to take charge of my career growth if there is a skill set that can make a difference let me look at a program that really delivers value what can give me hands on knowledge what can give me the right certification the right degree or the right kind of experience which then I can translate into career growth effectively so a lot of people are looking at education more as an investment increasingly more as an investment rather than as a cost and that's making a huge difference in the direction in which the market is in so I think these are couple of trends which are playing out and most companies are trying to adjust their portfolio of products to tap into what the consumer is looking for on the higher side and on the university side one of the very strong trends that I see is that with the advent of technology, tech, online learning, blended learning whichever model you talk about it is translating into you know leader takes a larger share of the market of a direction so for example earlier the entire thought process was more this that if I'm staying in a particular place I would have maybe 5-7 universities in that catchment which I'm considering and I'll probably enroll for one of them however increasingly the question that students are asking themselves is that if I can do an online program or a blended program with the best university out there why would I settle for whatever is closest to my hometown for my home so I'm considering this entire trend that earlier capacity was a huge constraint let's say an IIT would be able to take in 500 people and that's it so if you don't make it it's over but with the entire online road even if you don't get into the primary program by a premium institution you can get into some of their online programs, some of their certificate programs and stuff like that and a lot of people actually carry a lot of weightage for that that I would rather do that rather than going to a tier 3 college and basically do a program from there so we definitely see this also being a trend towards greater consolidation and stronger brands winning in the market compared to a broadly geographic spread of horizontal tech institutions I think that's a very strong trend that we see globally not just in India-U.S but in most parts of the world sure I'm so sorry to cut you in but we're really extending on time and we have a section of awards which we have to do before our next speaker, Professor Anil joins us he's already in the back end so I'd really request all our imminent panelists to please stick around for a couple more minutes I know you all have a heavy schedule ahead of all of you but just a couple of minutes to encourage all our winners so just allow us a minute while we get the preset done, Miss Mara we're just going to get the preset done for this section and let's roll it could we have the preset please for the next set of awards being displayed so ladies and gentlemen the best test solution of the year and that goes to text book congratulations could I request Ashutosh Kavarasi who is the founder to kindly join us hey hi everyone and thanks thanks to the India team and all the green members and as all the earlier the body was saying it's always a validation and a pleasure to sort of receive those awards and each and every one in the team puts a lot of hard work day and night they don't care about it and then the last one year we got almost like 95-96 lakhs new students coming on the platform and then the kind of impact that we were able to create is super massive and we focused on the tier 2, tier 3, tier 4 audience that's where the craze of the government job is actually and then it was asking right so there's a shift there's no shift at all and that's one of the values so thank you everyone thanks a lot and thanks to my thanks to our students as well congratulations well with this let's go on to the next preset please well the ed tech start-up of the year and that goes to our Brad well congratulations to the entire team well we did have our speaker Falgun who joined us so congratulations to Falgun and the team well let's move on and find out the next winner please the best skill solution platform and that goes to simply learn ask for our request see you on tv or simply learn to finally join us thanks thanks Ritu, Babna and team I think it's a pleasure to get this award and again validation of some of the work we are doing I think personally one of the things that I'm super passionate about is more the stage of India's growth journey I think India will need 10-20 million people skilled in programming and data digital skills in general over the next 5-7 years and really super excited to play a part in making sure that that talent is ready for the economy absolutely thank you and congratulations with this the last two awards in this preset could we have them please well the best online personalized learning program that that goes to hero wired congratulations to the entire team and could be request Akshay Munja will see you and founder to kindly join us Akshay perfect thank you so much extremely humble to receive the award for a young company like ours it means a lot the team has worked tremendously hard over the last two years to get us here and we feel very fortunate and blessed to be a part of this mission to help improve overall the quality of the Indian education thank you right congratulations and with this the final award in this preset please well the best online skills provider of the year and that goes to great learning congratulations to the team of great learning well requesting Hari Krishna and I co-founder to kindly join us hi hi thank you thank you for this recognition absolutely humbled and thrilled to receive it I think the clinic really belongs to the entire team the faculty and all the students all the learners who believe in us just as a closing thought I think you know the opportunity and challenge ahead of not just great learning but all the companies on this panel and the companies in the panel before it's so immense that I'm very confident that you know everybody here has a role to play in changing how education becomes more impactful and more transformative in the years to come and I think that is truly the exciting part about this journey thank you thanks again thank you and congratulations Miss Mara are your words of congratulations to all the winners we move to the next section please I think sitting over here we probably have the future the educator providers I remember there was a time