India's 10 Best EdTech Companies to Watch, 2021

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AUGUST ISSUE-01 SPECIAL PROFILE

EDWISELY

Empowering Education with AI

NEW PATHWAYS

Career in Digital Marketing

1

India's

BEST

dTech Companies to watch, 2021

SPECIAL PROFILE

ENGGENIOUS

Bring in the Digital Autodidacts

THE NEXT DIMENSION

AR and VR in the Education Sector

EDITOR’S NOTE

EDTECH SECTOR - A FLOURISHING MARKET IN INDIA

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ith the seismic rate at which the country’s EdTech sector has been growing for the past few years, it is evident that there will be no looking back. And if the experts are to be believed, the next decade is expected to see the industry reach $30 billion, a whopping rise from the current $800 million.

Private equity investments are majorly instrumental for the industry’s giant strides in comparatively less time. Global EdTech leaders have made a strong presence in the country. Healthy growth has also encouraged the emergence of many start-ups that are competing to be the best. Most importantly, the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 will add to the colossal growth in EdTech.

Easy access to gadgets like computers, Tabs, smartphones, and Apps that facilitate live interactive classes has also helped the industry’s growth. Internet penetration throughout the country made EdTech easily accessible to all for less cost. The K-12 market is the most promising one in the current situation and will continue to be so.

Test preparation and online certification are the other major markets.

The ongoing global pandemic saw educational institutions adopt online learning faster than one could imagine in India.

Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning in EdTech are expected to grow by nearly 50% by the end of this year.

Automation of basic activities by AI and ML has enhanced user experience.

The industry was already on a healthy growth path before Covid-19. It got a massive boost after the pandemic broke out, and many private players, including global ones, pitched in to invest, there have been acquisitions and upgradation in the service. The companies provide apps and services for students of all age groups, which are easy to use. A majority of school and college students have shifted to online classes.

With a number of EdTech companies mushrooming, it has also become confusing for educationists and parents to choose the best. To make things easy for you, we have featured some of the best EdTech companies in our latest edition of The Knowledge Review, India’s 10 Best EdTech Companies to Watch, 2021. These companies have traveled that extra mile to transform education through technology and give a fulfilling experience to both educators and learners.

As you flip through the pages of this interesting edition, please do read the CXO standpoint and the articles curated by our in-house editorial team.

Happy reading!

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The demand for online education has also seen EdTech companies go on a hiring spree. This is the right time for a career in this industry.

Sumita Sarkar sumita@theknowledgereview.com

Cont Articles

18 THE NEXT DIMENSION AR and VR in the Education Sector

26 NEW PATHWAYS Career in Digital Marketing

nts 08 EDWISELY

Special Profiles

14 ENGGENIOUS Bring in the Digital Autodidacts

Empowering Education with AI

CXO

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30

LEARNAPP

Pune Tithe Kay Une

Directing the EdTech Revolution

PUNE

The Oxford of the East

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1 Name of the Institution

AskIITians

Careers360

DLP Education

Edwisely

Embibe

Enggenious

GlobalGyan

LearnApp

Leverage Edu

Schoology

India's BEST

dTech

Companies to watch, 2021

URL

Brief

askiitians.com

AskIITians has brought a ne range of preparatory online courses for JEE & NEET, where each course caters to different study requirements of students.

careers360.com

Careers360 eases biggest doubts of students with personalized video counselling from its curated experts and and answers from the student community.

dlpindia.com

With years of experience in the education domain, strong team, and a diversied business portfolio, DLP Education is one of the very few protable ventures in the country.

edwisely.com

Founded by IIT Madras and Delft University of Technology (Netherlands) alumni, Edwisely is India’s rst AI-driven personalized hybrid learning platform that connects both curriculum and career.

embibe.com

Embibe is focused on the vision to deliver holistic learning solutions to students regardless of their level of ability, exposure and access.

enggenious.com

Enggenious enables the journey of students as career aspirants to industry leaders, through eLearning, conventional, and blended learning ways.

globalgyan.in

GlobalGyan academy provides practical and ready-to-use management learning from industry leaders by using appropriate blend of digital, classroom and application projects to ensure that learning is continuous, practical, and interactive.

learnapp.com

With the objective of redening and reimagining education for the 21st century, LearnApp is an online video education platform that brings the best minds in the eld of trading, investing and business management to teach from a relevant, skill-driven curriculum.

leverageedu.com

Leverage Edu helps students gure what they should do and where they should be at wherever that be in the world - to realise their full potential.

schoology.com

Schoology has every tool your classroom needs and comes pre-integrated with more than 200+ tools, student information systems (SIS), and education platforms.

Empowering Education with AI

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hese are exciting times in the landscape of education. Where once the time-honoured tradition used to be sitting in a classroom or a lecture-venue, the concept of classrooms has now been thrown wide open in a way that has never been seen before. Once again, man ventures into the unknown with this revolution that the education sector is experiencing right now, and we will see the fruits of it in the coming years.

