Innovative E-learning Solution Providers in 2019

Vol. 4/ Issue-6

www.insightssuccess.in April 2019

Innovative E-learning Solution Providers in 2019

Siddharth Banerjee Founder and CEO

TRENDS TO WATCH E-learning Trends that Will Dominate the Year 2019

VIRTUAL LEARNING Virtual Classroom: E-learning trends that will dominate the year 2019

INDUSGEEKS Training the Workforce of Tomorrow

Editor-in-Chief Pooja M. Bansal Managing Editor Devasish Kanojiya Executive Editor Sneha Sinha Art & Design Head Amol Kamble Associate Designer Poonam, Shweta Art & Picture Editor Rahul Kavanekar Co-designer Priyanka, Shweta Business Development Manager Akansha Garewal Sales Executives Rutuja, Shraddha, Joan Technical Head Swapnil Patil Technical Specialist Amar, Pratiksha Digital Marketing Manager Prashant SME-SMO Executives Uma, Manoj Circulation Manager Tanaji sales@insightssuccess.com

April, 2019 Corporate Ofď€ ces: Insights Success Media and Technology Pvt. Ltd. th

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From the

EDITOR

Embracing Innovation in Education for Excellence

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nnovation is one term that can spark excitement anywhere.

What’s new is a question that everyone wants an answer to. And man being an inquisitive creature, looking out for new things and new methodologies is just another trait that marks it different from other species. To innovate one needs to learn about things. And to learn one needs to undergo the process of education- formal or informal. It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say that education and learning is the key to innovation. So what beget innovation must also be always updated and in-sync with modern times. Hence, it is all the more important that innovative education or innovative learning be supported.

Innovation in Education is important to keep the learners or students upbeat about learning. Human attention span, in today’s electronic time is becoming shorter than ever. In order to grab one’s attention and make then learn during a session anywhere is a big task.

Innovation is what keeps learners coming to seek knowledge and keep the cycle of learning and innovating going.

Education itself has changed over the years. From the days when all the knowledge was passed on verbally to the written documents and now the virtual instructions, it has come a long way. E-Learning today is considered a revolution which is bringing education to all and breaking many educational barriers. This change is necessary because what was relevant yesterday might not be the same today.

What has not changed though is the spirit to make generations educated, learned and a society that is enlightened. What needs to be seen is how every innovation adds on to the value of education. How technology is bridging the education gap. How it is helping the society to be more aware about its surroundings. How thought provoking, indepth and yet interesting do these innovations make learning to be.

And not to forget, how it treats the world in equity.

The cycle of education and innovation must go on as they complement each other and make the world an interesting place to be. And as John Dewey, the great American philosopher, psychologist, and educational reformer said, “If we teach today’s students as we taught yesterday’s, we rob them of tomorrow.”

Sneha Sinha Sneha Sinha

CXO

Futuristic Education Future of Education: Interactive and Collaborative Learning Environment

Trends to Watch

COVER STORY

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Indusgeeks Training the Workforce of Tomorrow

Future of Education: Interactive and Collaborative Learning Environment

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Virtual Gaming Gaming & eSports in India: The Opportunity & the Challenges.

Virtual Learning Virtual Classroom: E-learning trends that will dominate the year 2019

ARTICLES Learning Mode

Writer’s Column

E-Learning: Learning Without Limitations

E-Learning Trends in 2019: The Pathway to Future

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IxamBee Helping Learners to Ace Competitions

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Pragati Leadership

INTERVIEWS

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Memcorp Immersive Play, Learn, Repeat

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Transforming today's Leaders for Tomorrow

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66 Miracle Corporate Delivering Solutions for Digital Agility

SQUAD Making India Industry Ready

Code & Pixels Transforming Learning through Technology

Designmate Empowering education with Virtual reality

Enggenious Well Crafted Learning Solutions

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Manipal ProLearn

Prime Meridian Consulting

Leading Professional Learning Company

Building Transformational Leaders

Swift Solution Learning Made Measurable and Meaningful

For an Experience Called Learning

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earning is the essence of life. We learn as we grow and we grow as we learn. While we learn from our daily life, formal education plays a crucial role in how we spend our life. It opens gates of opportunities, helps us think logically and rationally and also to share our learning and knowledge.

The digital age today is breaking the shackles of traditional learning and creating new ways to learn and explore. Elearning is making learning fun, interactive, immersive and creative. In this issue of Insights Success, we are glad to enlist “Innovative E-learning Solution Providers in 2019”. These companies are providing features and ways that make learning more relevant with the times today.

The Cover Story of this issue features Indusgeeks, which is considered a pioneer in the field of Game-Based Training, Virtual Reality Training and Augmented Reality Training.

Also featuring in this issue are Code & Pixels Interactive Technologies Pvt. Ltd, an e-learning service provider delivering end-to-end Software development & E-Learning solutions using innovative technology, Designmate (I) Pvt Ltd, which develops world’s best 3D e-Learning Content, Manipal ProLearn, which is empowering corporates and individuals to master new skills and achieve their goals by pursuing curated employee training programs and industryrelevant courses, Prime Meridian Consulting India Private Limited , a company incorporated with the purpose of building leaders everywhere, SAN Techno Mentors Pvt Ltd(Enggeniuos), learning solutions experts in engineering and manufacturing domains, and Swift Solution Pvt. Ltd., which offers customized content development services across various domains and verticals.

The issue also highlights the CXO Standpoints of Anubha Maurya Walia, Founder- Director of Prism Trainings Consultancy, Ashwini Purohit, Co-founder of Winuall, Himanshu Jain, Founder and CEO of Acro Engineering Company and Ramaya Chatterjee, Director (Sales) of Barco India.

The insightful interviews of Arun Wakhlu, Founder, Pragati Leadership, Anupam Srivastav, Founder, Miracle Technologies, Chandraprakash Joshi Co-founder, ixamBee, Maneesh Jha, Co-founder, SQUAD Infotech Pvt. Ltd. and Shashwat Dhuliya, Creative Designer, Memcorp Immersive Learning Solutions showcase the latest in ELearning Services. Go through the latest trends in our in-house article E-Learning Trends in 2019 The Pathway to Future from Writer’s Column. Read about how E-Learning is helping everyone with or without special needs learn in E-Learning: Learning Without Limitations from Learning Mode.

We hope you enjoy reading this issue as much as we did while creating it!!

COVER STORY

Siddharth Banerjee Founder and CEO

“We transform legacy learning content into fun, immersive, interactive training solutions that engage learners and captivate their attention

Ind

“

dusgeeks Training the Workforce of Tomorrow Learning is more effective when it is an active rather than a passive process – Kurt Lewin, German-American Psychologist.

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earning is a lifelong process. And surely, something that we are going to do all the time should be interesting, effective and engaging. As a kid, when the learning process starts, be it informally at home or formally in a play-school, the emphasis is on activity-driven learning. Rhymes, stories, toys, songs are all an integral part of the learning process. But as we grow, the joy of learning seems to dissipate. Fixed syllabuses, patterns, exams, competitions all seem focused on manufacturing professionals instead of producing creative thinkers. The content and lessons seem to be more boring, test and jobcentric rather than being fun, curiosity satiating and intriguing.

Dismayed by dysfunctional educational and training systems fuelled by boring content on dated technologies, Siddharth ‘Sid’ Banerjee, decided to find a solution.

Indusgeeks was thus born out of this need to make training content fun and effective using immersive interactive technologies such as training games and simulations.

Leveling Up Founded in Mumbai, India, in 2007, Indusgeeks has grown to become a global leader in Ed Tech solutions serving Fortune 500 companies and governments worldwide. It is a multiaward-winning company considered to be a pioneer in the field of Game-Based, Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality training for all industry types and processes.

Meet the Geek-in-Chief Growing up, Sid watched the Indian education system fail at every level by over-emphasizing memorization and preparation for standardized tests, instead of fostering a lifelong love of learning. He realized the power of tapping into something that people enjoy and founded Indusgeeks to channel the love of gaming into a love of learning. An entrepreneur and thought-leader in the field of Applied Gaming and Virtual Reality, Sid spotted the market for ‘ImmersiveInternet’ technologies. His pioneering work as the CEO of Indusgeeks has positioned Indusgeeks as one of the leading Game-Based & Virtual RealityBased Training companies. Indusgeeks has received multiple awards and has most recently been honoured with The Brandon-Hall Gold Award for “Best Use of Games & Simulations for Learning”.

Sid was nominated by NASSCOM as a founding Board Member of NASSCOM’s Applied Gaming, Special Interest Group (SIG). He thus gets to

“Through our contentftorm, INIT, we

n pla transformatio d ate customize are able to cre er ns for a numb o ti lu so n o ti a gamific es aining process of corporate tr

“

Indusgeeks serves the vocational and enterprise training markets globally with offices and partners in San Jose, Mumbai, Dubai, and London.

work with governments and the gaming industry worldwide to formulate key policies that are directly transforming the applied gaming ecosystem. A passionate evangelist for the medium, he’s been invited to speak at various events and summits on emerging trends in applied gaming technology.

In addition, Sid, in collaboration with partners from Stanford University, created one of the first digital healthcare training platforms to transform healthcare education and training worldwide.

Along with his team of passionate Geeks, Sid has been responsible for growing Indusgeeks into a missiondriven EdTech company determined to transform vocational and enterprise training for learners around the globe.

Curating the Content With each unique client comes unique learning requirements. Indusgeeks

tailors its interactive training content to the client’s needs. However, some key considerations for deciding the type of content to be created remain common among all clients, namely: Ÿ Target Group - The person who is actually going to use this content.

Indusgeeks does ‘persona development’ to ensure the content matches the needs of the target group. Ÿ Level of Interactivity - Based on the target group it decides the appropriate level of interactivity in the solution. For instance, content targeting older users may require lower levels of interactivity compared to content created for millennials or Gen Z. Ÿ Accurate Assessment - One of the key benefits of sim-based or gamebased training is the ability to assess the learner actually applying the knowledge by practicing in a digital simulation. This allows the company to create a formative assessment

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solut ions deplo can b yed o e eas naw ily comm i d e ercia v a riety lly av such of ailab as Co l e r L n MS’s Peop erSto leSof ne, t and Saba

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Ÿ matrix that accurately reflects the learner’s level of knowledge, unlike traditional MCQ tests.

Meeting the Requirements Once the initial analysis is done, the Geeks then proceed to develop the solutions based on customer requirement. Their services include: Ÿ Game-Based Training and Learning: Indusgeeks provides customers and businesses with a broad portfolio of game-based and gamified training solutions. Their platform, INIT (Interactive, Narrative, Immersive Training), supports self-paced learning with the help of intelligent, interactive bots that engage with the user and provide an immersive experience. This results in a fun, engaging learning experience that intends to keep learners coming back for more. Indusgeeks’ immersive learning platform (INIT) supports both formative and summative assessment based on client requirements. These quantify the knowledge retention of the learners playing the game-based learning solution. Its solutions feature gamification and social layers (such as leader boards, badges, the ability to post top scores to Twitter and

Facebook among others) to improve user engagement.

Social learning features such as leader boards and badges also introduce the element of competition - one of the most important aspects of learning. The platform has the ability to collect and store vast amounts of analytical data that helps create a more personalized learning experience for the end user.

Ÿ Interactive eLearning Content: Indusgeeks provides simulationbased training solutions. It creates immersive, interactive and engaging solutions for a variety of training like leadership development, sales, soft skills, etc. These simulations span the gamut of the interactive spectrum from Level 3 & 4 highfidelity simulations to Level 1 & Level 2 simpler interactive elearning content.

Ÿ Virtual Reality/ Augmented Reality Training: With recent advances in the field of Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR) Indusgeeks recognized the potential of these technologies to transform training.

These solutions truly add a new level of immersion for learners, allowing them to interact with training content in a more realistic way than existing video-gaming technologies. These are supported by high-end devices such as the Oculus Rift and the HTC Vive, as well as budget VR solutions such as the Oculus Go and Google Cardboard.

Indusgeeks has the expertise to create any type of virtual reality or augmented reality solution for enterprise training, onboarding, and compliance.

Unique Propositions INIT – Indusgeeks’ fully customizable platform, Interactive Narrative Immersive Training (INIT) is unique because it offers all the benefits of a standard e-learning platform like recap assessments and analytics while also delivering high-fidelity, interactive, 3D content like a video game.