when we used to celebrate our universities and I think it's just a matter of time maybe an year or so when we will equally so celebrate our tech companies also for the kind of education that they are delivering to students and as an outcome of that education that they're receiving from their tech companies they're able to find their place in the job market so I think congratulations to all the winners and to all of you for doing this wonderful work and I think you are the future universities of India in terms of the delivery of education that you are doing you know for some of you who can stay back we have a professor Anil Sahasra from AICTE who's going to be speaking next and I know there's just been a new order from AICTE that they're planning to detach tech startups from the higher tech space with universities as the new order so you know it would be really great to question him about it and to know more about it but thank you very much for joining us today I just had an amazing time with all of you and learning from all of you thank you very much absolutely thank you and with this we do really like to thank all of our panelists and thank you thank you so ladies and gentlemen it is now time for a little extended on time but we try and cover up on the billion dollar question are the rising evaluations of ed tech startups sustainable for this we're joined by professor Anil Chairman all India Council of technical education Professor Anil has held several important academic research and administrative positions at the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, Tata Consulting Engineers, Northeast Regional Institute of Science and Technology, Ibnagar and IIT Guwahati as a Director of College of Engineering Pune since 2006 on a deputation from IIT Guwahati prior to joining as AICT Chairman but with this I'd really like to welcome all the students from Professor Anil to join us thank you Professor Anil over to you great to have you thank you so may I speak now yes please over to you thank you very much for this particular keynote we're addressing especially the billion dollar question are the rising evaluations of ed to companies startup sustainable I think they have proved their worth they have already been evaluated as billion dollars once and many more will come and the very fact that five of them were awarded just now whether it is textbook upgrades simply learn hero wired and great learning they are all part of our initiative of what is known as NEAT National Educational Alliance for Technology where AI based learning of various subjects have been incorporated by AICT more than two years ago and the third version is ongoing and many more companies will be joining the bad bad end so the importance of tech companies edu tech companies who are able to give skills for our students as an educational feature beyond the education is going to be very very valuable from two perspectives one is employability the second one is entrepreneurial ability and therefore the value of the tech company is not going to diminish there will be valuation it will always have pluses and minus and depends on how many more will join there will be takeovers of companies by another company and so on so forth so valuations will continue to grow doubt about that with population of the size of 135 pro of which the young population which is interested in employability and entrepreneurship rising and our own vision of increasing the gross enrollment ratio in higher education from present level of 27% to 50% we cannot wish away the importance of the edu tech companies in the beginning you also said the AICT and UGC have got a new notification which came up and we need to discern between what has been stated and what is going to be allowed and not allowed the universities are the ones who are entitled to offer programs which lead to degrees and diplomas post degree degrees and post graduate diplomas they are all approved by a process of regulation be it by UGC or by AICT and in the new national education agency when a single regulatory body comes up called as higher education commission of India one of the verticals will be national higher education regulatory council which will continue to do the task of what the AICT or UGC is doing so there will be regulation which will be in place and institutions or universities who are going to be set up new ones or the existing ones will continue to be regulated by some kind of a mechanism however the institutions like startup companies if they also form what is known as section 8 companies and then apply them for giving education maybe PGDM program MBA, MCR they are most welcome but if it is a profit making company formally today education sector does not allow profit entity to view formal degrees but certification programs they are most welcome add on programs most welcome in fact the whole idea of the NEET portal which AICT and Ministry of Education developed was for this very purpose education which is important from the colleges and universities will create citizens of tomorrow with a background which will be helpful in their lifetime but when it comes to employability at times what is relevant to the industry at the current point in time is not taken care of and that is why there is a value addition which happens through such kind of skilling programs it is not just when they are in the colleges and universities but even post their graduation when they are employed they are doing a particular type of a job because of the change in technology which often comes in and today we talk about emerging technologies as artificial intelligence internet of things machine learning, robotics, 3D printing augmented reality virtual reality, cloud computing cyber security, blockchain data science these are all areas which are very important from Anand you are muted requesting to please unmute so sorry about that I don't know someone muted me No worries we will get the team to not do that because someone else was speaking that's why everyone was muted for me So sorry about that So I was referring to the role of adutec companies vis-a-vis the formal colleges and universities the programs which are approved by the regulatory bodies be it AICT and UGC in terms of permitting a program to be run is the responsibility of the university the adtech companies can provide support in terms of technology platforms for creating content which is more interesting by using augmented reality virtual reality or data science in order to make sure