In the global education landscape, the growth of AI is expected to rise to $6 billion by 2024 with China and US leading the charge. Most recently, AI has started to appear in many colleges and universities to drive enrolment or to streamline operations, among other things.

One such area where we can anticipate the rise of AI and machine learning to demonstrate their enormous influence is on personalized learning. A steadfast company which is leading the charge to bring about the educational revolution through AI is Edwisely.

Aspire to Make a Difference Founded by IIT Madras and Delft University of Technology (Netherlands) alumni, Edwisely is India's first AI-driven personalized hybrid learning platform that connects both curriculum and career.

Recognized among the Top 10 Emerging EdTech start-ups in 2021, the company has completed 3 years of deep research on Indian higher education to understand the fundamental and practical issues that need to be addressed, with the valuable advice from various eminent educationalists. Edwisely has forged a community partnership with NASSCOM. It has been identified as a high potential startup among Higher Education SAAS

companies and is now part of Amazon’s AWS EdStart Program.

Edwisely technology for higher education institutions harnesses artificial intelligence to help teachers create a personalized learning experience for their students and significantly improve their learning outcomes. The analytics engine continuously captures data from learning, behavioural, and assessment cycles to provide custom learning paths and prescriptive actions. Edwisely's knowledge graph and cloud-based architecture allow it to handle large datasets and scale across different disciplines.

“In the current pace of technology evolution, India needs a new generation of quality institutions and educators to nurture and build productive and creative individuals,” stated Mr. Harsha Kankanala, the Co-Founder of Edwisely. “The current education system runs on a onesize-fits-all model. Obsession for marks and constant comparisons have broken the self-confidence of students.

The system is more driven by examination, rather than educating the individual to become a productive citizen.

Institutions that are the temple of learning, are unable to provide quality education. With rapid changing requirements from the industry and the limitation of subject matter expertise, it has become a challenge to adapt to the changes,” he added.

Edwisely's Mission is – To make every Indian graduate employable by harnessing AI for personalized learning.

The EdTech Harbinger Harsha Vardhan Reddy Kankanala (Harsha) is an engineer turned Edupreneur and Co-Founder at Edwisely. Working on a vision to personalize education, Harsha helps learners

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achieve their goals in a faster and an efficient way.

Coming from a family of teachers, he has closely seen the changing trends of teaching and learning, both from a faculty and a student perspective. His passion for education has triggered him to start Edwisely. He strongly believes in the fact that understanding the student needs, capabilities and personalizing their learning experience can bring a real change in Education. With this vision, he has been researching ways to improve education by using technologies like AI. He has done a detailed study on various pedagogies, global curriculum frameworks, and adaptive methodologies in higher education.

The Path Although, the company had a long and arduous journey of 4 years since its initial inception, Harsha Kankanala (the founding member), Yashwanth Tudimilla (Co-Founder and AI expert who is an alumnus of IIT Madras), and Y. S. Rao (Co-Founder) started Edwisely with a fresh perspective, having learned from their past experiences.

Edwisely technology for higher education institutions harnesses artificial intelligence to help teachers create a personalized learning experience for their students and significantly improve their learning outcomes

After working with major global airlines, churning massive amounts of data for better pricing and customer experience,

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Yashwanth has decided to apply the same AI technologies in personalized learning.

“At the core of personalization lies ‘Knowledge Graph’: A technology that is used by all tech giants. A Knowledge Graph is like the internet of knowledge. Millions of atomic knowledge units (concepts) interconnected with relationships. This lays the robust foundation needed for AI to propagate,” says Yashwanth.

His team at Edwisely is harnessing the power of data science.

“Our aim is to connect, collaborate, and co-create future workforce by addressing pain points of all the stakeholders – educators (knowledge providers), students (knowledge seekers) and industry (knowledge consumers).” explains Y S Rao, the other Co-founder of Edwisely who had been with the industry for more than 32 years and hired large batches of entry-level employees.

YS Rao contributes to building the industry side of the product, Role-competency matrix, career to curriculum mapping, and accelerating the placements with validated student learning and assessment analytics. This will facilitate the companies hiring - qualified, skilled, and knowledgeable students' data meeting their job descriptions across the colleges saving lots of time and effort. The entire activities related to screening, profiling, shortlisting, and qualifying can be shortened to hours with validated data points. YS Rao brings his expertise to Edwisely by forging all key partnerships with academia and industry.

They raised the notion of transforming higher education institutions into AI-powered learning campuses. Further, the team also wanted the end customers to experience the vision of AI transformation through premium user interface and personalized interactions within the product. To achieve the same, they went to India's best design company to uplift the UI/UX and to make the user experience the value proposition.

