Ram Gollamudi is founder-CEO of the Hyderabad-based Edutor Technologies Pvt. Ltd (estb.2010), an edutech company offering digitised textbooks and related learning solutions to schools and higher education institutions (HEIs) in India, the Middle East and South Africa. Through its flagship product Ignitor, a textbook learning application/platform which can be loaded on most branded Android and Windows hand-held devices, Edutor delivers entire textbooks and supplementary essays, interactive quizzes and weblinks to facilitate exam preparation. The company has 110 institutional subscribers reaching out to 80,000-plus students.

Newspeg. According to Gollamudi who was in Bangalore in early March, Edutor inked a strategic partnership agreement in February with the US-based McGraw Hill Education, one of the world’s largest education publishers, under which Ignitor will digitize 5,000 McGraw Hill higher education textbook titles. Through this initiative, Edutor expects to add 80,000 post-secondary students in 1,000 campuses countrywide to its subscription base over the next two-three years.

History. An engineering and business management alumnus of IIT-Madras and University of California, Los Angeles, Gollamudi acquired 14 years of valuable experience in the US working with Ericsson and Entropic Communications and later as a venture capitalist before returning to India in 2010. Since then, Edutor has partnered with 35 textbook publishers including Pearson, S.Chand and Oxford University Press to provide its digitized app to 110 schools and colleges. Among them: Modern High, Barakhamba Road; Delhi Public School, Faridabad; CHIREC, Hyderabad; Indus World, Gurgaon; Aakash Institute; Career Launcher; SRM University, Chennai; and GATE Forum. Subscription fees range from Rs.2,000-6,000 for K-12 students and Rs.5,000-15,000 for higher education students.

Direct talk. “In 2010 when touch screen Android and i-Pad devices were becoming popular worldwide, iPod touch devices were being used in US schools to facilitate young learners. I recognised the power of hand-held devices for engaging children and felt they could be used positively in Indian education. Therefore I teamed up with two of my IIT classmates — Prasanna Boni and Ramesh Karra — to co-promote Edutor as soon as I returned to India. We strongly believe digital devices will enable millions of Indian students to improve learning outcomes without lugging heavy textbooks to and from school and college,” says Gollamudi.

Future plans. Encouraged by the positive response to Ignitor, Gollamudi has drawn up ambitious expansion plans for Edutor Technologies. “We are in the process of developing diverse versions of Ignitor to introduce in government and private budget schools in tier-II cities, and eventually rural India. Over the next two-three years, Edutor intends to reach one million students and radically improve learning outcomes in Indian education,” says Gollamudi.

Fair winds!
Paromita Sengupta (Bengaluru)

Girl child champion

A science graduate of City College, Kolkata and an educationist with more than 45 years experience of early years education, Kusum Bhandari is the convener of Udayan Care Kolkata (UCK), a voluntary organisation with ten chapters countrywide.

Udayan Care was established in 2002 in Delhi by social activist Kiran Modi to provide shelters for homeless children, education scholarships and vocational training programmes. The Kolkata chapter of Udayan Care was founded by Bhandari, also director of Montessori Bal Nilaya, Lake Gardens (estb.1962), a pre-primary ranked #5 in Kolkata in the EducationWorld Preschool Rankings 2015. The prime objective of UCK (estb.2007) is to facilitate the higher education of meritorious girl students in the 16-18 age group from underprivileged households.

Newspeg. With 1,000 girls in its care, UCK is set to inaugurate branches in Birbhum and Bankura districts by June to provide its education facilitation services to meritorious school-leaving girl students residing in far-flung areas of the state.

History. UCK supports and trains girls in the 16-18 age group under its Udayan Shalini Fellowship programme. Fellows are selected from households with monthly incomes of less than Rs.8,000, who have averaged 60 percent-plus in the class X school-leaving board exam after a written test and interview. Subsequently, they are given scholarships to support them through four-six years in higher education.

UCK’s annual expenditure averages Rs.1 crore with major corporate houses of Kolkata being the prime donors. Bhandari is justifiably proud that ten UCK girls have been admitted into top-ranked higher education institutions including the IITs and IIMs and are employed in IBM, Tata Consultancy Services, Cognizant Technology Solutions, Bhabha Atomic Research Centre and Allahabad Research Institute.

Direct talk. “Since most of our girls are among the first in their families to enter higher secondary education, they seldom receive counselling and advice, especially in government schools. Our fellowship programme fills this lacuna, by providing them professional guidance, training and counselling as well as monetary support to realise a fulfilling future,” says Bhandari.

Future plans. Bhandari believes that women’s education is the prerequisite of national development. Therefore the UCK experiment is being rolled out in other small towns of West Bengal. “I am sure with the passage of time the Udayan Shalini Fellowship programme will attract greater corporate attention and funding,” she says.

God speed!
Baishali Mukherjee (Kolkata)

Skills education missionary

Canada-based serial entrepreneur Bradley D.H. Loiselle is founder-chief executive officer of the Ottawa-based SKILLSdox Inc, an education technology company. Earlier this year (February), Loiselle launched the Mumbai-based SKILLSdox India Pvt. Ltd (aka School of Skill).