that the students are learning outcomes which are going to be achieved out of the education that is being imparted so there is a place for adutec companies for skilling I was talking about not only skilling when students are in the universities and colleges but also post their graduation when they enter into the job market and if they are employed by X company if they want to shift to a Y company which is doing some other activity naturally the skilling which a candidate had earned during graduation and during the job of 5-10 years of experience may not be sufficient so there is upskilling, re-skilling which is required not only when someone is shifting from one company to the other but also within the same company because the job profile has changed you will have more of IOT, more of AI more of machine learning all of that when it gets embedded and cyber security, cloud computing I have told about various new emerging areas these are all called as emerging areas but they are no more emerging areas they have entered the market there may be new things which will come up which we call in the future of learning and in that case unless a student one who is life long learner does not continue to learn I don't think he will fit into the industry at all and therefore there is a great deal of work that is required to be done not only by universities and giving online programs but also by ATEC companies in order to give the latest in technology that is happening in the industry world to the students or to the employees who are already working and that's why the valuation of these companies will continue to rise there is no doubt about it with such a huge population and India being a software giant in some way or the other all these ATEC companies who have been creating products which can be and which are many of them AI based, you test a student in terms of the learning that she has already done and for learning a particular course additional material that is required how do you provide that for learning and the path taken by different students in an ATEC platform could be different someone who has a better learning which is a pre-learning already done may do the course at a much shorter duration while someone who has much less knowledge about that course may have to do a lot of pre-learning and then come into the program and this portal or this educational technology platform will provide an opportunity to make a student learn all that what is required as a prerequisite and then move forward taking a little longer time than the rest of the people so all these are very valuable things which are happening in the industry especially a do take industry but only thing which the warning issued by both AI city UGCs don't take the mantle of giving an MBA on your own without having an approval for doing so and going as a franchisee of a existing university is also not permissible if you want to enter the market of giving MBAs and MCAs or even whatever degrees, online degrees you come to the regulatory process get approved and then run it there is no problem over drive for that one profit entity is not allowed therefore you will have to create a section 8 company and then have another arm of your company this can go on as a certification program certification does not require any approval but when it comes to offering a degree post graduate degree or a post graduate diploma or a diploma there is a regulation in country and it has to be followed that is all what we wanted to say through the circular which has been released or the advertisement which has been released but the value of the products of this nature can be seen from the number of companies which are on boarded on to AICT and Ministry of Education portal called NEET itself shows there are more than now hundred products on boarded more than 50 odd companies who have put their products online on to the platform and what we have stated here is for every four students who buy the product you have to give one free seat which as a government body we want our sections of the society who cannot afford even that small fee of 5000, 8000, which these companies charge for individuals we would like to get those free seats to be distributed to weaker sections of the society be it SEST, OBC or economically weaker sections of the society from the general category as well and that is where we stand now there are other activities where a tech companies have a great role to play different universities who are giving online program or ODL program may not have a robust learning management system government has itself created a MOOC platform called SOEM which has four quadrants one quadrant is for delivery of lectures in the form of video lectures the second quadrant is additional reading material provided as PDF files or additional videos from other sources which are in the open source market and the third one is the discussion forum where students can interact with each other with the faculty who is coordinating the course and the fourth window there is that of examination that means be it sessions examination or final examination or the quizzes assignments given and then evaluation of the student at the end of the program and then give the credit or grade for the students who do it. Something similar in the private sector also anyone can create a portal and any university may use either the SOEM portal or may use some other portal which is created by an adute company or for creating an excellent content which is very interesting if some kind of augmented reality virtual reality is to be made use of or a lot of animation is to be made use of and there are a lot of software which are available both ones which are in the free domain that means open source as well as there are those which are from a particular company which is to be paid money for license and then do it. If the adute companies help faculty of the universities to create a content with lot of simulation which makes the class interesting they are most welcome. This is the role that adute companies are required to play in collaboration with the universities but not give their own degrees by themselves without having the approval. I think I have made this much more clearer than what people were thinking and some of the aspects of education in terms of creating values the morals the integrity what we talk about in the even industry world we all see that they want people who work in teams they want people who manage the timelines they want people who have got