Institutions that are looking to new-age learning, should start thinking beyond regular LMS (learning management systems) or ERP (enterprise resource management) systems. Most of these technologies that colleges and universities are currently using are just used as convenience tools for administrative purposes and for few academic activities. They don't bring in a real value proposition to either faculty or students, in terms of making learning more purposeful and engaging. Today, with the increased technology adoption rate, institutions should aim for futuristic technologies that can bring in a significant impact in day-to-day education, rather than going back to regular standardised technology platforms.

These helped Edwisely reach out to 1000+ colleges in the span of 6 months, starting from October 2020. Various education veterans, vice-chancellors and institutional heads started acknowledging Edwisely's mission, its products, and the unique value proposition it brings to the institutions. A strong product-market fit has been established, being the only company in India that brings personalized learning technology to higher education institutions.

Changing the Game: The 'What’ Innovative learning science models with the intervention of technology, unlocks the future of education. Personalization in education using AI majorly depends on the multi-faceted learning approach for each concept.

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India's 10 Best EdTech Companies to Watch, 2021

Though lots of learning science models and preferential styles are constantly evolving, a little is known about what an individual student needs for him/her to learn better. In general, assessments conducted in the colleges fail to understand the exact reasons for the students' inability to learn. Is it a lack of prerequisite knowledge to master a concept; inadequate time spent; attention deficiency; improper exam temperament; mismatch in learning styles and preferences.

Edwisely’s AI systems will automatically analyse the reason for inability and support each student to get through by personalizing their learning experience. AI-based recommendation engine also provides the best learning modules based on individual's learning styles and abilities.

Edwisely AI framework can also support institutes in nurturing the personality by understanding individual students' attributes in the 1st year of their graduation and support them to build on that.

Edwisely AI-driven Personalized Career path helps accelerate institute placements by connecting students to their best fit opportunities across the nation. Personalization helps students set their career goals and drives them to stay ahead of their peers by following our career guidance model, focusing on individuals' skills and job key skill requirements.

The Edwisely web applications, mobile applications (IOS/Android) are designed for the faculty, students, and management which are customised to their requirements.

These applications conduct assessments and analytics, create learning paths as well as career paths, and plan to integrate an AI-Driven Placement Accelerator.

Institutions that are empowered with Edwisely are branded as 'AI Powered Personalized Campuses’.

“Our goal is to transform 1000 colleges into AI Powered Personalized Campuses by 2025,” concluded Harsha, the perseverant leader of Edwisely.

AWARDS Recognizing the efforts and impact that Edwisely can create, ASSOCHAM, The Associated Chambers of Commerce of India has awarded the young startup 'The Emerging Startup of the Year' award at the 14th National Education Summit in New Delhi.

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India's 10 Best EdTech Companies to Watch, 2021

Bring in the Digital Autodidacts

The simplest way to describe Enggenious: it is a company of learning solutions experts in engineering and manufacturing domains. They design and deliver learning solutions for and about automotive, auto-ancillary, power, metal, oil, and gas, and other manufacturing domains.

Enggenious addresses the learning needs of all stages – employability, deployability, career advancements, leadership and serve purposes of up-skilling, in-depth knowledge, and expertise. It enables the journey of students as career aspirants to industry leaders, through eLearning, conventional and blended learning ways.

Enggenious is a strategic business unit at SAN Techno Mentors Pvt Ltd. Founded in 2006 by a group of IIT and COEP alumnus with long years of professional experience in diverse industry verticals, SAN Techno Mentors has been into conventional classroom training and mentoring for the engineering and manufacturing companies. Gradually, SAN Techno Mentors became first choice technical training partner for large and medium engineering and manufacturing companies across the world.

SAN Techno Mentors is a part of SAN Group. Established in 1990, it has six companies in product design, electronic manufacturing, industrial automation, data connectivity

“

We will keep impacting top lines, bottom lines of the companies with well researched and awesomely built learning offerings

“

T

he online learning market in India is set to grow from USD 247 million (around 1.6 million users) in 2016, to eight times that and sit comfortably at USD 1.96 billion (around 9.6 million users) by the year 2021 itself. While reskilling and online education market currently accounts for a significant part of the online education sector, online test preparation is expected to be the fastest growing category. With an explosion of resources becoming more available to the masses by the day, the process of knowledge acquisition and dissemination has never been easier. And if one wishes to sharpen his/her skills and expand his/her horizon in the engineering and manufacturing domains through the medium of online learning, Enggenious is the right place to be.

solutions, instrumentation, and value engineering domains respectively. SAN group has presence in India and the Middle East and works with a global clientele.

With a large pool of subject matter experts (SMEs) with strong industry and brilliant academic backgrounds, experienced instructional designers (IDs) and creative visualizers working together, Enggenious creates meaningfully engaging and lasting learning experiences which are beyond books and theories.

Having worked with large Indian and foreign corporates in this space, Enggenious is ably equipped with the know-how of designing learning solutions for students, freshers, graduate engineering trainees or senior, mid or senior engineers, managers and leaders.

