TCYonline, India’s leading Edtech company, is a pioneer and leader in assessments for the last 18 years. Mr. Kamal Wadhera is its CEO and Founder. In an exclusive interview with R.M.S. Atwal he dwelt on various issues confronting the country’s education-technology sector.
Here are some excerpts from the interview
Q.1 How has the modern technology changed the Indian test prep sector?
Well, the biggest change is, the learning is now individualized (adaptive) and the mobile is playing a big role. Now any learner can learn on the go. It’s not that there is a particular time or place where he should prepare. The most beautiful thing is that now you can capture the analytics of the learner on the entire journey of his preparation and then you can guide him to become what he’s born to be. So, the student can gain more in lesser time.
Q. 2 How does the increasing emphasis on a digital India affect your company’s business?
For any company that does business online, there are no geographical boundaries. Any company that operates in India, its goal would be the Indian market if not the global; wherever the potential learners are we will do that. In case the Internet availability is one of the criteria, then of course we would be in a better position to take advantage of that. In that case since the learner would have more access to the Net, say, at a Railway Station, Bus Station, public places, markets, the consumption of our services is likely to increase manifold. So, naturally we would expand our horizons to smart education in ‘smart cities’.
Q.3 What about adopting the smart class concept?
First of all, how good or bad this concept is, I don’t know. The concept has become analogous to running an animated content in the classroom. If that is what smart class is, I don’t believe in that. A smart class is in which the complete eco-system is tailored around the learner. For example, the presence of the Wi-Fi, his device for personalized learning in that Wi-Fi environment, such an environment understands him, how his past record has been, what his today’s lecture would be, what he is going to learn from his teacher and about his assessments post-class that would guide him to the next classroom session. That’s what according to me the smart class is. Just running an animated content on the whiteboard is not smart class. The bottom line is how much a learner has understood and assimilated. That is the complete 360 degrees learning.
Q.4. Don’t you think India has been slow to this change as compared to the Western world?
Yes, initially the start has been really slow and the major deterrent was the Bandwidth (Internet). The second reason was the online payment problem (credit card penetration) in the country. Now, there are two issues; one is that the Internet is the road to run your online products and then you have to make easy for the people to buy and you don’t have to run people to banks to pay. Since the card penetration in the country is very low, so both these factors contributed to the slow change. The third reason was the supply side of teachers over here was not a problem as in the West. It has been very difficult to differentiate between the good and the bad teacher and the thinking was if the teacher is available why not face to face. So, the cost of physical teachers in the class per hour in the West was very high and also the costs of devices were also the issues. But we are catching up fast because the cost of the Internet and devices is coming down. Now we have options like Paytm and Mobikwik wallets, etc. So, these kinds of things are helping people buying from the market.
Q. 5 How far is the technology been successful in narrowing down the industry-education gap?
Ans: I don’t think any serious effort has ever started in this direction, whereas there is a big scope. For example, right from the entry level in corporate, the corporate has the wherewithal to gauge what the level of the leaner is compared to his basic skills. It could be logical skills, cognitive skills, to some extent the leadership skills and the problem-solving skills. So, they have the mechanism and keep on capturing the professional journey of the candidate. However, there is a big disjoint. If a candidate has used a platform in the past on which many of the skills were captured, say for four-five years before entry into the organization. So, we are not making use of that. Now what is happening is whatever he has done, he has invested lot of his time putting an effort on the analytics of the platform and that platform knows how the value of the candidate has been and suddenly then there is a gap. The new life cycle starts. This is the very big disconnect.
Q. 7 how do you see Edtech as a career option?
Ans: The Edtech in India has come a long way and it can be a great career option for the youth today. The key technologies that are carving out a space in Edtech sector include Data Science, Artificial Intelligence, Psychology, Psychometric, Animated/video modules, Learning and Assessment design, etc. One of the most important and revolutionary technologies that requires multiple domain expertise is personalization of learning. TCYonline.com has been one of the pioneering companies working on this area. The company employs multiple skilled teams working on digital pedagogy, data science, user experience design and mobile experience design.
