By Amol Dani
Today is India’s first-ever National Start-up Day – and the celebration is well deserved. For a country that had fewer than 500 start-ups in 2006, it has come a long way, becoming the world’s third largest start-up ecosystem with more than 84,000 start-ups. But the real measure of success lies in their impact. Not only have start-ups created jobs and business opportunities, they have helped the country tide through some of its biggest challenges in recent years, from demonetisation and the pandemic to, now, the ongoing global recession.
Edtech, in particular, has played a major role in enabling this growth and resilience. By ensuring that the workforce had easy access to skills, it helped India Inc keep pace with the dynamic, evolving, and rapidly growing skillset demand in the modern workplace, with its constantly shifting job roles and the sheer volume of new skills required.
However, to remain a key growth driver for India, the sector must take this opportunity to reflect upon its journey, from its milestones and accomplishments to challenges and struggles.
India and Edtech 1.0: Identifying the impact and acknowledging the limitations
Edtech greatly improved access to learning and knowledge acquisition across all levels. Students used digital tools to supplement their offline learning, as well as to overcome geographical barriers that traditionally limited access to a better quality of education. These benefits also extended to the workforce, with Indian professionals acquiring the skills they needed to not only function better in their current roles but also to take on newer roles and responsibilities.
In essence, Edtech 1.0 popularised the adoption of digital learning tools as a viable way of continuing and augmenting academic education and professional growth. However, there is a need to step the game up a notch to address newer white spaces that have emerged due to growing digitisation.
Take, for instance, the growing gap between academia and industry. The rapid pace of technological innovation is driving widespread business transformation at such a clip that, often by graduation, new entrants in the workforce find their learning already outdated. With tech advancements and changing market trends creating new skill requirements at an unprecedented rate, this disconnect is only becoming more prominent, leaving professionals to play catch up.
Another major challenge that remained unaddressed is the lack of a guided learning ecosystem that empowered the learner. While professionals were aware of the most in-demand skills in the market, there were no frameworks in place to help them understand which skills were the most relevant to their current roles and future job aspirations. As a result, the utility for upskilling for the learner was often less than optimal.
As the next natural progression of India’s edtech ecosystem, Edtech 2.0 addresses these key issues by bridging the gap between academia and industry, between skills and application, and between education and employability.
Understanding Edtech 2.0: The differentiation, the outcome
The core concept behind Edtech 2.0 goes far beyond the mere aggregation of academic content or pure play digital delivery tools. Instead, it aims to build on the good work done within the edtech landscape so far to lay the foundation for its future.
The biggest difference, perhaps, is the shift from program-centricity to learner-centricity. Instead of focusing on which upskilling programs are the most in-demand, this approach puts the learner at the heart of digital learning by contextualising upskilling to the individual’s stated and unstated goals.
The high level of personalisation that this purpose-driven, value-conscious learning introduces into the upskilling experience improves not just the overall efficacy of the program but also nurtures a culture of lifelong learning. With a clear path to guided upskilling, aligned with their desired career milestones, laid out in front of them, learners are incentivised to adopt a repeat learning behaviour to fuel self-growth and success.
All of this feeds into a virtuous cycle where learner-focused pedagogies empower individuals to take charge of their learning needs and update their skillsets on a regular basis. In doing so, professionals remain keenly aware of the changing skills requirement in the ever-evolving modern workplace and, instead of playing catch up, can proactively make more informed upskilling decisions to supercharge their career trajectories. This, in turn, will create a credible workforce that can power and accelerate India’s economic engine and solve some of the most burning professional and skilling challenges that are impacting industries and the economy at large.
As it celebrates its first National Start-up Day, India stands at a curious crossroads. The next phase of its growth and success, and that of its start-up ecosystem, could well be defined by Edtech 2.0 – because a future-ready, digital-first India will need skills. A recent report by Monster.com projected that, within the next five years, 40% of Indian professionals will need to be reskilled while nearly two-thirds (60%) will require upskilling. The need is there, as is the determination – and Edtech 2.0 will guide the way.
The author of this article is co-founder, CEO, Keybridge Global Education. Views expressed are personal.