the ability to be clear in their thinking in terms of critical thinking analytical ability and if to develop this if any type of certification is going to be provided by any adute company both as a part of the curriculum or outside the curriculum is welcome not the whole curriculum by itself otherwise what is the university for the university was established for giving degrees for creating the next generation of students who are ethical who are moral and if this itself is going to be defeated in the very process I think there is something missed out and that is what I want to substantiate on this particular platform and if there are any questions from any adute companies or from the organizers Bhavna or Ritu you are most welcome to ask me the questions Thank you very much Professor Anil it's always wonderful to have you here and talking to our audience and thank you very much for clarifying the circular that you spoke about we have a few questions that have come in there is one from Mahesh who says that what are the changes you would see in the non-technical undergraduate programs in India nowadays many online degree programs are available from international universities and how Indian universities can compete with those online degrees and how government can recognize these online undergraduate programs in India Online programs other than in some fields are already permitted by UGC and they have been offered by many universities I think about 56 of them are offering various programs in online mode where we do not have hardcore experiments or working by hands is required such programs are allowed even in some way some sort of indirectly related with engineering I am talking about for example MCA computer applications program or AI and data science program are also offered in an online mode whereas coming to hardcore engineering like civil engineering mechanical engineering electrical engineering where you have to work with actual equipment on the field and understand the nuances of that they are not allowed although we have a lot of virtual labs today existing which give a lot of input in terms of a lot of experiments simulation based experiments but ultimately in order to become a full-fledged engineer professional you need to work with the equipment by hand observe them operate them otherwise pilot who has been trained only on a simulator will you fly on that particular aircraft I hope so no one will agree to that unless he has some flying hours put in no one will be allowed to have the pilot license it is almost something similar to that same is the case with medical education unless someone has operated physically on a patient will have a degree which is offered purely on an online basis so same is the case with some other fields like physics or chemistry or pharmacy or architecture but many others like you know maybe economics maybe management maybe we have even sociology etc which can be easily offered in an online mode is being already permitted and it is only if we have to become competitive in the world market our faculty have to be trained that is another area which companies can take how the classes can be made interesting on an online mode that is a big challenge it is not easy in a classroom environment teaching learning is different and in an online mode keeping your attention span and then making you be present there physically as well as mentally is not an easy thing even in a normal classroom forget about in an online mode and therefore how do we make our teachers learn the art of doing this and that is where again there is a requirement both from the regulator from the facilitators from the adute companies and we welcome that actually there are a lot of teacher training programs which we have been doing in terms of Atal Academy from AICT something similar we would appreciate from even the companies so that our students whoever are learning they will be excited about learning from such online platforms so we are competing we are doing it in a big way and that is the task which we have already undertaken so we are running short of time but I think we will quickly take on one more question so Saurav Sinha is asking that you know there is some kind of career guidance which is needed to help eager students who want to pick up the right choice of online courses because the plethora of them being which are offered through online platforms so you know anything that AICT can do to facilitate it see already our SWIMP portal itself gives a lot of ideas about what are the type of courses which will be useful to you similarly the need platform which I have been referring quite often in this particular talk for 15 minutes is the one where all these are tested and please remember that this is a very rigorous process through which these are onboarded onto our platform first a blind review is done without knowing even the name of the company and the product it is only based on what is the outcome that is going to be achieved out of the product next one is whether it follows all the rules and regulations of the country in terms of laws is checked thirdly the actual product is tested rigorously and the return on investment of what money is being charged is it worth that is also seen and only then it is onboarded so I think you close your eyes and then join all those courses which have been taken on board on the need portal that itself is a possibility depending on what is your area of interest you must choose the right kind of a program sure sir I am going to now ask Bahamna to come and under your guidance we would like to present some ad take awards going forward so Bahamna if you can take the proceedings forward sure thank you so much Prof. Anil with this as Prof. Anil rightly said it is time for the awards let's get the presets rolled out and let's acknowledge the next winners well as you can see on the screen ladies and gentlemen the most breakthrough ad take start-up of the year goes to Sunstone at University congratulations to the entire team and may be request Ashish Mujal CEO and co-founder of Sunstone to kindly join us Hi Bahamna thank you so much for recognizing and giving this award to us and this is truly truly dedicated to the awesome team who has put their blood and sweat in reaching us where we have reached today and I just like to reiterate what Prof. Sahasthar said that this is a very large market and it's a big problem and there's a space for both ad take companies and the higher education institution and the universities