INIT XR - It allows Indusgeeks to easily port interactive content created on the platform for computers and mobile devices to virtual/augmented/mixed reality devices, future-proofing content for its clients.

A Struggling Vocational and HigherEd Sector The Ministry of Skill Development and

“The gamification

solutions have multiplatform support right out of the box and can be deployed on any device - mobile phones, computers and even VR and AR headsets

“

“ Entrepreneurship (MSDE)’s estimate for the number of people who needed skills training was 126.87 million people in 34 sectors across industries by 2022. However, the government lacks adequate resources at every level to meet these ambitious goals.

Our expertise in

Sharing its view on the current challenges that the Indian vocational training sector is facing, the company points out the problems as under: Ÿ Inadequate Vocational Training Infrastructure: India lacks the resources to create enough physical training centres to impart vocational training to its growing population of young adults and teenagers. Years of under-investment in education at all levels has resulted in a very low capacity generation.

This is unlikely to change any time soon. Ÿ Lack of Quality Professional Education: According to a post by firstpost.com, approximately 18.43 percent of engineering graduates are employable, which means 80 percent of them are unemployable. The situation is worse for plain graduates and that is where the real malaise lies. The system, however, is pressed by widespread quality challenges; the vast majority of graduates - as

makes us the right

delivering quality learning to enterprises, globally. But this platform will also cover the remotest corners of India and other emerging economies.

As part of its CSR, Indusgeeks offers free healthcare training courses to impoverished communities in Africa and India. It also works with corporate clients and utilizes their CSR budgets to deliver world-class training to underserved communities.

creating engaging

training content and

delivery frameworks

“

partner to train your

millennial workforce

Therefore, Indusgeeks’ mission is to address this gap in physical infrastructure and lack of standardized training by providing world-class vocational and professional development content using a fully digital delivery model that will scale to meet the educational challenges faced

by India’s youth.

Game On! The eLearning sector has opened up avenues that young entrepreneurs are eager to capitalize on. Advising them, Sid says, “It is important to be mission-driven and to challenge existing education hierarchies and institutions. Artificial intelligence, new hardware and broadband will change the learning and training landscape dramatically in the next couple of decades.” He opines that entrepreneurs should start investing in the future and not in the age-old mass education model whose time has passed.

Riding the Technology Wave Indusgeeks is building a future-ready platform that will combine Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning with interactive Virtual and Augmented Reality content. It is aimed at

Meanwhile, Indusgeeks plans to be the go-to platform for all vocational training worldwide. With low-cost, high-quality courses, available ondemand to anyone who needs to train to improve their employability.

many as 75% by some estimates are not considered employable.

Quick Facts Headquarter Segments Handled Prominent Industry Verticals

Most Prominent Clients

San Jose, CA E-learning, Game-Based Training, Virtual Reality / Augmented Reality based Banking, Financial Services, Insurance, IT/ITes, Energy, Manufacturing and Healthcare.

Microsoft, Infosys, Santander Bank, Stanford University

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ixamBee

Helping Learners to Ace Competitions

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April 2019 |

Interview with Insights Success

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xamBee is revolutionizing education on the digital platform. It offers authentic test questions easy learning material and engaging content using technology. Co-founded by Chandraprakash Joshi, Arunima Sinha and Sandeep Singh, it aims at equipping learners so that they ace competitive exams.

In the following interview, Chandraprakash Joshi divulges more details about the company, its working and goals.

1. Kindly brief us about your company and its initial journey. ixamBee, is an online learning place for competitive exams for jobs in banking, insurance, Centre and State government jobs and others. ixamBee uses technology to create exam specific content at low cost by connecting Subject Matter Experts. In less than 2 years more than 5 lakh students have registered at ixamBee and have solved 82 crore plus questions. ixamBee is the only place that provides all mock tests for free for more than 50 competitive exams. Thousands of students have appreciated the content quality of ixamBee and our success rate in recruitment exams like RBI, NABARD, SEBI, IBPS PO and IBPS SO (Specialised Officer) has been excellent in the first year of the launch of the learning course.

2. Brief us about the Founder/CEO and the motivation behind choosing E-learning platform?

I started my career working with the banking sector. I worked with the RBI for 6

| April 2019

years and then with Financial Inclusion division of YES Bank. I have lived in villages and during my work also I travelled to different parts of rural India and that is when I realised the gap in access to quality education. I observed that millions of small-town students are ready to pay for education but are not getting the quality education and online learning is the way to reach these youths scattered all over the places.

Arunima (one of the co-founders) quit her government job (She was Manager in SIDBI) to pursue her passion for education. She started Stratagem – a coaching institute for competitive exams. In the first year 5 students joined the coaching and all 5 got selected.

In 2016, I, Arunima and Sandeep met and started ixamBee, to make quality education available to millions of students. Sandeep has extensive experience of internet industry. The common passion for education and the willingness to do benefit the unemployed youth of the nation have made ixamBee a favourite among students very quickly. We three founders have our school education from small towns and bring complementary skills in education, online industry, entrepreneurship, and business development.

3. What are the key points that you consider while developing the Elearning content?

We strongly believe that content is the king. The uniqueness of our content is: · All learning material is crisp and relevant

· The content is updated regularly, which is a must for competitive exams · Subject Matter Specialists study the previous year exam pattern and prepare the test paper and learning material based on that and as per the notified syllabus 4. Brief us about the services that the company offers. ixamBee has two types of offerings for students: · Free Mock Tests – These are the simulations of the real exam, which students practice in the computerised environment. We provide Mock Tests for more than 50 exams and we provide these for FREE. Post attempting the tests, the users are provided with a detailed performance analysis which helps them in identifying weak areas.

Each question is provided with a detailed explanation. · Online Learning Courses – We have learning courses for Bank PO, IBPS PO, RBI, NABARD, SEBI, IBPS SO, LIC AAO, IBPS Clerk, RRB, and other exams. These courses are prepared by Subject

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Matter Specialists and consist of recorded videos, short notes, practice questions and live sessions for doubt clarification.

5. What are the challenges in the Education Sector in India?

The biggest challenge we see is that a large number of bright students, living in small towns and villages are not getting access to qualified and passionate educators. The most talented students do not become a teacher and especially the quality of teachers in small towns is very poor. We have a large young population- there are 30 crore students in India and in the absence of quality education we will lose the demographic dividend.

6. Please share the latest technology that the company is utilizing to offer better learning solutions. ixamBee is using low-cost technology for recording videos and making questions. We have partnered with Kidaptive, a Silicon Valley-based company that uses Artificial Intelligence for adaptive learning. Kidaptive is helping us in improving exam analysis and product customization as per the user requirement. Using technology, we connect Subject Matter Specialist with students from all parts of the country.

7. How does the firm intend to handle its Societal Responsibility? Please mention any special charity or program as such. ixamBee is the only website that provides all Mock Tests for FREE to all students. In addition to this, we provide career guidance, exam awareness and general awareness related material to all the users for free. Today more than 99.5% of our customers are free users, learning and improving their scores. In the coming years also less than 1% of our users are going to be paid users and the rest of students will continue to learn for free. In the paid courses also ixamBee offers scholarships to bright students.

8. What would be your advice for the budding start-ups and entrepreneurs in the industry?

One needs to focus on making content appropriate to the students’ requirement.

There is a large unmet need of student who are looking for exam specific content and get confused with the information overload on the internet.

9. Brief us about the company’s future perspectives. ixamBee will continue to provide the best quality content for more exams. There are more than 200 exams that we plan to cover through our Mock Tests and 2-3 crore students will get access to these tests for FREE to practice for the competitive exams. Using technology, we are going to improve the learning experience and also provide better customisation of the content.

Quick Facts Headquarter Segments Handled Prominent Industry Verticals

Most Prominent Clients Total Content Hours 18|

New Delhi Test Prep in Online Learning

Online Education, EdTech Graduates preparing for competitive exams for jobs About 1000 hours April 2019 |

Code & Pixels:

Transforming Learning through Technology

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stablished in 2012, Code & Pixels Interactive Technologies Pvt. Ltd. (C&P) is ranked in the top 3 e-learning companies in Hyderabad, India. It provides end-to-end e-learning solutions specializing in the innovative use of technology. The shift from classroom learning to e-learning is credited to the new technologies in digital education and smart electronic devices such as mobile phone, computer, tablet and others. With various feature-oriented applications, students now enjoy the freedom to learn at their own pace and understand the concepts as everything is just a click away.

An Experienced Initiator G. Gopi Krishna, Founder and CEO, C&P has an impressive two decades of experience in e-learning. He also heads the Technology, Sales and Marketing wings. He has executed more than 25000 hours of content and developed training software for various sectors including Defence, Insurance and Banking, Health and Pharmaceutical, K-12 and more. He has a strong command over various tools & technologies of e-learning domain and has designed, developed and executed hundreds of Content Development Life Cycles (CDLC) comprising of thousands of hours of Multimedia rich content for both Sharable Content Object Reference Model (SCORM) and Non-SCORM projects.

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Services One Can Count On! C&P’s major strength is the development of sophisticated and customized contents to industries in various verticals. It aims towards creating exciting and innovative elearning and IT products and services.

Its ability to handle unstructured situations with ease gives life to ideas and concepts that have seldom been implemented lately. It confidently manages large and complex projects without slipping on delivery deadlines while maintaining the highest standards of quality and efficiency.

There are 3 Technology divisions in the company-- Software Development wing, Content Engineering Wing and Research and Development Wing.

In 2014-15, the company designed, developed and launched its Smart Classroom Content under Brand Name Digital Teacher (DT) which is now being used by thousands of educational institutes across India. C&P is also serving universities, corporates like TATA, L&T and government organizations like Indian Railways, National Police Academy around India for Content development. It has been empanelled by UGC and Ministry of HRD and INFLIBNET Center to develop content for pan India universities.

Curating Creative Content C&P is a client-centric and processdriven organization which considers

‘content’ as the king. It emphasizes on understanding and analyzing the real needs of the client’s business and then provides cost-effective solutions in form of content. Its Software Development & Content Engineering Wing executes work orders/ Projects.

The Research & Development Wing provides the latest technology related support to the development team and researches on the latest tools, open source products and also prepares Quality Assurance Documents to support Quality Check.

While launching DT, it discussed with Principals and lab faculty across the country and realized that institutes want easy-to-use software so that students can learn on their own.

Keeping that in mind, it developed DT as a self-explanatory and easy-tonavigate interface which does not teach to assist or guide.

With Digital Education slowly becoming mandatory in schools, the need to create quality content becomes even more important. Digital teaching material supports self and self-paced learning in the students, increases the interest levels and the retention power of the students and C&P wants to contribute to it.

For A Tech-enabled Future C&P has developed a Mobile Learning App and also Moodle based Learning Management syAstem. It also develops April 2019 |

Custom eLearning courses in HTML -5 which is responsive and compatible with all Operating Systems and various browsers.

Augmented Reality, Virtual reality, Simulation-based Learning, Gamebased learning are being used in the education sector globally. In India, few schools are using these technologies but the cost is high and the syllabus is different. To bridge this gap, C&P has started Research and Development activities on AR/VR and intends to produce a low-cost solution. By the year-end, it will be ready with the technology.

“Our Aim is to make technology affordable so that every educational institute must be able to use it in teaching effectively”

Quick Facts Segments Handled Smart Classrooms, English Language Lab, Customized content development solutions

Headquarter

Hyderabad, India Prominent Industry Verticals

Education, Banking, Defense, Corporates

Most Prominent Clients

State Bank of India, Bank of India, Advanced system laboratories ( ASL), Bharat Electronics Limited, UGC, L & T, NTPC and more Total Content Hours 50,000 Hours

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About the Author Ramya Chatterjee, Director – Sales (Visualization & Entertainment), Barco India is an industry leader with over 16 years of experience. Ramya heads the company’s sales division in the South Asian market with a view to enhancing and streamlining its P&L functions and tapping India’s enormous business potential. In the course of his illustrious career, he gained hands-on experience across industries in Audio Visual (AV), Information & Communication Technology (ICT), IT hardware/software and Office Automation (OA) technologies. He is frequently invited to lecture at professional institutions to share his expertise in sales, marketing, and technology.