Team now comprises of 60 plus ex-IITs, ex-COEP, PhDs subject matter experts with average 30 plus years of experience in industry and academia. Digital media experts, experienced instructional designers and developers work with those subject and domain experts to create awesome learning experiences.

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Leading the Charge With an industry and academic experience of 35 years, Sudhir Panditrao, Founder, Director of SAN Techno Mentors has always been a passionate trainer. Sudhir completed his Bachelors’ of Engineering (BE) in instrumentation and control from COEP in 1985, and later Masters’ of Engineering (ME) in instrumentation and control from COEP in 2003.

Mangesh Wagh, CEO at SAN Techno Mentors comes from digital technology and media profession with experience of 17 years. BE in production from COEP in 2001, and later PGDBM in marketing from Indus Business Academy in 2005. Mangesh brings in his expertise in digital technologies as content development and delivery platforms and digital media. eLearning is the need of the hour, a cliché, but true statement. According to the team over at Enggenious, one of their major turn-ons in eLearning has been the creative visualization aspect. The company believes that the core eLearning quality comes from there. For the learner to gain complete clarity on technological/technical concepts, content needs to be built with excellent creative visualization.

“After going through our courses when the learner says, ‘never thought it was that easy’…that’s the kick we live for,” commented Mr Mangesh Wagh.

A Goal to Inspire Towards Enggenious impacts top and bottom lines of clients via well-crafted learning solutions. It wants to be that catalyst who work with learning and development (L&D) teams to create and continuously build upon desirable learning culture. On the other side of the spectrum of the industry, there is a great scope to bridge industry-academia expectation gap. “We are working with academic institutes to prepare their future workforce which exceeds industry expectations, rather than setting greatly elevated benchmarks,” said Mr Sudhir Panditrao.

They do this by keeping in mind a few simple mantras to direct their time and energies toward: Ÿ Learning that is beyond just books and theories Ÿ Learning that sticks Ÿ Learning that is joyful experience Ÿ Encouraging the learner to learn continuously “Having acquired marquee clientele over the years for

Sudhir Panditrao Founder, Director

conventional learning solutions and also for the eLearning and blended learning solutions, we are looking to scale up rapidly in next couple of years,” added Mr Sudhir Panditrao.

Primary Products and Services Ÿ Main products/services offered by Enggenious are as listed: Ÿ Off-the-shelf eLearning courses – online subscriptions or buying packages Ÿ Custom developed eLearning and microlearning courses Ÿ Innovative blended learning courses; pre-packaged as well as custom Ÿ LMS- (learning management system) based competency assessment solutions; pre-packaged as well as custom Ÿ Enggenious learning solutions are created by subject matter experts having global field experience in the subject. Experts who create these courses/solutions are available for training, mentoring and consultancy at site or via web.

Weathering the Storms There are several challenges faced by EdTech start-ups manoeuvring the trials and tribulations of the industry.

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a comprehensive learning experience platform, with plans to float their content on it.

The company soon plans to create cluster packages of courses, for example, pool of courses for engineering trainees, other one for the beginners in digital manufacturing. “We are localizing a few of our courses in Hindi and other regional languages,” added Mr Sudhir.

Elaborating on their perseverance and strive to reach new milestones, Mr. Mangesh commented: “We love what we do. Learning is a joy. Ask anyone. When you learn something new, you are happy. If you have someone who helps you learn well, makes it interesting, is not preachy but a buddy; you will have great time learning.” This is perhaps the same experience and trust which the clients have received over the years.

Enggenious has also adopted global technological trends well. For example, they have mastered digital manufacturing, Industry 4.0 and created comprehensive learning solutions on the same. Very large manufacturing companies have been continuously working with the company to make themselves Industry 4.0 ready.

Mangesh Wagh CEO

However, according to Enggenious, the challenge that resides at the core is andragogy. And it (Enggenious) is going all out to nail this aspect. The courses need to be meaningful, addressing needs and problems of the learners, showing them the way to pursue their desires. Dumping eLearning courses on employees or students and enforcing them to get the ticks for the completion report will never serve the larger purpose.

“You can deliver less useful content in high quality 3D animation or VR or AR, versus delivering a much more meaningful stuff in a text blog; you know what will make the difference in learner’s life. Yes, interactivity, engagement, overall production quality brings a lot of merit but let andragogy be the hero of your solution,” is the word to the wise, from Sudhir Panditrao and Mangesh Wagh.

Riding the Tides of Time A few more talked about developments in the field of learning solutions, are practices such as gamification, localization, bite-sized-learning pieces, use of AI in the learning management system platforms, interactive videos and much more. Enggenious is looking to create or acquire

Based on the target audience and learning objectives, they have created learning solutions of small durations like halfa-day to three months long championship programs. These programs include both synchronous and asynchronous modes – eLearning, live lectures, recorded lectures, handson training, interesting online gamified assessments, case solving, hackathons and more.