and they can definitely work together and that's what we have been trying to do work together with the universities to provide them support wherever we can and with all the humility and humbleness we accept this award thank you so much for giving us this award thank you and congratulations well with this let's move on and find out the next winner as you can see on the screen best learning solution math science language drama and that goes to QMAC well congratulations to the entire team and may be request Manav Korma founder QMAC to kindly join us thank you Babna really thrilled to get this award at QMAC we think math is not just a subject you learn in school it's life skill critical for every child's success today and with QMAC we are on an ambitious mission to build the world's largest math brand in the global math market and I think with any such grand mission the real key to success is a great team which is true in our case as well so I'd love to dedicate this award to our stellar team and the thousands of QMAC teachers on our platform who have been announced with the pandemic to keep pushing us closer to our mission so thanks a lot and happy to get this recognition great congratulations on that well with this ladies and gentlemen it is time for our next award could we have the preset please yes the emerging classroom tech solution of the year and that goes to perceive education congratulations to the entire team and for this if I may request Uttam Kumar Pandey co-founder and CEO to kindly join us Hi Vahnaan thank you for the opportunity I would like to thank the jury the education innovation award team and this whole effort and the dedication put by our team to come up with a solution an extra solution which has a future vision of building a perceived educational verse for education teachers and students to work on right congratulations congratulations Uttam on that my ladies and gentlemen this is time for our next preset as you can see on the screen the best tech company of the year and that goes to Vedantu so congratulations to the entire team of Vedantu and let's move on and find out the next preset let's see who gets the next win the best online children's learning by a preschool and that goes to Europe it's a preschool congratulations to the entire team out there let's move on and find out the next winner emerging tech start-up of the year and that goes to Example well congratulations to the entire team and may I request Uttam Gandhi co-founder Example to kindly join us Mr. Gandhi if you're there would you like to join us on the screen so I believe Mr. Gandhi is not there in the back end right now we'll see if he can join us shortly for the next preset please I can just see Mr. Gandhi joining okay Mr. Gandhi congratulations hello hello thank you I would like to thank the jury for the award and it means a lot to us as a company because at end of the day these are the motivations that take us forward as a team and we look to provide as becoming the best employability solution we can be for the students and these awards will keep on motivating us thanks thanks a lot thank you and congratulations with the final two awards in this set let's roll out the next preset the best corporate training platform and that goes to Wiley Nex congratulations to the entire team and may we request Ritesh Kumar country lead to kindly join us can you see me unfortunately I'm not able to see you Ritesh Ms. Mario are you able to see him no right Ritesh is there some video issue out on your end I think I have switched on my video no worries Ritesh please go ahead we'd love to hear from you I think words go a long distance so please go ahead yeah sure so hello everyone so pleased to be receiving this award on behalf of Wiley Wiley India expanded its footprint in India's ethnic professional learning space with Wiley Nex just two years since launch we have certified and trained over 12,000 professionals in the back region in areas such as artificial intelligence machine learning and data analytics etc this award is a true recognition of our efforts we will continue to shape the workforce of the future with our efforts thank you very much for selecting Wiley Nex for this award thank you very much well congratulations on this and congratulations to your entire team at Wiley Nex ladies and gentlemen now with this it is time for our final award in this category shall we see all right the EdTech a deployment of the higher Ed and that goes to Meduacity congratulations to the entire team and for this award if I may request Gerald the CEO to kindly join us Gerald for giving us award and Ritu nice to get connected and Dr. Anil thank you so much for sharing your thoughts on AICT and the direction forward I would like to accept this award on behalf of all the healthcare professionals out there who are working today to make a difference to COVID over the last 18 months and also for dealing with Omicron as we face it every single day thank you well absolutely congratulations Gerald and Professor Anil you are the doctor of education let's put it that way so we'd love your words congratulations to all our winners please we just request to do congratulations to all the winners for these various categories I'm sure they will put in their best efforts to create employability skilling upskilling re-skilling of our entire workforce so that as a nation what we talk about New India which is emerging effectively contributing to that right absolutely Ms. Maro final words from you as well I think Anil sir has always been doing the pathpaking work of actually guiding the higher education industry to really go on and achieve the better echelons and what they are achieving and thank you very much sir for presiding these awards and actually motivating the award winners to continue to do the good work that they're doing and I think together you know with your knowledge of education that you have for higher education we should see it coming to fruition thank you very much for joining us today thank you thank you Ms. Maro thank you for our final and congratulations to all the winners thank you for joining so ladies and gentlemen now with this it is time to move on to our next panel discussion we hope you are having a great time it is time for edtech exit or in westmore factors driving the investments free in edtech a very intriguing topic for this this session is going to be moderated by Mr. Saurabh Kumar editor special projects on Saurabh India and joining Saurabh would be our panellist