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Futuristic Education

Future of

Education Interactive and Collaborative Learning Environment

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earning spaces where students work together at large tables, connecting with both each other and the teacher. Multi-location learning where groups of students at different locations follow interactive courses. Or even a step further: virtual classrooms where each student can be in a different place and the educator in yet another.

Do these scenarios sound like scenes from a sci-fi movie?

In today’s world of technology… probably not.

The traditional way of teaching, featuring teachers/professors reading out loud a syllabus, is almost a thing of the past. The future of our education lies in Collaborative learning spaces, multi-location learning, adaptive learning systems and virtual classrooms. The main purpose is more dialogue & interaction between students and teachers. The role of real-life educators remains crucial, but he or she should embrace the latest educational technology.

Using a wide array of information exchange tools and a focus on connectivity and interactivity, the collaborative way of learning is designed with modern students in mind – students who have grown up with mobile technology and absorb information through them quickly. These students are entering a very different working world than their parents’, and new educational methods will prepare them for the digital age.

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Technology – a click away Today’s world is fast-paced, and innovative products seem to pop up every day. Education has also evolved rapidly in the past few years, and technology plays a large role in these changes. So much information comes at students from so many angles that identifying and absorbing the valuable parts of that information is more difficult than ever before. Technology has evolved, and so have the methods students use to learn. More people than ever are connecting to educators and taking classes remotely. While some of these solutions are fantastic and offer a great way for students to telecommute, there are others plagued with problems. Students and instructors shouldn’t have to squander their education time learning a new interface or device or troubleshooting issues.

Embracing BYOD and the New Classroom Collaborative learning solutions are for much more than providing a platform for sharing visual materials and making note-taking easier. With seamless BYOD support for a customized application, teachers are no longer limited to the traditional lecture-style classroom, and students have access to a more robust learning environment & information. Collaborative Learning integrates classroom displays and connected devices and embeds them in the network, so students can connect to classes from anywhere. This new type of learning experience offers students the ability to learn more comfortably and share their resources with peers.

Fostering collaborative efforts in the educational realm is indicative of the new workplace – more of today’s employees are choosing to work remotely and on-the-go, so having this experience earlier in the classroom makes adapting to modern work styles part of the educational process. Students learn their trades and hone their skills while adapting to new ways of sharing ideas and connecting with peers. Embracing BYOD means students can engage with their own devices and still collaborate and share content. When students use their own devices – devices which they are extremely familiar with – one step of difficulty is removed, and learning becomes seamless & effortless.

Augmented and virtual reality – Keeping up with the trends Virtual and augmented reality technology is making huge waves in the business, marketing, and entertainment industries, but these technological advances present huge opportunities in the world of education. Using advanced forms of visualization, educators can offer more robust, hands-on, practical skillbuilding activities. Students today will enter the workforce with far more hands-on experience than previous generations. But learning doesn’t have to be relegated to the classroom. With the proper security of content, education can meet the students where they are. The roadmap provides technology that enables both virtual and remote classrooms. Training simulations and working in 3D spaces for research and development are becoming increasingly common sights, and we geared the Collaborative Learning Platform for preparing today’s students to handle these tools in the working world.

In a nutshell, today’s technology-driven generation requires new ways of teaching: more interaction, participation and engagement instead of long monologues from teachers standing in front of the classrooms.

With advanced visualization technology, intuitive application platforms, BYOD functionality, and classroom collaboration solutions such as wePresent, ClickShare etc. are helping prepare a new generation for the digital age.

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PRAGATI LEADERSHIP Transforming Today’s Leaders For Tomorrow

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ince 1988, Pragati Leadership is focussed in developing future ready leaders who co-create profitable, sustainable and joyful businesses. Founded by Anu Wakhlu and Arun Wakhlu, the company has been chiseling leaders to develop holistic teams and companies. In the following Interview with Insights Success, Arun Wakhlu takes us on a journey into the world that has been building leaders.

1. Kindly brief us about your company and its initial journey.

Pragati Leadership supports organizations to build wholesome leaders who catalyze change across teams, businesses, society and the planet. For over 30 years we have worked with more than 860 organizations to transform 1,20,400 leaders and build sustainable businesses by combining result-oriented thinking with mindfulness.

Headquartered in Pune, we have operations in Pune, Mumbai, Chennai, Bengaluru, and Delhi-NCR. We have delivered value in over 29 countries around the world.

Our initial journey began in 1985 from a tiny flat in Pune. The Founders, Ms. Anu Wakhlu (MCC) and Arun Wakhlu (coauthor of the book ‘One Wholesome World’), set up Pragati Leadership in response to the question: “How can our organisations be more joyful and productive at the same time?” We found that people who followed their inner calling, had a

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April 2019 |

Interview with Insights Success higher purpose, and saw work as an opportunity to serve from one’s gifts were more joyful and productive.

Our belief is that people are at the heart of every organization. It is people who drive business forward by listening to customers, Innovating, building organizational strategy and driving operational efficiencies.

2. Brief us about the Founder/CEO and the motivation behind choosing E-learning platform?

Over the past 30 years of our existence, we have developed a whole body of experiences, knowledge, tools and insights that work to bring about transformation. We see a crying need for these tools and insights all over the world.

Using e-learning in a blended way is a low cost and effective way to share this knowledge globally and swiftly. We have also successfully developed ways to facilitate collaboration between leaders across geographies, thereby saving time and money.

The costs involved in e-learning are relatively lower than face to face

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learning. Also, the younger generations want smaller bite-sized learning inputs and experiences. Using a blended approach , with a focus on Action Learning and Business Impact serves us well.

3. What are the key points that you consider while developing the Elearning content? Ÿ Deep empathetic listening to the needs of customers, and what they consider of value; Ÿ Clear metrics of Business Impact agreed with the customer; Ÿ Being creative, and multi-modal is our design of the e-learning solution; Ÿ Designing a continuous journey with customer rather than a one of learning event; Ÿ Focusing on action learning on the job rather than just theory; Ÿ Keeping the content simple and visual; Ÿ Coaching and mentoring people on their journey; and Relying on the resourcefulness of the learner and Group Genius during the learning journey.

4. Brief us about the services that the company offers.

Pragati Leadership is India’s Pioneering organization in the space of Organizational Transformation and Leadership Development. We partner with the leading organizations across the globe to offer highly customized solutions for Collaboration, Executive Coaching, Capability building, and Integrated HR solutions.

We have a highly qualified team of Consultants, Facilitators, and Coaches with valuable hands-on corporate work experience to draw upon.

Our team includes several former CXOs and has conducted thousands of programs for a varied set of

organizations with many different challenges in the space of Leadership Development, Building Collaboration and Organizational Transformation.

5. What are the challenges in the Education Sector in India? Ÿ Being cut off from the reality of life in India as it is. Ÿ Focusing too much on theory rather than application Ÿ Not drawing upon student’s gifts and talents Ÿ Making education top down and control oriented. Ÿ Not teaching the fundamental learning skills like, creativity, design thinking etc. Ÿ Not being based on a holistic understanding of life Ÿ Not focusing on Character, Mindfulness, Compassion and Values.

6. Please share the latest technology that the company is utilizing to offer better learning solutions.

The company uses cutting edge Mobile based learning solutions to address the needs of a younger workforce. We also have partners in digital simulation and gamification to achieve a deeper learning experience. We bring engaging content, tailored solutions and technology together to produce effective and customized learning solutions.

7. How does the firm intend to handle its Societal Responsibility?

Please mention any special charity or program as such.

Pragati Leadership has NGO ‘Pragati Foundation’ (PF) as its CSR arm. We work on the empowerment of youth and women through the development of sustainable livelihood. Our larger vision is good work for all. Over 10,000 underprivileged persons have passed through the PF experience and have come out brimming with selfconfidence, joyfulness, empathy, peace and dignity.

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Arun Wakhlu Founder Director

We are also active partners of Charter for Compassion under which the initiatives of Poorna Pune (Compassionate Pune), Annadata Citizens Movement for Save Food and facilitating interaction between children in Indian and Pakistani schools are all part of our CSR work.

8.What would be your advice for the budding start-ups and entrepreneurs in the industry? Ÿ Constantly seek guidance from your deepest core of creativity and confidence in short and frequent moments of Silence. This will keep you anchored in an unshakable source of creativity and confidence; Ÿ Focus, Focus and Focus!! Keep your eyes focused on a few key objectives. Avoid distractions like Netflix, Facebook etc.; Ÿ Be focused on Joyful Action Now. Be quick and diligent in your action responses; Ÿ Keep learning and innovating all the time. Be a great observer and copycat; Ÿ Your business will only good as good as your relationships. Look after all your relationship including your family; and Ÿ Take great care of yourself, (physically, emotionally, spiritually)You are your most important customer!

9. Brief us about the company’s future perspectives Pragati Leadership is poised for accelerated growth in the future. It aims to strengthen its solutions by doing primary research, enhancing technology based solutions, and being closer to its customers. It also will produce customized video solutions for effective Learning-on-the-Go. We are also investigating how learning can be augmented using Artificial Intelligence (AI.). Digital assessments to help evaluate leadership performance would be one more growth driver. We will be Driving this strategy will be a robust Innovation Funnel where a pipeline of clear projects will be moved forward based on design thinking, frugal innovation, evaluation gates and deep investments in worthwhile projects.

We are confident that given our unique IPR, the creative use of Technology (especially Platforms) and Assessment Tools, we will be delivering huge value to many of our clients… new and existing ones.

Quick Facts Headquarter Segments Handled Prominent Industry Verticals

Most Prominent Clients Total Content Hours

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Pune Organizational Transformation | Leadership and Talent Development | Collaboration | Executive Coaching | Integrated HR solutions BFSI | Manufacturing | IT and ITES | FMCG | Start-Ups and NextGen Businesses | Others Mercedes | Tata | HDFC | Bank of America | BMC | Mastek | Others

Transformed 120,000+ leaders, through 5250+ programs

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E-LEARNING Trends that Will Dominate the Year 2019 T

he usage of E-learning began a couple of decades ago and presently it complements & supports Mobile Learning. As the word suggests E which can either be read as an Employee (in case of a corporate) or Empowerment (either for Self or for employee), the word takes on to the next paradigm of ENHANCING one’s own capability through the new buzz word of Digital. The intent of the organisation is to make employees learn through the Electronic tools which are readily available in the hands of the employee and can be easily digestible yet leave the taste of a high impact.

There has been a steady increase in the adoption of E-learning, Mobile learning for employee training in the last couple of years. In fact, it is becoming a significant part of an organisation’s training delivery today. It has also been able to leverage on the high impact learning formats that make the learning digestible with immersive approaches. E-learning is synonymous to online platforms like gamification, videos, interactive videos and mobile apps for learning to multiply its e-learning impacts. The reason e-learning for employee training is becoming a "must-have" approach from a "good-tohave" because of ease of accessibility in the hands of an employee at their convenience, ease of navigation, comprehensive information tabulated through links and linking to various modules which make collaborative learning a boon.

While the formal classroom training can always be a good approach to train the new recruits who just get inducted into the system as well as vintage staff for enhancing their cognitive & behavioural skills but as the organisations take on the bigger objectives wherein the employees also seek the growth path, enhancing their skills becomes imperative and hence the flexibility to learn with anytime, anywhere approach and be still on the go. E-learning breaks that barrier and leaves it with a permanent mark. Even during

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Trends to Watch

About the Author Anubha Maurya Walia, Founder Director of Prism World, Creator of PRISM™ Philosophy carries 18 + years of rich experience in L&D and Quality. She is training & consulting corporates & institution and delivers Change Management, Leadership & Followership, Team Building, Emotional Intelligence, TQM & Six Sigma programs. The first lady in India, actively engaged in research work on Followership and her work has been acknowledged by a host of industry publications. Recipient of Emerging HRD thinker award (Gold Medalist) consecutive 3 times has trained 40000+ professionals and consulted in TQM implementation and Change Engagement & Learning. In her leisure time, she enjoys travelling & reading, watches movies.

classroom training, session by prism philosophy ensures participants Bring their Own Device (BYOD) as it is popularly called and it’s just not another fad. On the trainee’ side too, BYOD is a win-win for both personal and professionally as they don’t have to manage separate devices.

