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“The edtech market is maturing to a level where we are looking at student experiences now. Measurement of learning outcomes, quality of content, AR/VR content, and supplemental learning are going to drive the future of edtech,” noted PP Sunil Acharya, South Asia Lead: Education, Space & NPO, AWS while delivering a keynote address at Growth Gurus.

This was an offline meet-and-greet event by Amazon Web Services (AWS) and CloudThat in partnership with YourStory. The event brought together edupreneurs and stakeholders in the edtech sector to exchange ideas, learn about latest technology innovations, and be part of a community of edtech founders.

Digitisation has enabled access to education and ensured that the digital divide is minimised in the country. Today, students in leading universities or Tier 1 cities have access to the same knowledge and faculty as that of their counterparts in the remotest corners. Moreover, the Indian government’s initiatives – Swayam (Study Webs of Active Learning for Young Aspiring Minds), Diksha and its e-pathshala initiative – have further made education accessible to anyone anywhere.

Reshaping the learning landscape

The future of edtech lies in phygital, believes Abhishek Mishra, Chief of Strategy at PhysicsWallah, which boasts of 1.27 lakh live learners in one class. “A multitude of teams worked together to achieve this feat. We made sure every element of our infrastructure was scaled, tested, and ready before the D-day to have smooth sailing operations. We invested heavily in improving our tech stack to serve millions of requests. We use Amazon Web Services (AWS) in our ecosystem and are committed to serving users with improved performance,” he said.

So far, there has been a lot of content delivery and content selling in edtech. Now it’s more about a perfect student-content fit, like a relevant matchmaking. The real challenge is not just putting out content but also finding ways to engage with children as edtech products are now competing with classrooms.

Edtech can truly revolutionise learning in India. Bhavesh Goswami, Founder and CEO, CloudThat cites a case in point here. “Picture this – a traditional classroom, filled with 50-60 students is taught the same lesson together. While somebody becomes a topper, a few become bottom rankers. But if you score 35 percent marks, you’re barely passing but still promoted to the next class despite limited knowledge about a topic. However, edtech has the ability to provide personal attention to each and every student, along with helping them get a solid foundation,” he shared.

“Edtech is not a plateau. I think we’re going to continue to grow for the next many decades. The widespread use of digital technology has completely reshaped the teaching-learning landscape. Multiple modalities like video on demand, Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Google Lens, etc. would enable students to experience classroom learning while being at home. And personalised learning is going to be a very big component of that,” said Bhavesh.

How AWS creates value for edtechs

When we look at companies and businesses using AWS, we often hear and in fact see cost savings as a primary driver for the decision to use cloud. But organisations that use AWS realise value above and beyond just TCO reduction, pointed out Irshad Chohan, Senior Solutions Architect at AWS in a session on ‘Cloud Economics: Understand & Optimize the Value of AWS Cloud’.

“Organisations also realise value in staff productivity which includes improvements to staff efficiency, operational resilience which refers to improvements in quality of service, and SLAs, and business agility which includes increased innovation, and reduction in go to market time for new features and products,” he explained.

Irshad suggested a framework for organisations to not only create visibility and optimise cloud spend, but also make cloud spend more predictable for the business and stakeholders, and build a long-term, self-sustaining cost aware culture supporting all waypoints in the cloud journey.

Edtech is a great place for the teacher ecosystem to upskill, according to Pallavi Venkateshan, Senior Program Manager – Edstart, AISPL. “Exemplary teachers who are not yet discovered should get onboarded on edtech platforms and find their next customer base,” she said.

Nanda Kishore P, VP, Consulting Sales, CloudThat and Ajay Nair, Partner Manager – South India, AWS, delivered the closing remarks. They highlighted how you can leverage cloud computing, you can think about moving all of your IT to the cloud, establish a hybrid environment with some infrastructure on premise and other applications in the cloud, or consider moving over workload by workload…and then over time, more and more of those pieces move into the cloud.

An increasing number of innovators are trying to leverage the massive business opportunities in edtech that pan across online, hybrid, and offline offerings. And Growth Gurus has been successful in bringing together edupreneurs to nurture and showcase the potential of cloud in the sector, and become part of the larger community to celebrate the next chapter of edtech.