Ankur Vithal co-founder, inflection, point ventures, Manish Adwani associate vice president, elevation capital and Rishabh Malik venture partner, jungle ventures well with this I'd like to humbly welcome with a lot of enthusiasm all our panellists and Saurabh no one better than you to moderate this so please take it forth and have a great discussion thank you Bhavna thank you for the introduction and good afternoon everyone and welcome to this session in India as we know that every household the majority chunk of their income goes into children's education but quality education was something which was lacking and that is where the edtech companies have come in but more so importantly are the backers who provide funds to these companies to grow to the levels that they have grown we have seen in the past two years and we have three such backers here today thank you Ankur Manish and Rishabh for joining us today here so you know I'll just continue from where we left in the last session so Mr. Professor Anil Sarathukade was here and he talked about the notification that came that made these headlines to a different page of almost all newspapers so do you think that in any way is going to affect how edtechs have been valued or have been working till now in no order but Manish if I can start with you Ankur so I think as a evolution of any industry I think regulation the fact that regulation comes in normalizes that industry is only helpful and over time it brings in more legitimacy to the sector I think and also ensures that all stakeholders from students to even companies which are catering to these students improve and come up with more effective offerings right so I think net net it just shows that the industry is maturing it shows that the the government also is bringing in regulations to formalize and also support the sector in its own way and ensure that finally students also benefit from it so I think in the longest term it only helps ensure that there is more regularity that comes in the sector and I don't think it should impact valuations in any way it just ensures that like companies become more formal in which in the way they cater to these students okay Rishabh any thoughts and also giving the fact that maybe a lot of startups actually maybe they say that you know we are providing these degrees or maybe they would have done till now so do you think that that's going to change your perception in any way yeah I think I agree with you know everything Manish said I think long term the regulator getting more involved in the industry is a very good sign in some way it legitimizes the industry I do think in the short to medium term it causes a little bit of confusion between the founders between the investment fraternity around you know what the real lines of the regulation are and sometimes it takes a few cycles of that for that clarity to emerge to where the benefits move from short medium term to long term you know I think an example parallel example could be how we've seen you know regulation around e-commerce in India evolved right you've seen regulation come in all the way from regulation that impacts the investment fraternity in terms of foreign direct investment you see regulation that's coming in on how different sellers across different e-commerce platforms can and should be regulated and what they can and can't do and similarly on the customer side so you know I think it's very positive I don't think it should change that interaction between founders and investors in terms of how they pitch how businesses are evaluated and downstream valuations so but yeah it is going to take a few cycles between the private and public sector before they can flesh these out to where everyone has clarity of thought around it and do you think these cycles how long will these cycles be because that really affects the companies in the interim when you know you haven't really reached to a conclusion so regulations here and there of course they dismantle the kind of the growth trajectory that a company actually has a certain for it's very difficult to predict how long these cycles will be because there's an interplay between two very very diverse fraternities right which is the entrepreneur and startup fraternity as well as the regulator I think it just comes down to how much the regulator wants to prioritize this and in terms of fleshing it out I again I think that having been an entrepreneur myself in my past life I think it should not impact the founders in terms of what they're building how they articulate what they're building and I think you know as an early stage company is one of your key modes so I don't see this compromising that speed in terms of developing products taking them to market and scaling them uncle your thoughts uncle I think you did hi good afternoon everyone sort of you'll have to just you know recap the area of discussion I had logged out for some reason okay so like in the previous session we had the dr. Daniel from the AICT and you know there was a news today that AICT and UGC has asked to you know the company so I was just you know trying to gauge that does it in any way change your perception I mean inflection I know you have investments in net text to exit so that's a big you know kind of portfolio that you have so in any way does this regulation change your perception about net text or do you think it's just like Rishabh and Manish said that you know it's more of a you know that the company that the space is getting coming under regulatory framework means that it's getting legitimized so what do you think? I appreciate now I heard what Manish and Rishabh were saying I kind of agree so basically I think that this is more of a regulatory clarification it's much needed very important to have the rules of the game and I think it may still go few more iterations before we actually have an idea Rishabh took an example of e-commerce but Rishabh I can tell you even e-commerce is still up for grabs there are still a lot of grey areas where what is allowed what is not allowed and who can invest and who can not invest so I think overall this government has I would be very surprised if they do something which is very you know anti-startup and it's probably not even required because most of these startups are only enabling and strengthening the existing institutions and to so that extent my opinion and my perspective of the tech space in India does not change what would happen is that some business models will have to modify