Corporates should from their BYOD policy leading to: Cost Reduction: A BYOD policy allows organisations to drastically cut down on costs of both E-learning or mlearning. Trainees/employees can use their personal devices for professional work. The criticality and the success would be on the basis of the content that is comprehensible and yet user-friendly and easy to grasp. Important is Content that should be responsive and able to deliver similar learning experiences.

Productivity & Satisfaction: Technology familiarity is a prerequisite to harnessing the maximum potential of employees through e-learning or m-learning hence using own device leads to satisfaction and productivity.

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On-The-Go Access: In busy schedules, it’s difficult to take time out for a training programme. LMS that fits “their” schedule works best because it allows them to drive their learning decisions. Employers allow them to access the courses anytime, anywhere, any location and most importantly on-the-go (in any transport i.e bus, train, airport).

Since content is also available offline, this flexibility leads to greater learner engagement.

Collaboration: Because most of the employees’ devices today are high ended and have multiple applications which make it possible to assign for projects leading to a minimum of the turnaround time for the project.

Here are a set of best practices using prism (prepare, respect, implement, share and maintain) philosophy that you should incorporate in your organizational culture while adopting a BYOD policy: Prepare: The research says 85% of users access their LMS from a desktop, 76% from a laptop, and to our surprise, only

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9% from a smartphone. We’ve studied that employees prefer to learn from either a desktop or a laptop, but sometimes mobile learning is their only option. Make your employees prepare by involving them before the launch of BYOD to understand and willingness. It is important to be inclusive in your BYOD strategy. This will help to minimise resistance and gain support.

Nowadays Mobile learning / E-learning for employee training is being used to address varied corporate training needs that include: Induction and orientation, all kind of Soft skills & Professional training, Product & Sales training, including Compliance training.

Respect: Know their devices. This is simply to aid instructional designers and the technology guys to have a better understanding of the kinds of devices that they are going to be designing for. “Giving flexibility to learners” and “Making them productive” sound too clichéd unless concrete steps are taken to actually facilitate learning whenever employees want it. Hence we need to respect each other’s gadget and time leading to productivity and better learning.

Implement: As per “Towards Maturity’s InFocus Report: “Mobile Learning at Work”, 47% of organisations currently use mobile devices in their training programs with 67% of organisations now offering Mobile Learning. India is picking slowly towards mobile learning. The BYOD policy works best with a cloud. If an employee can’t go through an E-learning / M-learning module while travelling or at home, then it’s no fun. Hence, implement and enable locationbased learning.

Share: 68% of users while our research with corporates said they have adopted a blended learning approach to employee training. While using prism philosophy, we too ensure blended learning as same has been proven to improve learning performance, by increasing flexibility, and enables anytime anywhere learning to include face to face session which means Mobile learning / E-learning followed while employees are at home post classroom/face to face session.

It caters to different learning styles (visual, auditory, and written components) and simultaneously improving people performance. Having so many different learning components helps keep learners on their toes, and highly engaged.

Maintain: Put a security system in place as employees’ use personal devices which are vulnerable to spyware. Enable security by using BI (business intelligence) for monitoring and detection of devices. You can also implement enterprise mobility management to prevent unauthorised access, file sharing needs to be secured, and loss prevention technologies to track sensitive data. With security infrastructure, the management role is key to sensitise employees to BYOD policy guidelines. Look and demand cooperation in complying with rules and everyday handling of data on personal handsets.

Organisation presently focusses on emerging technologies for transforming the Corporate Learning landscape. But, the most powerful element is not the tech itself, but knowledge of training subject, with attitudes of the users and the learners. We hope the use of a prism philosophy (prepare, respect, implement, share and maintain) will bring insight towards BYOD and should foresee the future. Mobile or e-learning LMS helps in providing a continuous learning experience. It provides the required training programs or courses offline with face to face session or classroom session and allowing learners to download content in their respective devices. An important feature is they can be accessed content/material offline. With high mobile penetration, where 300 million are connected to the Internet in India, Learning through a M or E-Learning LMS can truly become the ‘learning’ way of life. With a new-age learners i.e millennials, technology-driven learning is already taking giant strides that will bring a qualitative and quantitative difference in corporate training.

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“Designmate envisions empowering the Global K12 education market

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-Captain Kamaljeet Singh Brar Founder &CMD

Designmate Empowering education with Virtual reality

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ducation technology and ICT based learning has revolutionized the way students learn nowadays. Designmate (I) Pvt. Ltd., creates Virtual reality content of Science and Mathematics for K12 education. Designmate has carved a niche in the eLearning industry by creating world class educational content using different education technology like Virtual reality, Augmented reality, 3D Ebooks and 3D animations. From being the developers of Ipad app of the year ‘Froggipedia’, to having a global presence in more than 30 countries, Designmate has marked 30 glorious years in changing the way people learn.

A Humanitarian Founder Designmate was Founded by Captain Kamaljeet Singh Brar and the company is based out of Ahmedabad.

He served the Indian Army and later in the year 1988, established a design studio which dealt with animation, entertainment and advertisement. He

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then shifted base to Ahmedabad with the studio and thus began the journey of Designmate.

Creating it differently A strong workforce of 400 employees makes Designmate one of the world’s biggest and oldest organizations developing 3D educational content.

But what makes this workforce truly applaud worthy is the fact that a staggering seventy per cent of its employees are differently-abled. Capt.

Brar had met a young hearing-impaired man in Mumbai who was inspired, zealous and passionate to learn computers and work in his company and from there the vision to empower these people began. This humanistic policy now serves as a USP for Designmate.

EUREKA For Every Learner Designmate’s eLearning software is called EUREKA and comprises 4700+ topics of Math and Science topics in 3D animated video version. The software caters to various National as

well as international curriculum.

Eureka has its global footprint by over thirty countries in the world and over fifteen thousand schools.

The Offerings Eureka.in acts as a visual teachinglearning resource both for a teacher as well a student. Under the flagship product Eureka, Designmate has developed the following products: Virtual Reality (VR) Virtual reality is being used in classrooms to enhance student learning and engagement. VR has transformed the way educational content is delivered; it works on the premise of creating a virtual world — real or imagined — and allows users to interact with it. VR engages the learner better and makes learning more dynamic. That allows great degree of the freedom to the learner while interacting with the content that ultimately leads to the student centric learning. Designmate holds a library of 1400+ VR topics of Science and Math.

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Augmented Reality (AR) Designmate has created an AR app for book where conceptual images can be mapped with the interactive models/activity and videos.

The app initializes the augmentation when the image in the book is scanned by the camera of the device. The 3D model gets augmented on top of the textbook where the user can interact and have real time experience.

Mono ‘Eureka.in Mono’ caters topics under the K12 curriculum of Science and Mathematics across the globe. Each topic comes with a set of multiple learning resources as one single package. These resources consist of 3D animated videos, 3D simulations, 3D interactive, quiz, images, text, weblinks, glossary and key-terms etc.

There is also a series of lab experiments which can be performed in real time virtual labs. These meaningful interactions lead to a comprehensive grip of the topic.

3D Stereo ‘Eureka.in 3D Stereo’ explains several topics using 3DS animated video, simulation and are interactive. These high resolutions stereoscopic

animations create an immersive effect and keep students engaged and focused. While playing simulations students explore complex structures in 3D which adds an element of excitement to learning. They can rotate the models 360 degrees as well as zoom in and zoom out at will. Thus the learning is acquired through action.

Apps ‘Eureka.in apps’ offer an exciting and engaging platform to students for understanding complex concepts of Science and Mathematics on their hand-held devices like smartphones and tablets. These are available on ‘App store’, ‘Google Play’ and ‘Windows store’.

a combination of usability and personalized learning experience anytime, anywhere. It includes features like Dashboard, Analytics, Content list, Mind-map, Playlist and many more. The software’s singular emphasis is on expansive learning by incorporating features like consistent and proven evaluation methods, documentation of performance, learner-centric programs and adaptive content besides a plethora of exciting activities.

Classroom Management System ‘Eureka.in CMS’ software offers multiple ways for a teacher to bridge the gap between the computer screen and those of the students while integrating relevant technology into everyday instruction. It helps them grasp concepts more quickly and retain them better over time. This unique software allows teachers to multitask and interact with them screen-to-screen as a group or one-on-one. It helps teachers to supervise students’ activity in real time, providing individual help as and when required.

Learning Management System ‘Eureka.in LMS’ software is an integrated learning platform that offers

Quick Facts Headquarter Segments Handled Prominent Industry Verticals Total Content Hours | April 2019

Ahmedabad K12 Education – Science and Mathematics Education/Schools/Students/CSR 300 hours |35

E-Learning Trends

2019

in

The Pathway to Future

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ith the advancement in technology, traditional learning methodologies have taken a back seat as tech-driven innovative learning platforms are transforming the canvas of learning. The advent of the E-Learning system or the LMS (Learning Management Systems) as it’s often called as, has opened a plethora of diverse opportunities. Today this segment is reckoned as a matured industry.

E-learning is one of the best examples as to how technology is bridging the geographical and cultural diversities across the globe. Tools such as webinars, video & audio sessions, slideshows, chat and more have given the learners a chance to evenly balance their daily life as per the availability and convenience.

One of the most important reasons for the success of e-learning modules is the fact that data is updated every moment and hence you are always at par with study materials and information. Standing tall against the traditional thought of learning, e-learning is also favored as it is much faster, agile, cheaper, and offers unlimited information for the learners.

While software like Flash and MS PowerPoint offer slick presentations, word processing packages and HTML editors help to design engaging web pages, without much complexity. CMS (Content Management Services) is another platform that is highly used to course the contents, results, and database. With each passing year, as upcoming trends and practices pave in and outcast previous innovations, this sector is set on the right trajectory of growth. Trends like Micro-learning, blended learning, social and collaborative learning are the talk of the town and have grabbed the attention in recent times.

Let’s dive in deep waters and explore how various technologies are steering the growth path that ultimately is helping to create new avenues at the global platform.

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April 2019 |

Writer’s Column

Virtual Reality / AI: If it's about technology, VR has emerged as one of the core components that have outshined other elements. Combining the social aspects of traditional classrooms with the digital world, c o u n t l e s s o rg a n i z a t i o n s a re embracing popular virtual training coaches like chatbots and avatars along with virtual platforms. While Chatbots can assist in providing information regarding the new courses on the anvil based on the requirement posted by a user, AI offers automated answers, quiz results, and much more!

Big Data: As the global community continues to embrace digital learning, a huge amount of data is generated that carries the potential to analyze the learning patterns, behaviors, and requirements of the learners. Learning analytical tools are generating customized data that are further used in realtime; also the concept of personalized learning gets hold of more ground by the help of big data.

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Mobile & App learning: The internet has placed the world in our palms! With smart devices and phones, anyone is able to access training modules, contents, webinar, video sessions and much more. Also, mobile applications related to the learning domain are becoming a huge success as it gives you the liberty to access and learn from the comforts of your home. Also, parents have the 'super-power' to control the access along with monitoring the performance of their children through the learning apps.

Flat Contents are a thing of past: T h e advent of visually-rich and engaging training contents has been appreciated at all levels and are the next best tool for training purposes. VILT (Virtual Instructor-Led Training) has taken over the ILT concept and viewing plain documents, pdf, or even slides have become outdated.

Video-based learning: For generation Nxt, video-based learning is one of the easiest and preferred modes of learning. Over the last few years, there has been an exponential rise in educational videos as it is cost-effective, has a target-based audience, and the potential to reach out to any remote corner of the world. The use of advanced training technologies and tools are assisting organizations to design cost-effective training programs t h a t h a v e a l a r g e r re a c h a s compared to the setup of traditional coaching camps.

With all these solutions enabling a customer-centric platform that offers an innovative way of learning, E-learning is definitely emerged as the most operative way of learning and providing quality education.

-Devasish Kanojiya Writer

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ENGGENIOUS Well Crafted Learning Solutions

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nggenious is tech-enabled learning solutions arm of SAN Techno Mentors Pvt Ltd.

turnkey projects in electronics, IoT & data connectivity, security systems and power electronics domains.