Aspiring to Make an Impact The journey of Enggenious has only just begun. Soon, they envision to create an unseen value proposition for engineering and manufacturing domains. Not just learning solutions partner but a learning culture partner for manufacturing companies, individual professionals and even for the students preparing themselves for profession in the engineering fields.

One obvious feature would be use of 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. By all measures, Enggenious is all set to keep creating and maximizing joy of learning.

“We will impact top lines, bottom lines of the companies with well researched and awesomely built learning offerings,” concluded Mr. Mangesh Wagh.

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chool days are the golden days where we grow and spend good times with our friends. In this pandemic, many children have missed this opportunity to experience their golden days. Moreover, the pressure is hard to explain. How can we expect any student to understand his/her syllabus without attending any classes in reality? And how can we expect them to score well by those online classes held on that small phone screens? Students are depressed when they just can’t learn. So many people add up more pressure on them because everyone wants them to score well. And shouting at them, thinking they are not being serious, can worsen things even further.

In this 21st century, it was already hard enough for the students to understand what the teacher is teaching in 45 minutes. Imagine a class of 40 to 80 students, especially if the seat is on that last bench, where all students are talking and laughing, troubling the teacher, and half of his/her time is spent shouting.

Then the pandemic invaded. What do you think about how helpful these online classes are? Where the teacher is speaking, and students are supposed to turn off their phone’s audio button so that there is no noise. In this digital world where our attention span is so short especially when it comes to those things that are hard to understand.

And what about the learning part? How nice will it be if learning could be something that everyone could enjoy, in creative, engaging, and challenging manner rather than the rote-learning and theory education? If this happens, then no one have to force anyone to study, and stop them from playing or from doing whatever they like to, studies will become part of those things that they like to do instead.

No doubt nothing can replace the real-life experience when it comes to those rare, good teaching sessions until that thing can give the same experience as a real world. Yes, I am talking about AR and VR. It is the answer to all those

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New Pathways

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prayers that all parents, teachers, and even students were praying for.

Augmented reality and Virtual reality are not difficult terms to understand. These heavy-sounding theoretical words are actually very interesting, and once you experience them, you will be simply addicted to them. AR and VR differ based on what device we require to experience them and what we experience by them.

Virtual Reality is a program that you can use with headset devices. It takes you to a completely virtual world that can seem and feel completely real. But it can be a fictional world. Whereas to use AR, you can use your smartphone. It uses real-world settings. AR has the ability to upgrade the real and virtual worlds.

It is a solution to so many problems in this pandemic. AR and VR are proving to be helpful in various industries viz. health care, corporate, governmental organisations, and even in education. AR and VR can solve many problems that our students have been facing while studying. Many students are scared to ask questions in class or to speak up when not able to understand what the teacher taught. Some students understand better when they can imagine or relate those topics.

And this can also be a solution for a cheap education. And of course, now you don’t have to pay for that extra tuition fees as well. Sounds like a dream? Well, it isn’t. By learning with AR and VR technology, students are literally in that time and place, witnessing the ongoing events happening in the virtual world.

It’s a fact that we may forget the names of people, but we mostly remember the faces, right?

Similarly, students perceive and remember better what they learn by practical. They observe and follow with their continuous thought process. Even their attention span is better and longer in interesting activities, for example, the topic is the universe, and the lecture is about to be conducted in the virtual space itself. Now, who would of think of bunking the class, right?

student would love to attend. The subject can be anything, like science, history, or be it geography. The app can take the students to museums, Antarctica, or the oceans of the virtual world.

AR and VR are being utilized on a whole new level by the Australian company called FLAIM Systems that is helping its firefighters by training them in the virtual world.

There they experience all the dangerous zones of fire and learn how to deal with them without being in a danger zone in reality. Everything they see and feel is just as real as the reality to them with AR and VR. Wouldn’t it be great if all students could enjoy the education equally, even if they are differently abled? We can thank AR and VR technology again for designing this facility with specialized features. Models that enable students to regulate the device according to their needs.

This technology will help students to deal with ADHD, depression, and anxieties problems that they experience due to their studies. By making daily education as interactive as it should be.

It can also solve the language problem that many students have. For example, learning English or any subject in English is hard for many students because they don’t practice it in their regular life. But in virtual education, one can not only practice but see how it is being used.

Providing students quality classes that they can enjoy is the least we can do for them when they are willing to learn so many subjects altogether. It is not easy for them. After all, one student has to learn multiple different subjects whereas there is a separate teacher for almost every subject. By educating them with AR and VR, we can finally make it so that students and children genuinely fall in love with learning.

