The COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in an acceleration of earlier EdTech attempts to provide students with an engaging and comprehensive learning experience through digital platforms.
However, it is impossible to succeed in this endeavour without considering the presence of a significant learning gap in the country. A wide array of digital and hardware solutions is being brought into the EdTech industry. Still, these products are not reaching many potential customers – that is, the students in rural areas of India who, arguably, need it more than their urban peers. Why? Because of inadequate digital as well as internet penetration in rural and remote regions of India.
While mobile and internet penetration is taken for granted by those living in major cities of the country, many of the population is still only dreaming of uninterrupted connectivity. According to TRAI reports, more than 500 million people in India still have access to only a 2G connection. Most people from this section belong to rural areas.
This disparity, on the one hand, has made the creation of EdTech models specifically for urban areas possible for new-age B2C players. However, in the rural sector, these companies cannot be expected to single-handedly design or sustain such models. The lack of necessities such as electricity, connectivity, and related paraphernalia and infrastructure in rural areas restricts the effectiveness of B2C EdTech solutions, thereby contributing to the widening of the already alarming educational gap.
The solution, then, lies not with the B2C companies alone but in the dynamic synergy between private and public stakeholders of the education system.
How public-private partnerships can help India overcome the digital divide
One approach to dealing with the issue of accessibility is for EdTech companies to work in tandem with institutions capable of providing the necessary support and infrastructure. These include state governments, schools, and non-government organizations. While this conjoining of hands requires patience, perseverance, and a realistic view of its long-term nature, it can help players adapt existing sources of knowledge-sharing and communication into an appropriate format that can support online education without the need for cutting-edge tools.
This is precisely the route that some new-age EdTech companies are taking by using messaging platforms such as WhatsApp and Telegram to reach out to the massive underserved section of students in rural and remote areas. There are many advantages to this innovation.
For one, WhatsApp is among the most popular messaging platforms in the country with an extensive reach – even in remote and rural regions. A major reason behind its popularity in India, home to its largest user base in the world, is that it is extremely easy to operate.
Apart from being capable of running on extremely affordable entry-level devices, it also consumes minimal mobile data, thus reducing the costs of the internet. Owing to its immense familiarity among the user base beyond tier-1 regions, a WhatsApp-based EdTech tool is among the most optimal resources in the rural and remote Indian context available at present.
Another such tool is television. Besides being a source of entertainment, it can also be used for the dissemination of information and teaching-learning modules. The upside of using TV as the vehicle for driving digital learning is apparent: like WhatsApp, it is nearly omnipresent in India and, being an old technology, most Indians are familiar with it.
These sources of knowledge are much more easily available in rural areas of the country than applications on high-end laptops, computers, or tablets. Familiarity with technology is a crucial element in driving its adoption when it comes to the less “tech-savvy” demographic – and both TV and WhatsApp enable EdTech players to leverage this fact to their advantage.
EdTech for Naya Bharat
The collaboration between EdTech companies and government and non-government bodies and institutions is a promising prospect in the post-COVID scenario. Digital tools and online learning are here to stay, even as educational institutions gradually return or plan to return to regular classrooms. Internet-based products and solutions will continue to be used in coordination with offline teaching modules.
Against this backdrop, leading EdTech companies are launching initiatives aimed at catering to the less privileged sections of the student population, especially those enrolled at government and affordable private schools in both rural areas and underdeveloped urban areas. In the wake of the pandemic, innovators in the space have been modifying their products to bring practical, efficient, and comprehensive online education to more and more students in India.
Some EdTech players, for instance, are deploying conversational AI bots to bridge the gap between human and computer language, thereby making communication between students, teachers, and parents easier and more natural.
In this manner, rural students and teachers can also avail of high-quality EdTech products through conversational, omnichannel, and multilingual AI bots integrated with WhatsApp, Telegram, and Smart TVs. And, in line with the adage that “necessity is the mother of invention,” the urgency of challenges in the rural sector is driving noteworthy innovations in the EdTech world in precisely this direction.
—Shashank Pandey is Co-founder at ConveGenius Group. Views are personal.