themselves and I think that kind of environment will be there in every sector it's not specific to edtech I think some regulatory clarity will keep on coming in different spaces even dream 11 may have to further modify their business model big unicorn businesses may have to do it, Amazon is still fighting on some regulatory ground elsewhere so I think that's part in parcel but I think overall as long as the theme is to strengthen the system and ensure benefit to the end users because I think to some extent some clarification you know it is actually correct to say that not everybody should be allowed to issue a MBA certificate and I think there is some merit in that I don't think degrees should be given for free but having said that there are so many other non edtech educational institutions which also are offering different courses so I hope that the government will take a more expansive view across the regulations and not just focus on edtech I think the one point that professor made was that the institutions which give degrees are non-profit they are not for profit so they have you know if edtech have to do that then they are which cannot I mean these two things I do not think can go hand in hand right true well most of them are not for profit only on paper while they are very profitable pardon yes that's the but that's the rule and I think there is already a way around it that you don't have to give degrees and you can give diplomas at the end of the day it is all about upskilling of the and maybe as India doesn't need so many MBAs maybe we need upskilling in different parts and maybe that is the kind of you know modification or pivots that edtechs will have to do but I think there is enough you know ways around it so I think one of them is a diploma versus a degree as long as you do that you are outside those gamut but I could be wrong also but even if that is not true then also I think you can structure it differently you can call it a training class you can call it an upskilling as long as your skills are such that they are even employers or even global employers I think it should work you said that this government is back the start-ups and wouldn't go just the irony is that the announcement came on 16th of January which was announced as the national start-up day and on the same day this notification comes so yeah so let's move on to the core topic of discussion that we were supposed to have today which is you know the edtech space to exit or invest more so Manish I like to come to you first what is your overall reading of this space I mean we have seen Pihamoth being created in edtech and M&A3 we have seen so much of money coming in in fact I was looking at some numbers numbers in terms of investment so India's edtech investment is almost comparable with you know the US last year and last year so what do you think is the space overheated or do you think it's just the tip of the iceberg and there is much more that can be done here thanks for playing that context so I think if you look at what education is to India right versus what it is to the US I think there is in itself a massive difference right I think education is like even culturally socially it is one of the most important levers of social mobility right it is like parents spend more on education for their kids than they would even spend in e-commerce or generally in shopping in retail outside so I think like in itself education is a massive category for India as a country and hence it's just natural that our investment in education matches with what is there in the US right and I just think this is tip of the iceberg so obviously there have been large companies which have been created in K-12 also we are seeing that now happening in upskilling which just puts the pressure on newer companies that are coming in this space to actually come up with something very differentiated but also on the other side and that limits the kind of investments or the amount of investments that you can make in this space but also on the other side it reduces like the fact that there are larger companies reduces your risk of investment because now even if let's say become really large there is always this possibility of M&A there is always this possibility of a larger competitor leveraging them and sort of combining a much stronger and combining and creating a much stronger entity right so like as an investor I think the presence of these large incumbents pushes the bar to innovate for newer companies but it also lowers the risk of investment when you invest in this space and I just think that they have done a great job in pushing the consumers towards acceptance of tech and as people now become more amenable towards learning online there is just so much opportunity that will be created right also one common theme across all of the large incumbents in tech today that have been created is that they are powered by a very strong sales force and they have a very strong strategy of driving sales through push whereas if I look at now the next horizon of companies that will emerge in this space will effectively disrupt this model which we've seen across multiple spaces so there is still a lot of potential that is like today at tech would be 5-7% of our at tech would be 5-7% of overall education spending in China that has reached 15-20% right in mature geographies you've seen that trajectory happening there is just so much more potential for this space and you having investments you know elevation having investments in topper and academy yellow class is a bigger name so I am sure that you are still bullish on this space absolutely yeah okay Rishabh move to you what do you think of this space is it overrated is it or you know such a huge country with so many you know the demography which is still in the space they need guidance education to achieve in their life do you think you still have a long way to go yeah so you know I continue to remain very very bullish and you know I think at jungle we have made one investment in India in a company called leap finance which is in the higher learning space we are working on two more one is language related which is in Vietnam and the other one is a very early stage one within K-12 in India so you know as a new investor to the space when I say new I'm talking last two years we continue to remain very very bullish I think the depth and you know I think the regulatory point we were discussing earlier is testament to the same that the depth is starting to emerge in the