Did you know that the very first VR education was conducted on September 3, 1943? In Berlin Blitz. It was the true story of the Lancaster Bomber – mission to Berlin. It was produced by the Immersive VR Education for the BBC. There is an app called Google Expedition, an education app that lets teachers conduct enthusiastic classes that any

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- Nidhi Arya

Ankush Oberoi Co-founder, Head of Business and Productions

Swati Sharma Co-founder, Head of Productions

Prateek Singh CEO & Founder

Directing the EdTech Revolution At LearnApp,

each course is designed in

a way that aims to give you an information and insight-rich lifetime of a mentor's

experience into an hour

“

experience by organising a

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earnApp is an online video education platform that brings the best minds in the field of trading, investing and business management to teach from a relevant, skill-driven curriculum. Its main objective is to redefine and reimagine education for the 21st century. With the world changing at a rapid pace, constant learning and upskilling have become essential to success. At LearnApp, you learn what it takes to be an industry-ready, disruptive and successful professional.

The company was founded in 2017 as the manifestation of the vision of four go-getters:

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India's 10 Best EdTech Companies to Watch, 2021

Prateek Singh, CEO & Founder; Ankush Oberoi, Co-founder, Head of Business and Productions; Swati Sharma, Co-founder, Head of Productions; Sohail Alam, Co-founder, Head of Technology.

It was their collective vision and belief in experiential and practical learning that laid the foundation stone for LearnApp. The leadership believes that it is skills and not conventional knowledge which will guide professional success in the 21st century. Their focus has constantly been on making learning actionable, skill-driven and objectdriven, because that translates to better results and longlasting learnings that are in sync with the constantly disruptive 21st century world.

It is with this belief that they founded LearnApp. The idea was to engage directly with the practitioners and learn from their insights and experiences. Their emphasis on constant upskilling, action-based learning and innovation reflects in the organisation's philosophy, where there is a healthy space and encouragement for unconventional and off-beat ideas and hands-on learning.

Leading the Way An entrepreneur and a risk-taker by heart, Prateek Singh (founder and CEO), started trading from the age of 17 and has been active on the markets ever since. Over the years, he has also shared insights from his trading journey and investing journey with thousands of individuals by the means of his ventures in the financial education space, namely TradeAcademy, Tradersaint, and Market Scientist.

His interest in trading led him to start multiple ventures, where he aimed to solve the knowledge gap between authentic stock market education amongst the masses.

After four ventures, LearnApp was finally established in 2018 with four co-founders. Having skipped formal education, Prateek is on his journey to revolutionize the way education, skill development and financial literacy is thought about.

Products and Services LearnApp believes in skill-driven, actionable and testable learning patterns, curated by the best in the industry. The company also strongly believes in the idea that upskilling should start at a fundamental level, where people are just beginning to venture out in their professional spaces. It offers in-depth, insightful, and application-driven frameworks of learning to professionals and students in the

Sohail Alam Co-founder, Head of Technology age group of 19-30. It covers this through four major domains of importance – trading, investing, business management and communications.

This emphasis on skill and insights, rather than rote knowledge forms the core of its courses and classes. Each course is designed in a way that aims to give you an information and insight-rich experience by organising a lifetime of a mentor's experience into an hour. This is further enriched by the voiceovers, animations and graphics that help drive home the point better. With each course, you get one step closer to thinking like a leader. And with live classes you get to engage with what you learn! What's more, with LearnApp's live Q&A sessions, ensure that you leave the class doubt-free, because the mentor will solve them for you, right away.

Standing Apart The idea is to make the learning process enriching, industry-driven and engaging. The 150+ courses offered by LearnApp cover various concepts of investing, trading, communications and business management extensively and are shot cinematically, with insights, stories and experiences of industry veterans.

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Our curriculum is

designed by the world's

brightest minds spanning 10 major subjects. From

business management to entrepreneurship, to

“

trading to investing, we have it all

At LearnApp, an experiential, film-like crash course organised into a lifetime of insights and knowledge each industry legend has to offer- that is what the courses are like. The idea is to focus on incorporating practical, relevant observations that can be implemented by the user with immediate effect. The live classes further provide a direct opportunity for users to interact directly with the mentors.

From Raamdeo Agrawal teaching the art of investing to Utpal Sheth explaining portfolio construction to experienced traders explaining various trading strategies, LearnApp gives you a chance to learn the best from the best!

Prateek comments: “Our curriculum is designed by the world's brightest minds spanning 10 major subjects. From business management to entrepreneurship, to trading to investing, we have it all.” At LearnApp, education is skill centric. All this comes with a hyper-curated, in-demand, relevant and continuously updated curriculum that is designed by those who run the industry. Here, you work to learn, and learn to do!

LearnApp are immediate and practical, shortening the learning curve for the users and leaving a lasting impact.

In addition to that, the company also has clearly defined learning modules for trading, investing and more, which provide a definitive starting point and a sequential path for the user to start learning. This is not just beneficial for a new learner, who has his learning map charted for him for systematic, structured learning, it is also beneficial for an intermediate or advanced learner, who wishes to enhance certain aspects of their understanding regarding the subject.