According to Loiselle, School of Skill (SoS) is a marketplace for 19,200 — and growing — skills development and accredited courses offered by its education partners worldwide including edX, Udemy, Bombay Stock Exchange Varsity, Algonquin College (Canada), Merit Nation, Funtoot, Fullbridge (USA) and Acadgild, among others.

Newspeg. Recently, School of Skill signed a C$30-million (Rs.150 crore) marketing agreement with Bennett Coleman & Company Ltd (the holding company of India’s top-ranked dailies including the Times of India, Economic Times, television channels Times Now, ET Now and over a dozen periodicals) under which Bennett Coleman will provide SoS market visibility through various media such as print, radio, TV and digital.

History. “I believe there’s a difference between learners’ real needs and the programmes online portals offer. Hence SoS offers all levels of education including skill development courses, localised for Indian learners. With the assistance and collaboration of the Canadian government, India Inc and Indian educators, over a period of three years we have selected suitable partners and professional programmes for Indian learners and industry,” says Loiselle.

Loiselle who opted out of formal education after high school, began his career as a customer call centre service agent of the Central Bank of Canada. Subsequently, he promoted two start-ups, before being appointed to the board of directors of the Project Management Institute, Ottawa Valley and Quaouais Region, an affiliate of the US-based Project Management Institute (PMI), which has 220,000 members in over 120 countries worldwide, and served as its president in 2010-2011. He also served as member of the Indo-Canada Ottawa Business Chamber (2014-15)

Direct talk. “A committed entrepreneur I am always looking for business opportunities. However, given my experience with PMI, I am also equipped to provide high quality affordable online education to emerging market countries. School of Skill provides economy-appropriate courses for Indian learners,” says Loiselle.

Future plans. Loiselle is confident SoS will expand its operations in India because of “quality content and a great delivery platform”. “Right now we are on a talent hunt for a managing director, top-level leadership and business development managers, who will help promote online education across the country. Although we offer a large number of K-12 and higher secondary courses, currently our focus is on providing skill development courses to make millions of Indian school-leavers employable and prosperous,” says Loiselle.

Right on!
Swati Roy (Delhi)

Yes Foundation driver

Prerana Langa is CEO of the Yes Foundation (estb.2012), the CSR (corporate social responsibility) arm of the Mumbai-based Yes Bank, India’s fifth largest private bank in terms of advances (Rs.98,210 crore in 2015-16). In 2013, the foundation launched Yes! I am the Change (YIAC), its flagship programme to “engage youth with social issues through the impactful medium of films, thereby accelerating the country’s social transformation”. Since then, the foundation’s annual YIAC 101-Hour Social Filmmaking Challenge has emerged as the country’s largest social films movement attracting participation from 500,000 youth across 2,500 cities and towns countrywide. The 5,000 selected short films — each of three minutes duration — are accessible on the foundation’s YouTube channel.

Newspeg. In early March, the foundation launched a two-month Media for Social Change Fellowship under which 47 college/university students were trained and placed with 20 partner NGOs in Mumbai to support their social media and communication efforts. The fellowship programme has received over 922 applications from students of top-ranked colleges including the Xavier School of Management, Jamshedpur, IIT-Bombay and SP Jain Institute of Management and Research, among others. Partner NGOs include the highly-respected Teach for India, HelpAge India, Magic Bus, and Pratham.

Direct talk. “In Yes Foundation, we believe that youth, NGOs and women are essential to social transformation. Through our film-making challenge and social media fellowship programmes, we want to involve youth in social causes and initiatives and inspire them to become agents of social change,” says Langa, an alumna of Mumbai’s St. Xavier’s College and SIES College of Management Studies, who has also completed executive development programmes in CSR at the World Bank and Harvard University South Asia Institute. Langa began her career with Mudra Communications in 1997 followed by stints in Corporate Voice, Weber Shandwick, ICICI Bank and ICICI Foundation before setting up Yes Foundation as its CEO over three years ago.

According to Langa, the foundation’s YIAC 101-Hour Social Filmmaking Challenge has helped create a valuable repository of short films on important social causes. “Many NGOs, especially those working at the grassroots, don’t have the resources to create and produce impactful films. Through our filmmaking challenge, we have helped create an open repository of audio-visual resources that can be accessed by non-profits to build public awareness, raise funds and mobilise resources,” she explains.

Future plans. The foundation recently invited applications for the first edition of the ‘Yes Foundation Social Film Grant.’ Launched in partnership with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), under the programme a grant of Rs.4 lakh will be awarded to selected filmmakers for producing minute-long public service films on any of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals set out by the United Nations in September 2015.

“Another high-potential programme we will be launching shortly is the Yes Responsible Youth Citizenship Movement under which we will mentor and fund ten high-impact youth initiatives. Moreover the 2016 edition of YIAC 101-Hour Social Filmmaking Challenge is set for rollout early next month. This year, we hope to further extend the programme’s outreach to youth across the country as well as the global Indian diaspora,” says Langa.

Dipta Joshi (Mumbai)