Founded in 2006, SAN Techno Mentors Pvt. Ltd. (STMPL) has been providing conventional classroom training and mentoring to the engineering and manufacturing companies. Its years of association with large Indian and foreign corporates have rendered it ably equipped with the know-how of designing learning solutions for manufacturing professionals. These professionals range from fresh graduate engineering trainees to senior, mid or senior engineers, managers and leaders.

STMPL’s team comprises of over sixty ex-IITs, ex-COEP, ex-IISc subject matter experts each with average 30 plus years of experience in industry & academia, digital media, instructional designing and development.

A part of SAN Group, STMPL was founded and is managed by a group of IIT & COEP alumnus with long years of professional experience in diverse industry verticals. SAN Group, established in 1990, has 6 companies in product design, manufacturing &

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Specific Solutions for Manufacturing Enggenious designs and delivers high quality technology-enabled learning solutions for engineering and manufacturing domains. Enggenious creates meaningfully engaging and lasting learning experiences which are beyond books and theories. It makes interactive, engaging and highly effective eLearning & blended learning courses.

Domain Expert Founders Sudhir Panditrao, Director and CEO of SAN Techno Mentors has always been a passionate trainer with an

industry & academia experience of over 32 years. COEP alumni, he brings in a vast experience and technocommercial acumen.

Mangesh Wagh, Co-founder of Enggenious business unit, comes from digital technology and media profession with experience of over 16 years. Digital technologies as content development and delivery platforms and digital media expertise – that’s what Mangesh brings in.

Engaging Content ELearning, the need of the hour, has several generic benefits like: Ÿ Significantly low logistical overheads and hence the lower costs, Ÿ A better speed of training initiatives, Ÿ Ease of tracking Ÿ Self-paced and available 24x7 And more One of the major turn-ons for Enggenious to explore the eLearning sector has been creative visualization aspect. The core eLearning quality comes from there, is what they think.

For the learner to gain complete clarity on technological/ technical concepts or aspects, content needs to be built with excellent creative visualization. And while developing these crafted contents, some of the key points the team considers are: Ÿ Learner centricity April 2019 |

Sudhir Panditrao

Co-founder

Director & CEO

Ÿ Business goals of the learners’ organization Ÿ Outcome orientation and clarity of learning objective Ÿ Attention span possibilities Ÿ Joy of learning Ÿ Knowledge retention

company opines, is the gap between industry requirement and the education being imparted.

The contents have been designed using internationally renowned content development models.

Extensive Services Enggenious’ services mainly include training, mentoring and consultancy.

Complex technical subjects are dealt with blended learning. It designs a mix of learning methods based on user requirement. Its services include: Ÿ Off-the-shelf eLearning courses – online subscription or package buying Ÿ Custom developed eLearning and microlearning courses Ÿ Innovative blended learning courses; pre-packaged and custom Ÿ LMS based competency assessment solutions; pre-packaged and custom These effective services are backed by the latest technology. To make its solutions better and more focused, STMPL uses technology in many ways: Ÿ Remote triggered labs for blended delivery courses Ÿ Gamification, platforms for Gamification Ÿ Well-equipped LMS platforms Ÿ Advanced authoring tools for rapid content development Ÿ Building virtual reality (VR) capabilities Bridging a Wide Gap The biggest challenge right now, the | April 2019

The major difference is that the academics is more oriented towards theory and academic concepts. The industry is more focused on application of the theory and has to abide by international standards & codes, safety and reliability, and industry practices.

This is where the gap is.

The industry has always been vocal about the gap between their expectations and knowledge & skills which fresh graduates or postgraduates possess. In academics and industry, the major challenges are employability of students and then the deployability of the hired workforce. In the modern industrial era, the need for multi-skilling is also prominent. The industry is investing heavily into employability, deployability and multiskilling of people. Returns on those investments continue to be a point of concern.

A Message for the Neophytes The founders have a crisp and clear message to share with the budding entrepreneurs. They say, “If you are sure that your start-up idea is about creating value, pursue that. Don’t get distracted for small revenue gains by defocusing your large value creation goals.”

‘After going through our courses when the learner says, ‘never thought it was that easy’… that’s the kick we live for

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Mangesh Wagh

partner but a learning culture partner for manufacturing companies, individual professionals and even for the students preparing themselves for a profession in the engineering fields. It will impact top lines, bottom lines of the companies with well researched and awesomely built learning offering.

One obvious feature would be the use of the latest technology and tools to enhance learners’ experience and retention of knowledge. Continuous innovations on fronts of instructional design, delivery, assessments and other aspects of learning – that’s assured.

The company is set to keep creating and maximizing the joy of learning.

Foraying into Future For Enggenious, the journey has only begun. It is looking forward to creating an unseen value proposition for engineering and manufacturing domains. Not just learning solutions

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Ravi Panchanadan CEO & MD, MaGE

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Manipal ProLearn helps individuals and corporates upskill in emerging future skills in soughtafter domains

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anipal ProLearn is a part of Manipal Global Education Services (MaGE) which is a part of the Manipal Education and Medical Group. With a rich legacy in the educational sphere, Manipal ProLearn offers a wide variety of professional learning programs that have been offering desired learning outcomes to its learners. The everincreasing discussions on unemployability, the inability of formal education structure to service the quality and quantity demands of education in the country, industry’s constant push for skilling / upskilling prompted the organization to consider

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M A N I PA L PROLEARN

Leading Professional Learning Company developing a business that will address the above needs.

The Foundation Formed in 2014, Manipal ProLearn started as an organization offering online learning programs, the most popular one being the Digital Marketing Program. It developed and partnered with industry to offer professional learning programs in the space of Digital Marketing, Finance, Project Management, Technology, etc.

Through the amalgamation of multiple businesses within Manipal Global, the integrated Manipal ProLearn acquired the ability to offer high-end technology and management programs across the enterprise and consumer businesses.

Manipal ProLearn today has over 30 large enterprise customers in addition to its consumer learning business.

A Renowned Leader MaGE is currently headed by Ravi Panchanadan, the CEO and MD. His role includes managing all business units and enabling functions at MaGE. With years of experience, he brings in a thorough understanding of best practices and latest technology trends.

This helps the Group to expand the existing businesses and develop new engines of growth in the national and international markets.

Developing Quality Content Manipal ProLearn keeps special focus on the following while developing the e-content for learners: Ÿ The programs should focus on skill development Ÿ Skills identified must be sought-after in the industry Ÿ Programs are relevant for entrylevel, mid-career professionals as well as the Leadership Ÿ These requirements are addressed for individuals wanting to upskill themselves or organizations that feel that its employees need upskilling Ÿ Programs have to be delivered online or face to face to manage scale and quality The design of Manipal ProLearn courses includes short term skill building programs as well as long term university award programs in future skills. Many of these programs also result in our learners getting jobs or career growth at the end of it.

Manipal ProLearn’s offerings address the learning needs of individuals and enterprises. It covers area like Information Technology, Data Science, Digital Marketing, Finance, Management and Leadership. It also addresses the spread of employee lifecycle from entry-level to mid-level to leadership. These services are April 2019 |

offered online, in blended mode or in the classroom at its Academy or in client locations.

Education and Challenges Indian Education sector grapples with the following challenges:

Ÿ Ability to manage scale – the traditional brick and mortar education system will not be able to cater to the quantity needs of Indian learners. Ÿ Relevance – the academic system is not able to cater to the dynamics of the industry. Many courses offered in the education system focus on knowledge and not on skills. In addition to this, they trail the industry in the relevance of courses offered.

To tackle these challenges it is imperative that new ideas be brought on board through new companies and start-ups. Sharing its views on the

same, the company believes, “It is important for start-ups and entrepreneurs to stay committed to solving industry and societal problems through their ventures. There are many of these that can impact society positively. Education is one such area where there is a genuine problem impacting the lives of individuals in particular and society in general.”

Leading with Technology Most of the courses offered by Manipal ProLearn include the use of a robust Learning Management System (LMS) that can be accessed on

computers/laptops or mobiles. This makes learning convenient for learners while increasing its effectiveness. This technology-based LMS is designed to improve the learning experience as well as prompt for improved learning outcomes and course competition rates.

The technology platform allows learners to learn through simulations, gamification, peer and social learning.

The platform also allows synchronous as well as asynchronous online instructor-led learning. There are discussion boards that allow for greater engagement among learners as well as learner and instructor.

Quick Facts Headquarter

Segments Handled Prominent Industry Verticals Most Prominent Clients

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Bangalore Education, Human Capital Management Education, Human Resources Dell EMC, IBM, Aditya Birla Group, Atos India, Capgemini, Visteon, ANZ, Fractal Analytics, GE Healthcare, Toyota Kirloskar Motor, and many more

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E-LEARNING Learning Without Limitations

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earning is an essential part of every living being’s life. For humans, it becomes all the more important. Learning helps us grow, socialise, take up a job, earn, and survive. Those who are unable to go through this process of learning are often at a disadvantage which can range from social issues to financial problems and others. While there are many reasons for this lack of learning, one of them, which is often misunderstood is Learning Disability.

Understanding Learning Disability Health, as per the World Health Organisation, is ‘a state of physical, mental and social well-being’. A lag in any one aspect is hence considered unhealthy. Learning Disability is one such health issue for starters. Often neglected, or denied its presence, this issue is now a major focal point for educational institutions and social equality advocates alike.

Learning Disability, in general, is a term that describes specific kinds of learning issues or problems. It can cause a person to have problems in learning and using certain skills. The skills which are most often affected are: · · · · · ·

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Reading Speaking Writing Reasoning Listening Mathematics

April 2019 |

Learning Mode The degree of learning disability varies from one person to another. While some people suffer from one disability, few others still suffer from multiple disabilities.

While the above are the skills that are hampered due to a learning disability, disability of the physical or mental kind can also contribute to a person’s learning disability. Such disabilities are: · Visual disabilities · hearing impairments · Physical disabilities · Speech disabilities · Cognitive and neurological disabilities · Multiple disabilities · Aging-related conditions and · Mental disability These disabilities of a varying degree hamper a person’s prospects to learn in different ways.

The Current Problem The problem with the current learning system is that it considers everyone the same. It doesn’t take into account the choices, conditions, situations and preferences of individuals. No matter who one is, what one does, what background one has, what issues one has to deal with, learning centres operate in a similar and set way. It doesn’t, in general, provide with a flexible approach. So an autistic child is treated and has to learn in the same way that a non-autistic child would study. And if one does need special attention, the only option is a special school catering to similar children. While this makes them learned, it also, at the same time instils every idea of them being different and special. So they grow up with a feeling that they are different from others, need special care, and often find themselves at a receiving end. Social equality goes for a toss here.

E-Learning- Lending a Supporting Hand E-Learning is helping break many barriers in learning for the disabled. Education has had a makeover with e-learning.

Technology has made learning more varied and palatable for everyone. ELearning is now becoming a preferred mode of learning and education for its following properties: Breaking Time Barrier – E-Learning lets students learn at own pace. Moreover, they can start and enjoy the process anytime they wish. So a student with ADHD who finds it hard to concentrate for a 45-minute classroom session can easily break up an e-learning session at own attention span.

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Breaking Distance and Space Barrier – There are no set structures where one must visit for access to learning material or educators. The content is spread all over the world when it comes to e-learning. This, at the same time, is accessible to everyone, everywhere.

Breaking Analog and Digital Barrier – Digital content is far more interesting and appealing than old school texts. A learner can learn a topic using a video which is supported by suitable audio, animation, text, images and some interactive elements. It becomes so easy to put a video on repeat than to ask a teacher to stall and start over just for one student.

Breaking Stereotypes -- One size fits all is the biggest stereotype in education. One course design or method of teaching is not suitable for everyone and the world now agrees to it. E-learning content can be easily modified and personalized to suit the needs of special students.

Solutions for Everyone Technology is helping e-learning to overcome different types of disabilities in different ways. Such individual advancements or a combination of few is making people with different disabilities find their own way to learn. Some of the major advantage points are: For Visual disabilities – Great Audio, Braille keyboards, voice-to-text software are few ways in which e-learning is making them overcome the visual challenges.

Hearing impairments -- Video lectures are available with sub-titles and interactive elements let them raise question and learn more beneficially.

Physical disabilities – Physical or mobility impaired students find it easier to learn from their own home or any other comfortable place of their choice. Live streaming of lectures, multiple classes at the same time are just a few advantages for them.