A well-defined learning map can help them focus on what is most important and relevant from their perspective.

Rising Fervently LearnApp has managed to cover a significant and eventful journey in this short span of three years. It currently has more than two lakh registered users and a dedicated learning community that is constantly expanding and having more than 10 million streams on their paid platform is a testimony to the quality of the content.

Apart from that, they have more than 150+ live classes spanning a range of topics both current and conceptual, so that the viewers can get a practical, hands-on experience of their learnings and its applications. The live classes have received rave reviews and great views and thus the company wants to explore this dimension of user-mentor engagement in the most effective manner possible.

Prateek also proudly recounted: “Our user retention rate stands at 80%, which signifies how LearnApp has been able to forge long-lasting relationships with its users in such a short span of time. Our customer engagement has grown five times since the lockdown and we are very fortunate to have had the continued support of our users.”

While eLearning is still dominated by conventional learning patterns, LearnApp provides a dynamic, interactive learning interface for the user to learn, understand and practically understand the real-world applications of these concepts.

This can range from learning option strategies to trade profitably in the market to understanding the art of investing in order to manage their portfolio effectively. In essence, the learnings and takeaways from learning on

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Additionally, LeanApp has also been able to drive discussions in the learner community and ensure that learning becomes as seamless and as interactive a process as possible. More than 1,00,000 comments have been resolved on it’s website, proof of how invested the LearnApp community is in gaining hands-on education.

Having built an efficient system with regards to customer satisfaction and service, LearnApp has also ventured into prominent corporate partnerships like Kotak, empowering and fuelling the employee upskilling and development programs of many well-known companies.

Aspiring to Make a Difference LearnApp aims to become a pioneer in insight driven and practise-based learning space. It wants to become the world's largest educational platform in terms of practitioners teaching by means of an actionable framework to create industry-ready, highly disruptive professionals who possess a solid skill set. It also desires to add 10 million more people to its community and bring them a step closer to learning directly from industry leaders. The vision is to become the world's largest education portal where industry leaders and practitioners teach the future professionals and shape them into doers and go-getters.

LearnApp wishes to shift the focus of education from merely certifications, degrees and traditional learning to a skill based, result oriented and performance dependent culture where the skills and work of the professionals are given far more importance than the college education.

“This, in my view, is the future of every industry, including education. And at LearnApp, we want to be at the forefront of this positive revolution,” added Prateek.

While looking at diversifying its outreach by including courses and content in vernaculars like Hindi and more, LearnApp believes that its full potential will be actualised only when each individual of the society benefits from its courses.

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The Next Dimension

Career

Digital 26 | MM 2021 | www.theknowledgereview.com

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T

he term ‘digital marketing’ has become a buzzword today. It is one of the fastest-growing industries in the world that focuses on creativity and skills.

Every business is moving online, so the demand for digital marketing is increasing at a rapid rate. This increasing demand is opening doors for many job seekers. Due to this trend, there has been a rising demand for qualified digital marketing professionals. Hence, many universities and educational institutes added digital marketing to their syllabus.

So earlier, what was offered as crash courses by private computer institutes is now being provided by colleges and universities as full-fledged professional degrees - Bachelor's and Master's. It is the need of time to have digital influence for the growth of any business. Digital marketing plays the role of catalyst in the process of generating leads. Hence it is emerging as a go-to option for building a career.

Digital marketing is the process of promoting products or services online to get better reach. Any marketing technique that uses electronic devices to convey promotional messages and advertisements falls under digital marketing.

The main goal of digital marketing is the same as traditional marketing – to attract the audience and generate leads. In other words, digital marketing is the updated version of conventional marketing.

Digital Marketing as a Career Digital marketing courses are available at both UG and PG levels in the management stream. It is a broad term consisting of many sectors. It offers the following career options.

1. Market Research Analyst: The main work of a market research analyst is to study different aspects of markets such as consumer needs, preferences, habits, etc. The analyst then gathers all the data and assists the company in understanding the current trends of the market. Market research analyst also supports the customers in their decision-making process while purchasing any product.

2. SEO Executive: Search engine optimization is the process of improving the rank of a website to appear on the top of the search engine result page (SERP). SEO executive is responsible for implementing On-page and Off-page SEO strategies along with keyword analysis. This role includes compiling the reports from google analytics and assisting in the creation of appropriate content.

3. Social Media Manager: Social media is the best way to increase the brand awareness of a business. Most people spend half of their free time on social media. The social media manager's work is to manage social media campaigns, brand a company, share and publish productrelated blogs or articles, and engage in online conversations.

4. Content Manager: The job of a content manager is to manage interesting, engaging, and unique content. The content should be SEO-friendly and without plagiarism.

Content is the core part of any marketing strategy.

Customers get attracted to the product by reading the content. It is the primary job of a content manager to ensure the content reaches the targeted audience.