space the first wave of ed tech was companies that were helping with test prep you've seen a really really big push in K-12 you know in my mind largely in two buckets one is businesses that were creating and selling content and then the other one which we've seen companies like teachman class etc that have provided infrastructure on the back of a changing education environment the pandemic and I think we're going to see more and more verticalization whether that expands into you know more depth in higher learning or corporate training or then even going in the preschool space you're seeing a lot of interesting companies emerging there and various forms of skilling that are directly related to your curriculum in school or beyond so you know for me I don't think this is a juncture to think about exit the space I think it's a juncture to dive in deeper and see where that verticalization is emerging and find smart entrepreneurs and products to back I've made note I have three things that we'll come back to which is once we talk about Salesforce and we talked about language and verticalization but before we go to that uncle your thoughts on the space I think definitely it's not a question of exit completely although one of the things we are early stage investors and so one of the things we are doing to democratize angel investment is to create frequent exit opportunities but it doesn't mean exiting the sector or the space what would happen is and what has started happening is that there are certain sectors which are getting overcrowded so for example in the exam prep space I think we already have like you know five six unicorns and few unicorns and you know there's a lot of you have to basically ask yourself that okay you know what is it that they are truly doing different because you can pick up one or two exams and you can still become number one in those one or two exams but then you know then it comes to basically the you know the target market and also and these could be all higher revenue generating businesses but couldn't they become you know a big VC ideas is something that we evaluate on but what is different is then that you know in our talks to a lot of these unicorns and VC's is that a lot of these targeted exam prep companies now have become good targets for the unicorns so they can just acquire them and so from our point of view early stage investors that would still be a great exit opportunity so but yes there are certain spaces which are getting very crowded but at the same time Manish rightly said you know education has a very different place in India and what is now what is now happening is there are smart entrepreneurs and founders out there who are finding some small sub sub segments and going deeper into that and building their own niche and because the population is so big India is a very young country a lot of upscaling is required and therefore these small you know sub segments are also fairly large markets and from an exit point of view in the sense from our exit point of view as an investor both unicorns as well as startups as well as VC's are both future investors and therefore for us it still makes for an attractive sector to look at I think this answers one of the questions that I was trying to ask you is that verticalization so as you said that some sectors are now overcrowded and so I was just looking at some data so language and casual learning still is just one percent of total you know ethnic offering in India so do you think that now people and Parishabh also spoke about that you know he's working with a ethnic in somewhere which is in the language space so do you think that is the place where more people are going to move towards as we speak about Bharat what I'm saying is that there is still a lot of scope of growth there are certain sectors where a lot of growth has already happened and therefore for a new player coming in it may not be the most attractive of the opportunities but there are still pockets and segments which are still relatively virgin have not been evolved as well as they could and it's also natural transition once you have got your basic education then only you start getting into languages where you go deeper into languages we have invested in a startup called Multivashi which is into languages my son is learning French and Spanish from then and so on so there is still a lot of opportunities out there but I think still every idea will have to be treated on its merit it's a cliche but every idea will still because even in the exam prep space which is overcrowded I will not deny that we just invested in a startup toppers note because it was just a phenomenal business I mean the numbers were just unbelievable and they were competing with the best in the world at least in the country in the exams in which they are participating in so I think there is still an opportunity for certain areas even in the crowded space as you call it for startups to succeed Vishal welcome to you so as uncle said that even in crowded spaces there is opportunity which I am sure is a function of the sheer number of people that this country has and the other thing that you spoke about was language you are working with so do you think that's the next gold mine because that space has not been tapped much by the companies nor by the investors yeah I think I wouldn't say that it's the next thing but I think there are definitely a lot of emerging opportunities there to qualify what I was saying earlier we see a business in Southeast Asia that is focusing on language learning English language penetration being lower the need of the hour being for more of the middle class and emerging middle class to be well versed in that we have seen a favorable trend in the Chinese market in that sector with a couple of very very large businesses getting created and so we felt confident to move forward it's not announced here so I am not going to go into any other details there but I think we will see a similar trend in India I think uncle talked about one example and you are seeing that whole building for Bharat team come across some of the verticals we have seen I think there is a company called Pariksha which is doing that around certain types of government exams and jobs that come subsequent to that and you are going to see other verticals like that emerging in that Bharat team I think as jungle we have looked at a few early investments in that space we haven't in India we haven't developed the confidence to back any yet but we will