Cognitive and neurological disabilities – Such students gain an advantage using e-learning technology such as touch screens, trackers that track the head and eye movement of students to understand what they are reading and other augmentative and alternative communication methods.

E-Learning and its assistive technologies are helping bridge the learning gap. Disability of any kind shouldn’t serve as a reason for a person to not learn. Technology is for humankind and for its development. The need of the hour is to adapt the eLearning technologies and that too wisely. What is aimed at bridging the divide shouldn’t work to dilate it. The focus should be on equal opportunity to learn, which is every individual's right.

-Sneha Sinha

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April 2019 |

Memcorp Immer Play, Learn,

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April 2019 |

rsive sive Repeat

Interview with Insights Success

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n a quest to make learning interactive, immersive and lasting, Memcorp Immersive has been turning textual and lacklustre training content into interesting games.

Gamifying training, they believe, engages and enthralls participants and they come out of the sessions absorbing more than they can think of.

In the following Interview with Insights Success, Shashwat Dhuliya, Creative Designer at Memcorp takes us on a journey into the world that is making training sessions interesting, immersive and something to look forward to.

1. Kindly brief us about your company and its initial journey.

In our crusade of building learning interventions that create the change we’ve tried just about everything. From running classroom training session using PPTs to making learning more experiential where people learn by doing. But in the process, we realized that the learning wasn’t creating a lasting change within the people. And after asking a few simple but right questions, we learned that our predicament was not because the learning programs didn’t have the right content. Our predicament was a result of the learning not being authentic. It wasn’t inside-out. So we had to create learning which would be authentic. “But how?” we asked ourselves and our clients.

Fortunately, we have a great support system because of which we found our answer in Immersive Learning. After years of hustling, we created a real life-like environment (taking into consideration all aspects of life), put people in it and allow them to make choices based on their understanding of the situation. And then create a safe place for them to discuss the reasoning behind their actions. This way the learning is owned by the learners and thus applicable.

2. Brief us about the Founder/CEO and the motivation behind choosing E-learning platform?

Mohsin Memon is the CEO of Memcorp Immersive who works with a group of passionate people that build games for learning. Mohsin is not originally from the learning industry, he switched careers 8 years ago from IT where he was a Project Manager at a Fortune 500 company. In the past 5 years he has extensively used games to impact lives. He believes people learn best when they play and he dreams of a world in which student go to school not to study or learn but to play; a world where learning happens as a by-product of experience.

When he’s not working, you can find Mohsin either playing board games, video games, trekking, surfing or doing his favourite thing of all- snowboarding in the Himalayan Mountains. Mohsin has been recognized as one of the few young minds that have been able to merge the world of games with learning. He’s been invited to speak at NASSCOM, spoken at 5 TEDx events.

3. What are the key points that you consider while developing the E-learning content?

Our games don’t provide content. Instead it’s a platform where people can consume their own content while playing the game. The principle of game theory, gamification and instructional design makes the consumption of the content more effective which leads to higher retention and engagement rate. Games when linked with content are a powerful motivator for the content's consumption. In the future, we plan to build premade content which people can consume at own pace.

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4. Brief us about the services that the company offers.

In order to talk about services that we render today it is important to understand the services we delivered in the past that brought us where we are today. About 7 years ago we began our services journey with doing run-of the mill training programs such as decision making, problem solving and communication trainings.

Over the years we have recognized that the belief of Memcorp Immersive is to make it fun, make it engaging, make it a game! When we conducted these programs, we found our advantage in delivering the programs in a really fun and engaging way so we chose to do away with PPT’s. Our programs were off the cuff using a lot of human interaction activities and a lot of involvement from the participants and getting them to participate in the entire learning process. We took up a project with one our clients because there was a gap in the communication between the sales team and the managers. This whole ecosystem was simulated in a 3 hour process throwing in new and different challenges in each iteration. We wanted to do something different than a regular classroom training, something more engaging and exciting and most importantly fun for everyone because this was the very first game we ever built.

In 2015 we had a keystone opportunity with another client and the management of the team needed a game to develop awareness of collaboration amongst one another. Our services today span from dealing with Vuca, Strategic thinking, Strategic Execution, Project Management, Communication and Collaboration. The most unique thing about what we do in our services is not the topic of the service but the methodology and the way in which we deliver the service and the way we do that is through games. Imagine playing a game and by virtue of playing this game you learn important business and leadership skills that have an impact of how you deal with situations in the real world. We try to achieve our services by doing something unique, different, and meaningful for the participants and the users who experience our games.

5. What are the challenges in the Education Sector in India?

20 years from now, anything that’s being taught in schools will be irrelevant. It’s important to understand that needs are changing with time. What was important

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10 years ago may not be relevant anymore. The gap between education and industry requirement is growing which is leading to disguised unemployment due to lack of skills. Less emphasis on skills like personality, innovation or creativity is a big problem.

Since a child’s value is determined by his/her results and degrees, character building gets lost in the process.

Parents and teachers fail to realize that the upcoming job requires strong soft skills along with innovation and creativity. The quality of teachers is a major issue.

Schools need teachers who not only teach but inspire students to learn and bring out the creativity in them.

This problem is further fuelled by parents who just want their kids to have a secure and safe job. Lack of technology and poor infrastructures are one of the biggest challenges that schools face in India. The education system needs to open to change.

6. Please share the latest technology that the company is utilizing to offer better learning solutions.

There are a number of technologies that we use. We started off using virtual reality, along the way we realized that we needed something that blended virtual, augmented and physical reality. Our games have been developed using react, ruby on rails and node.js. From the front-end standpoint, we use ember j.s but are soon migrating to technologies that are more robust and versatile in nature as the use of mobile is increasing and we recognize that we need technologies that are more universal in terms of where they can be applied and used. We have created a semi-virtual reality experience focusing more on human interaction during gameplay because we didn't want to lose sight of the human element. Today we use technology to enable that classroom learning experience on a mobile device but it all started with doing traditional training programs in a unique and fun way.

7. How does the firm intend to handle its Societal Responsibility? Please mention any special charity or program as such.

We have been empowering change in the educational system by turning the process of learning important skills into a game. Until now we have conducted various gamification sessions in universities and schools to bring awareness about the new learning techniques. Our CEO has given several TEDx talks in universities which talks about how gaming can be the

April 2019 |

next big shift in the education system. Besides our motto, we love seeing people smile and putting forward a helping hand wherever we can. Instead of celebrating each other’s birthday, this year all the members have mutually decided to provide food for the needy instead of gifting each other on their birthdays.

8. What would be your advice for the budding startups and entrepreneurs in the industry?

Entrepreneurship is challenging. Most people want to follow the trend of entrepreneurship, only a few believe in their idea. So before you take the path, make sure if it's what you want to do. The learning industry has picked up pace and it’s not long before it gets concentrated. The only way to stay on top is innovation. No company can keep doing great work if they stop innovating new techniques. It's important to understand the trend and keep up with it. Some of the techniques that will thrive in the coming years: Micro-learning: The attention span of people has drastically reduced over the years. Micro learning solves this problem by delivering content when it’s required in small bite size learning.

Immersive Learning: As compared to the traditional format of learning where you download information, immersive learning is about experience. As opposed to directive learning, immersive learning is about facilitative learning. It's an environment where people

have realizations and these lead to real change in behavior and habit. Everything that you go through is immersive learning. It’s when you detach these experiences from learning, it becomes superficial.

Gamification: It is going to be most accepted change in the learning industry. The game element engages learners, something that most learning programs fail in today's world. As compared to other modes of learning games result in highest recalling value. So games when linked with content become powerful motivator for the content's consumption.

9. Brief us about the company’s future perspectives.

We need to constantly learn in order to deal with the rapidly changing work landscape. The current learning tools are not engaging enough and don’t hold the attention span of busy professionals. We want to make trainings fun and engaging while adding value to it. We have been into servicing clients using the games we had designed. Going forward we plan to make the tools available for trainers and facilitators to gamify their learning interventions. Memcorp also has plans to build a market place to host plethora of games for various competencies and also develop content for the training fraternity so people can plug and play these games to build more engagement and counter the requirement of learning stickiness required by the corporates.

Quick Facts Headquarter Segments Handled

Prominent Industry Verticals

Most Prominent Clients

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Mumbai, India eLearning Services & Training Services.

Learning Industry; Ed-Tech Industry Reliance, Air Asia, Motorola, Dell, Flipkart, L&T, Crisil.

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VIRTUAL CLASSROOM E-learning trends that will dominate the year 2019

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April 2019 |

Virtual Learning

Ashwini Purohit, a tech-enthusiastic person currently working in ed-tech Industry is the CoFounder of Winuall. It is a growing online platform that helps institutions and people preparing for examinations. He graduated from VIT Vellore and has been awarded Special Achievers award twice.

Passionate about developer communities, he has lead communities like Developer Circles from Facebook, Google Developer Groups, Docker Community.

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virtual classroom is essentially teaching without the teacher, an interaction between student and the teacher, via means of online technology interfaces such as massive open online courses in the form of online video broadcasting, notes, lectures, examinations etc., but virtual classrooms also pose various difficulties to their students. This little snippet written below tries to discuss the various limitations of these classrooms along with their impact on the students learning process and their development in real life. Virtual classrooms, although they may sound modern and revolutionary, still pose students with many problems in the process of learning or attending. Some of these problems are no face to face interaction, availability of resources or rather a lack of resources, authenticity of course and certificate malpractices, time limits etc. Students taking part in virtual classroom may not actually be gaining any knowledge, especially high school or college students who do these courses for extra marks and don’t actually pay attention. More over with lack of resources practical knowledge is not achievable. This article aims to bring out all the disadvantages and problems that students face while engaging in a virtual classroom so that it could help other students willing to take such course a prior general idea about them.

A virtual classroom in an e-learning platform is an educating and learning condition where members can collaborate, convey, see and talk about introductions, and draw in with learning assets while working in gatherings, all in a webbased setting. A virtual classroom is likewise now known as a virtual learning environment. A classroom or class does not generally require a functioning educator to manage understudies; in this setting, they can continue at their very own pace. | April 2019

There are diverse kinds of virtual classrooms, one sort is the unsupervised virtual classroom where there are instant learning materials that the understudy can pursue with the assistance of a mentor. This makes YouTube the most broadly utilized virtual classroom. Another sort of the virtual classroom is the mentor driven classroom. This affirms to a progressively customary classroom definition, where the exercise is completed continuously at a particular time and date. Here understudies and coaches can communicate and effectively take part.

There are a few points of interest to a virtual class: 1. Students are not constrained to the courses accessible in their geography.

2. Learning is increasingly intelligent as its inclination powers the understudy’ s consideration.

3.Access to coursework from anyplace whenever one requires.

4. Immediate criticism on tests.

5. While expanding your insight and aptitudes in your general vicinity of study, you’ll additionally be sharpening your advanced abilities on the most complex internet learning innovation.

Maybe a couple of its drawbacks are: 1. In the instance of directed classes, the date and time might be an issue to a few understudies.

2. It is constrained by the mechanical limit of the understudy; those with slower equipment or Internet speeds are off guard.

Virtual classrooms stand ready to change the manner in which people and instructive establishments go about

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substance conveyance. With the supported intrigue shown by tech designers and partners alike, it is not long from now that virtual classrooms would be the standard for overall substance conveyance.

Getting deeper in to the topic, Virtual classroom has various definitions with its learning techniques continuously implementing new methods to provide hassle free education. While several University professors may approve of this method as beneficial for its students to expand their knowledge on their own, it is also opposed by many.

A professor from University of Sharjah, in 2015, states that online education had helped in bringing knowledge to people’s door stop, as for many that education may not be available in their native place. In modern age students prefer learning through digital media. But the technology used must be well maintained and managed as it is very important to provide good education and also that people take it seriously.

Meanwhile Debra Sharon of University of the West Indies had two views on this matter. One was as a graduate assistant where she found that students under her who took online courses seemed to be overloaded from work. Due to this they become uninterested to learn anything new and read only materials require to get minimum marks and qualify. Many times, the instructor creating the platform couldn’t utilize it to the fullest making these courses difficult to gain knowledge from.