5. Digital Marketing Consultant: Discovering new ideas of businesses to attract new customers and retain existing ones is the primary job of a digital marketing consultant. It includes various activities such as overseeing ad campaigns, SEO projects, web designing, etc. Digital marketing consultant usually assists the company to reach their customers in the best way.

Scope of Digital Marketing To increase their online influence, most of the companies are focusing on robust digital work culture. For this purpose, they are hiring digital marketers to grow their business. All the images we see online, interesting content we read, and creative infographics we see are related to digital marketing. This field is ever-expanding, and people are getting attracted to it. Another reason behind this is, there is rapid growth in digital marketing jobs. Also, there is a gap between demand and supply of the workforce. The demand is much more than the current supply of skilled professionals.

This field is easy to start a career. It neither has a tough syllabus like engineering or medical field, nor complex structure like legal professions. Digital marketing is entirely based on skills and creativity. It is a cost-effective business practice than offline marketing. Digital marketing degrees help start new businesses too. After acquiring the skills, someone can start his/her own business. You learn more as you progress. After all, digital marketing is the mine where innovative entrepreneurs can be found.

- Vinayak Ghorpade

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Dr Rupali Dhamdhere

Principal Trinity International School

About the Author Dr Rupali Dhamdhere, is the Principal of Trinity International School, Pune.

She has also been an education coordinator. She has written in a number of publications on a myriad of issues relating to education.

Pune

The Oxford of the East 30 | MM 2021 | www.theknowledgereview.com

Pune Tithe Kay Une

T

his city lacks nothing. Pune, called Poona till 1978, is supposedly the second largest city in Maharashtra but known the world over as the “Oxford of the East,” a title Pune wears till date with a lot of pride. This pride is an integral part of the culture, people, and their attitude.

This city was also called as the pensioners paradise, the only reason being that the life here is very relaxed, you will not see people rushing, they have their own pace and timing and if you want to survive here you need to get used to it.

But wait…please do not get it wrong. This city has made its mark globally and was given the name Oxford of the East by our very own first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru. His love for Pune has a very interesting story, many of you may be aware but I would like to share it.

There was a massive flood in the year 1961 and when Jawaharlal Nehru visited the city after the flood, he insisted to visit his favourite bookstore which was badly affected due to floods. The International Book Service was established on January 1, 1931 and was possibly one of Nehru’s favourite bookstores. In his letters to his daughter he wrote, “I have sent you names of books, most of them are new but some are old, which I wanted you to purchase for me. But you could not get them at usual booksellers.

You might keep a list of those books with you in case they are now available. In particular, I want you to note down the name of a good bookshop in Poona which often keeps books which cannot be obtained elsewhere - The International Book Depot Deccan Gymkhana, Poona”.

Such was the level of the literature or the readership that was existing in Pune, due to which there are numerous bookstores in this city. Pune has always managed to keep its culture rich due to its historical events but also has been an educational ground for great institutions like Fergusson College, Deccan College to name a few where our great leaders have taken lessons. The city takes pride of the great student community that has made its presence felt not only in the corridors of these great institutes but also in the world that has recognised their work.

Pune is also known as Punyanagari, means City of Virtue.

As per the name, the city depicts high moral standards with its rich history which goes back to pre-historic times where manuscripts were found on the banks of the rivers Mula

Mutha. The first girls’ school of India was started in Pune at Bhide Wada on January 1, 1848. This was a very modern and courageous move made by Savitribai Phule along with her friend Fatima Begum.

In days where women were not even allowed to step out of the house, Savitribai Phule had made this dream come to a reality though it was a very difficult task, and a lot of hardships were faced. As she was the first head mistress of a school on record and while she was dreaming in the day to educate women, she faced a lot of harassment from the people as they would throw stones and dirt at her when she walked to school every day. It was a very progressive school as subjects like Math and Science were also taught along with reading and writing. Today we have our new NEP and we have so many schemes running for the benefit of the underprivileged students but she had thought about it more than 170 years back when she tried to give some stipend to students for the work they did so that she could control the dropout rate of the students, she also provided them with meals in the afternoon. Also taught skills so that students could learn a skill like painting, sculpture stitching etc. to earn a living. Conducted parent teacher meetings to spread the awareness of education among parents and how their role was important in educating their child.

Pune University, which was established in 1949, was renamed as Savitribai Phule Pune University in August 2014 to pay tribute to the tremendous efforts taken by this social reformer in the field of education and thinking ahead of time and contributing to put Pune on a global map for education excellence.

Today Pune is a well-known educational hub, as it has a variety of educational courses to offer from every field, be it science, engineering, medical, art, theatre, film making, astronomy, and astrophysics to name a few.

Pune is an attraction for students not only from India but world over due to its perfect blend of modernization and culture. It has a good green coverage with good geographical splendour.

Pune city is a part of our soul, it is difficult to describe the greatness of this city, but I believe to understand it better you need to be a part of it with heart and soul.

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