The other one was as a graduate level student where she had most of the course online oriented which was a much better method of engaging and felt that she learned much more from the course, and finally concluded that it depends on the course instructor to determine the course’s working.

In this manner several professors from across the globe had both positive and negative views on the digitized method of learning about how it was either easy to access and available at doorstep or just a method of making money with no actual guarantee of students increase in knowledge.

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April 2019 |

Prime Meridian Consulting We Build Leaders Everywhere

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An Esteemed Leader Colonel (Veteran) Pavan Bakshi is the CEO, Chief Facilitator and Executive Coach at Prime Meridian Consulting. He has an experience of 34 years and wide expertise in the domain of leadership transformation. A certified facilitator from the Army War College and Military College of Telecom Engineering, he has been a trainer at the prestigious Indian Military Academy, Dehradun. An alumnus of Defence Services Staff College, he has been involved in handling various national level crisis interventions, during his 22 years long career with the Indian Army. In corporate life, he has worked in both Indian and multinational organizations at distinct leadership positions. He has been instrumental in the areas of business growth, managing transition, merger and acquisitions and in establishing and managing new business streams. Pavan

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Pavan Bakshi CEO, Chief Facilitator & Executive Coach

“If there is Flow in your business,

employees perform at their peak

and work becomes a source of enjoyment and personal growth

“

rime Meridian Consulting India Private Limited is a company with a firm belief in “building leaders everywhere”. It helps people to perform at worldclass levels and at every level in an organisation. It is an end-to-end leadership development and human transformation consulting services company that provides coaching, training and consulting interventions to corporate bodies and academic institutions. Its facilitators have delivered programs to the workforce of many large and medium corporations like Capgemini, IBM, JP Morgan, PwC, Saint Gobain, Jubilant Life Sciences, Royal Enfield, Aditya Birla Group, Akzo Nobel, Advisory Board, British Gas, Broadcom, and Sri Lanka Telecom among many other companies.

Its programs provide a right blend of theory and practice, stemming from the ideology of building on practical skills with a solid foundation of theory. These programs help to harness the latent talent within the organization to meet the organizational goals. The company works in partnership with many leading Motivational Leaders and International Research-based Organizations. All these are aimed at honing the leadership skills and building leaders that inspire.

specialises in conducting leadership transformation initiatives within organisations, in the field of performance, growth, leadership, transition and change management. His coaching experience (1000+ hours) spans from coaching senior executives in leadership positions in multinational companies to large Indian corporate organisations.

Let Leadership FLOW Flow Promoting Leadership (FPL) is an award-winning online Leadership Development Simulation, promoted in India by Prime Meridian. It is an online Leadership Simulation, Assessment and Blended Learning program.

FLIGBY (FLOW is Good Business For You) is the official Flow-program for decision-makers by Professor Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and ALEAS Simulations. FLIGBY’s leadership development program combines a video-game learning experience with sophisticated, benchmark-based competence assessment.

Professor Csikszentmihalyi is regarded as one of the greatest psychologists of this age. He earned his fame by defining and providing a detailed description of the Flow April 2019 |

previous GM. The leader is assessed on the following skills: Ÿ Leading Change Ÿ Leading People Ÿ Result Driven Ÿ Business Acumen Ÿ Building Collations

state. He has been seeking the answer to the great question of our everyday life: finding happiness.

“Work can be one of the most joyful, most fulfilling aspects of life. Whether it will be or not depends on the actions we actually collectively take”, says the Professor.

FLIGBY aims to successfully apply this concept to the organizations.

The Leadership Game FLIGBY’s leadership development program combines video-game learning experience with sophisticated, benchmark-based competence assessment.

“FLIGBY” simulation informs and gives examples to managers/leaders how effectively to create an environment in which Flow can flourish. The purpose of this simulation is to teach the application of Flowbased leadership skills. The user or player, in this case, a leader, is measured for his/her 29 leadership skills. In the simulation, they are the GM of legacy business and must take everyday decisions to turn the business profitable and a great place to work for.

A player will identify leadership skills that are critical for helping to generate and maintain FLOW within organizations. The challenge is to achieve a state of harmony and cooperation in a team significantly weakened by internal conflicts due to the dysfunctional leadership style of a

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Ÿ Ÿ

Ÿ Ÿ Ÿ

By using a blended learning approach participant achieve the following learning objectives: Understanding Flow principles and the added value of Flow in business and corporate environment; Creating a blueprint for Flow in good business through the application of an inspiring vision, mission statement and attractive goals that are good both materially and spiritually; Understanding and learning visionary leader characteristics; Active participation in the Flowbased change management processes; Using leadership techniques to enhance Flow (successful management styles and techniques).

The Partnership Prime Meridian has exclusively partnered with and brought FPL to India. “FLOW is Good Business™” (FLIGBY®) Leadership Development Simulation won the Gold Medal of the “International Serious Play Awards” in the category of Corporate Games in August 2012 in Seattle.

provision of expertise, credibility, and trust. Leadership in this newer world means confident, value-based decisionmaking and acceptance of its consequences. The Flow process identifies the factors crucial to the operation of a successful but sustainable business: trust. It is committed to fostering the personal growth of employees, and the dedication to creating a product/service that helps mankind.

Prime Meridian is here to provide the Power of Flow in India. A Flow-based organization promotes employee engagement and positive attitudes in the workplace. The most important distinguishing trait of visionary leaders is that they believe in a goal that benefits not only themselves but others as well. Though FLIGBY’s intricately designed simulation game and workshops, leaders today are realizing the ultimate goal of a human being: Happiness.

Innovative use of E-learning in Blended Workshops In its workshop, Prime Meridian Consulting uses the blended learning approach. The pre and post workshop e-leaning has the following modular components: Ÿ Easy access to review the learnings of the workshop through video’s and slides & pre-recorded and live webinars Ÿ Apply and documenting on-the job application of the learnings through a mobile app. Ÿ Measure growth and change in graphical formats.

Evolving Leadership through FLOW Prime Meridian believes that leadership today is more than running a large organization.

In the new-age complex network society, leadership requires the April 2019 |

Miracle Corporate Delivering Solutions for Digital Agility 58|

April 2019 |

Interview with Insights Success

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ith a vision to help customers achieve their business objectives by providing innovative, best-in-class consulting, IT solutions and services, Miracle Corporate Solutions Pvt. Ltd. has been defining new modes of knowledge sharing. Its core areas of focus include security systems, client server technology, web based applications and biometric solutions.

In the following Interview with Insights Success, Anupam Srivastav, Founder, shares how Miracle has been creating a pool of experts and skilled resources in the field of IT and cutting edge technologies.

1. Kindly brief us about your company and its initial journey.

We started as a Technology Training company since 2005 and quickly grew one of the biggest training company, trained more than 40k F2F trainings.

Soon we realized, that we need to consolidate and adopted Technology to impart trainings. We became backend partners to Educomp in online LMS solution and to enable the backend technology used by Educomp.

Miracle is connecting more than 200+corporates in corporate training domain.

We decided to establish MVARSITY – A University to Provide Quality Education to every child in India and across Globe. This marks our movement towards the beginning of new Journey.

2. Brief us about the Founder/CEO and the motivation behind choosing E-learning platform?

Anupam an IIM Calcutta Alumni great motivator and full of ideas beyond imagination, providing Thought Leadership at Board Level and setting Strategies and Direction.He is apt in Envisioning Opportunities and convert successfully into business through swift and analytical decision making. He has Keen eye for innovations in Technology. He is visionary for StartUp Incubation, Entrepreneurship Development, Strategic Consulting, New Technology Evaluation for commercial viability.

3. What are the key points that you consider while developing the E-learning content?

Technology is a Great Enabler and has vast outreach while cconducting a needs analysis, more in-depth data collection methods. The results of this analysis intend to bring intelligence in your plan for design and what you hope to get your learners to achieve using | April 2019

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Artificial intelligence with computer vision and machine learning.

We intend to bring Intelligence to education, by incorporating Artificial Intelligence into training programmes.

4. Brief us about the services that the company offers.

Key services we offer is of course the MVARSITY – a. 360* platform for any business vertical to Improve employee performance (Education, Healthcare, BSFI) b. Interactive content with SCROM package on latest technology (Cyber Security, AI). c. Smart Workforce Performance solutions based on Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, computer vision, blockchain and IoT. d. Besides we do have presence into Ecommerce and ERP solutions as well.

5. What are the challenges in the Education Sector in India?

The perception issue and credibility of online courses Remain the biggest challenge for these platforms Without using proctoring, intelligence interaction and Tracking techniques.

The challenge we see is either Quality Education Pricy And beyond reach of everyone. Besides, the

Headquarter Segments Handled

Prominent Industry Verticals

Most Prominent Clients

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Schooling system don’t focus on imparting knowledge that would prepare the kids for future.

6. Please share the latest technology that the company is utilizing to offer better learning solutions.

Our Learning Intelligence solutions utilise Artificial Intelligence, smart learning algorithms, Computer Vision, IOT and Machine Learning, so that the learn and adopt to needs and help us build better.

7. How does the firm intend to handle its Societal Responsibility? Please mention any special charity or program as such.

Deliver several free workshops and lectures on latest technology to engineering colleges, supporting learning server UP police for learning in cyber security.

8. What would be your advice for the budding start-ups and entrepreneurs in the industry?

Creative thinking and out of the box approach can do Miracle in this industry.

9. Brief us about the company’s future perspectives.

Rolling out the most intelligence platform using lot of latest technology, so every stake holder of the industry will get the quality, authenticity and valuable output.

Miracle, C-59, Sec 2, Noida Software Development, Resourcing, eLearning, Products

E Learning, Development , Resourcing, Consulting IBIBO, Emerson, Compunnel, NIIT, WHO, KADDB, L&T

April 2019 |

& in India The Opportunity & the Challenges

About the Author Himanshu Jain is the Founder and CEO of Acro Engineering Company (AEC), which is the leading distributor of high-performance hardware in India.

Recognised as a major specialised player in the gaming industry, AEC has been one of the ďŹ rst companies to bring high-performance computing to India. Jain has been fascinated, since childhood, with any form of technology and the innovation behind it.

He chose this passion and eventually converted it into a full-edged business with a team of over 200 people in a very short span of time.

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Virtual Gaming

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t’s no secret that healthy competition breeds champions.

After all, as Ovid put it so aptly: ‘a horse never runs so fast as when he has other horses to catch up and outpace.’ What competition also does is breed grounds for engagement, entertainment, and thereby potentially large business opportunities. The expansive growth of the gaming industry is one exemplary example of this, amidst many others.

Growing up, gaming on a computer was a captivating introduction in the world of what was soon to become digital entertainment. For instance, everyone remembers the first version of DOS snake, which Nokia popularised much later, and very successfully, as a mobile playable game. We have all had some experience with the early generations of Atari and SEGA consoles, that introduced the first games where two or more people can compete against each other.(I have fond memories of competing against my sister on my Atari, and it has stuck with me since.)

The evolution of technology has seen an unbelievable makeover in the gaming industry - incredibly realistic graphics and visuals, ergonomic gaming chairs that one can sit for hours in, and immense hardware - all for an immersive experience, but the core principle still remains. Many may oversimplify it as a pastime where you just play to reach a pre-defined goal.

But in reality, it’s very different to many people. In a single screen a player can explore worlds that are only limited to the developer’s imagination.

Players can compete against multiple opponents from across the globe.

The eSports industry is projected to have made nearly 900 Million Dollars in the year 2018. Most of this revenue is generated through digital goods such as special player skins, collectable items, and some performance upgrades.

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Many economists had predicted the rise of eSports, but they had not anticipated the sheer momentum this industry would gather with its fan base which is growing at an astounding rate.

Many traditional and seasoned entrepreneurs have taken notice of this industry and are asking the same question.

What is eSports?

ESports is derived from the amalgamation of the words ‘Electronic Sports’. This involves two or more people competing in teams or individually using multi-player video games. There is a mesmerising variety of games, however the most popular kinds involve multiple players, and are thus known as MMO or Massively Multiplayer Online games. These titles include Dota 2, Overwatch, CounterStrike and many more.

The classification of eSports games into different categories gets more intricate: there are distinctions in gameplay that results in players requiring competitors to specialise in different skill sets in order to compete.

FPS (First Person Shooter) RTS (Real Time Strategy) MOBA (Multiplayer Online Battle Arena) or Battle Royal.

This diversification has enabled game publishers to create and captivate audiences, and has set the stage for the biggest competitive events that the world has ever seen: the championship finals for Dota 2, last year, for instance, had attained more that 15 million viewers; which is more than any sports event has ever seen.

It’s not just the viewership that brings in these astounding numbers. The prize pool for the afore-mentioned tournament was over 35 million USD; a sum that’s never been offered at any other sports competition in the world.

In 2010, the same tournament extended

a prize pool of just 1 million USD - a clear example of the leaps and bounds by which this industry is growing, thanks to its overwhelming support audience.

The eSports industry has also created unique employment opportunities for millions of people in the creative, event and entertainment segment.

What is the challenge?

In the competitive realm, players require hardware that allows them to run games seamlessly at the highest performance output settings.

However, given the degree of technological finesse involved, highperformance hardware come priced at steep rates, and is not easy to acquire by competitors in time.

The industry thereby loses out on much higher participation and audiences who want to play, but have to draw a line at the pricing of the systems.

Unfortunately, there are also some infamous stereotypes that surround the players and the industry, such as obsessive hours of playing, and antisocial behaviour.

The Opportunity.

The challenge of highly-priced gaming hardware has unearthed a unique opportunity for entrepreneurship: India is starting to see a surge in the number of gaming cafes in IT cities, a mega business opportunity, given its ability to entertain audiences at the fraction of the cost.

Gamers spend just Rs 300-500 per day to play at gaming cafes instead of having to shell out 100K for a gaming computer. In turn, gaming cafés are able to attain a return on their investment as early as 18 months of operations.

April 2019 |

SQUAD Making India Industry Ready

Q#2. Brief us about the Founder/CEO and the motivation behind choosing Elearning platform?

Founders of SQUAD are four different thinkers of four different specialization.

Rohit Sharma:- A common person just with huge dreams, a learner, experimentalist and a risk driven person.

Bhupinder Kumar:- A well organized and time dedicated personality with enormous knowledge in software testing field with multiple international certifications.

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QUAD Infotech Pvt. Ltd. (‘SQUAD’) is Mumbai’s first dedicated Professional Training Center for Software Testing. It was founded with a mission to provide highly skilled and trained Software Professionals to IT companies.

In the following Interview with Insights Success, Maneesh Jha, Director shares how the team is fine tuning the learners as per the professional needs.

Ritupanna Mohan:- An exceptionally knowledgeable person in the field of software development / networking with great sense of dedication and an army in himself.

Maneesh Jha: – A world in himself, great leader / motivator and positive person with deadline meeting attitude.

E-learning simply stands for online learning. Today the world is integrating with the technology as it has the solution to almost every problem.

Q#1. Kindly brief us about your company and its initial journey.

SQUAD Infotech is a training and placement company. It was incorporated with a dream to make training easier and approachable while taking care of career of students.

Founders of SQUAD are in education field varying from min 15 years to 30+ years of experience. It was impossible but we achieved it, as a company starting with nothing but achieved target of approx 8 corer (a year) in a predominating big brand world with almost a negligible investment of Rs. 1 lac.

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Ritupanna Mohan April 2019 |

Interview with Insights Success Following are certain points that highlight the motivational factors for SQUAD.

Ÿ Judicious utilization of technology for the betterment of Indian society. Ÿ Digital India campaign triggered the SQUAD Infotech to integrate technology in educational field. Ÿ E-learning platform can act as a good interconnect between students and teacher, thus taking a care of best teaching faculty’s availability to each and every student, independent on where (s) he reside. Ÿ Success stories of many online platforms instigated to come up with new innovative ways to have a better teacher-student connect. Ÿ Learning gap between rural and urban areas due to unavailability of good teaching resources motivated squad to go online in order to cater their needs. Ÿ It is predicted that online education system in India will grow by 52% which influenced us to be a part of dynamicity.

Q#3. What are the key points that you consider while developing the E-learning content?

Following are key points from the student’s perspective which are necessary to keep in mind while developing the E- learning content

Rohit Sharma

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Ÿ Quality: – SQUAD has ensured that quality of the content will never be compromised while developing the content. Ÿ Personal attention: – SQUAD takes the care of each and every student’s need by allowing them to ask doubts through doubt on chat module. Ÿ Optimal length of single lecture:- Over here every chapter is divided into different types and duration of each video has been kept as small as it can be in order to retain the concentration of students towards learning Ÿ Making students super-ordinate:- SQUAD takes the care of this particular aspect where student can come up with any doubt without revealing his identity to others.

This will boost the confidence of students where no doubts will remain unsolved Ÿ Flexibility:- A dedicated all round video lectures provided by SQUAD will give the flexibility to study according to student’s availability Q#4. Brief us about the services that the company offers.

SQUAD Infotech acts as an intermediary platform between candidates and corporate world to better connect them according to their respective demands. So, following are the services that we offer in order to support the above mentioned cause.

Maneesh Jha

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Ÿ Training in Software Testing, Java, .NET, Python, PHP, Digital Marketing & Spoken English Ÿ Campus Recruitment Training (CRT) program Ÿ Placement on IT Job Profiles through SmartHunt4u.com Ÿ Global Certification Preparation and Exams, such as ISTQB and Oracle.

Q#5. What are the challenges in the Education Sector in India?

Following are certain challenges in Indian education sector Unavailability of good teaching faculty

Ÿ Syllabus of Indian education system is not updated on time. Ÿ Diversity in syllabus, teaching quality across different educational institute. Ÿ There is a huge educational gap between urban and rural areas due to indifferent attitude of educational institutes towards rural areas where 70 % of population resides. Ÿ High fees often act as a barrier for those living under poverty thus leaving many of them out of educational zone.

Ÿ No proper exposure to innovative ideas leading to brain drain

education material designed by high quality faculties at minimal coast

Ÿ Inadequate budgetary support from government.

Scholarship programs:- Our Scholarship programs will create an opportunity to avail best of knowledge at free of cost

Q#6. Please share the latest technology that the company is utilizing to offer better learning solutions.

We are using web based open source technologies to offer online contents.

SQUAD Infotech believes in basic and advance technology learning methodology. We use LMS (Learning Management System), learning portal like SQUADonline and training delivery through goto-meeting.

Segments Handled

Prominent Industry Verticals

Most Prominent Clients

Total Content Hours

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Q#8. What would be your advice for the budding start-ups and entrepreneurs in the industry?

Following are certain points which I would like to suggest

Q#7. How does the firm intend to handle its Societal Responsibility?

Please mention any special charity or program as such.

Ÿ Focus, Will, Determination & Ability to take Decision

For the growth of any business Passion to build a better society act as fuel.

Ÿ Never forget WHY?

The main aim of the Squad is to be a reason for the success of Indian youths and to be a part of inclusive development. Following are key points that highlights our attitude towards Societal Responsibility Quality:- Squad ensures that each and every student gets good quality of

Quick Facts Headquarter

Awareness program:- Colleges and underdeveloped districts would be selected to create awareness among youths about importance of education.

Nerul, Navi Mumbai

Training and Placement

Education & Recruitment

Ÿ Prepare for the best but be ready for the worst.

Ÿ Long term planning followed by short terms targets to achieve the final goal. Ÿ Not to be afraid in odd situations, Finance is just one figure, be proactive, team is best asset, who sees the same what you see.

Q#9. Brief us about the company’s future perspectives.

SQUAD Infotech has carried vision to build-up strong technology leadership training delivery in different part of country and outside country. SQUAD Infotech has taken multi-project to start E-SQUAD across country with online learning model to penetrate in tier 2 cities to minimize training cost with world class training quality. Being NSDC partner we have taken our placement number very strong.

Mastek, Capgemini, Quality Kiosk & AQM 100-300 hrs April 2019 |

Manirangan Co-founder & Director

Madhusudhan Reddy Co-founder & Director

Keshavan Belagod Co-founder & Director

SWIFT SOLUTION Learning Made Measurable and Meaningful W

hat happens when friends meet a powerful personality, get influenced and decide to brainstorm? Ideas fly, entrepreneurial skills kick-in, night outs are spent discussing a business plan, opportunity and the market potential, competitive scenario, financial projections and details of the management of the company, and more.

But entrepreneurship doesn’t come easy. Some succeed the first time but for some, it’s a work in progress and a continuous journey with shifting goal post of excellence.

From Friends to Partners Swift Solution Pvt. Ltd. started as a culmination point of all the discussions into the start of the entrepreneurial journey on which the founders Keshavan Belagod, Madhusudhan Reddy and Manirangan embarked.

This was the year 2001-2003 during the dot-com bust which saw them

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caught in a wrong time but they were bubbling, enthusiastic and willing to crash land. The first few years were very tough and saw a few core members switching back to their comfort zone. The rest of them faced the hurdles and growth challenges together encouraged by the spirit of adventure and chasing a dream of being recognized.

Today, Swift Solution stands tall in the industry and is considered a pioneer. It was way ahead of its time in bringing the cutting-edge eLearning solutions and products, thus carving its niche in the sunrise sector of technology. After more than a decade in business, the founders see a robust need for the elearning services in India, especially in multilingual format.

Learning Solutions Swift has always been a focused eLearning content development company investing its time and resources to better its content development strategies. It offers

customized content development services across various domains and verticals. It also offers immersive and interacting VR and AR content with AI capabilities. Apart from its business abroad, it has always focused on Indian customer who is price and value conscious.

Creating a Difference The company believes that personalisation is the key and that the content delivered should meet the organisation goal and the individual goal of continuous value addition for efficient performance on the job.

Dealing with people with a range of emotions and motivation, the key points it considers while developing content are: Ÿ The content must be built with the context in mind. It should tightly align with the learning objective of the target segment. Ÿ It should be short, interesting nuggets with precisely targeting learner’s need. Ÿ It should relieve the learner from the April 2019 |

bombardment and make the learning experience immersive, motivating, compelling and one of great satisfaction. Ÿ It should be integrated with targeted assessment strategies.

Finally, what also matters is the way content is delivered, assessed and analyzed. . The customised learning Eco space tools like LMS, Microlearning platform, Knowledge sharing platforms, etc. should be judiciously implemented for Just in time, compulsory, continuous and need based learning.

Implementing Technology In an endeavor to remain relevant in the e-learning industry, use of technology is inevitable. Swift Solution, to do the same: Ÿ Has started using a lot of AR/VR technologies using AI capabilities to make learning more immersive and impactful; Ÿ Is using platforms like ‘WhatsApp’ as a component for continuous learning; Ÿ The popular offering includes Microlearning, especially with interactive videos;

“We have seen the

evolution of eLearning markets from a Nascent CDROM based delivery to the cutting edge AR/VR and AI-

“

Ÿ drudgery of information

based learning content and platforms

Ÿ Developing open source applications for effective mobile learning; Ÿ Using the latest eLearning publishing tools to create interactive content.

Advising the Startups The founders feel that the current vibrant start-up culture is a boon to India’s emerging economy. Their advice is, “There is no better time to start -up, if you have a disruptive idea or something which makes life easier for people, then trust your instincts and jump -in. Do not procrastinate as your ideas will have an expiry and will only remain in your mind.” Having a great

team with diverse and complementary skills, an exit strategy if things don’t work out and using the money wisely should be the priority.

It also mentors’ individuals in their startup journey especially in the domain of training and development.

To create a positive impact on society through work, it also supports free of cost to several NGOs, one of them is the Mysore Spastic society.

Planning Ahead Swift is investing in research and development of aligning the low-cost delivery channels in AR/VR for affordable learning. A ready-to-use content of soft skills and compliance training is on the anvil in multilanguage formats so that the client can adapt instantly with a little customization to suit their needs.

Integration of Data Analytics into need-based learning and performance linked learning is going on. Overall, it is investing its minds and people to better its customer experiences with the latest technologies and be future ready.

Quick Facts Headquarter Segments Handled

Bengaluru, India •eLearning services •Training services •Video production •VR and AR services

Prominent Industry Verticals Automobile, Banking and Financial Services, Education, IT, FMCG and more

Most Prominent Clients Total Content Hours | April 2019

ABB, Swiggy, Standard chartered, Ashok Leyland, ITC, Reliance Digital and more Over 5000 |71