Schools in smaller towns showing interest to adopt tech: Meena Ganesh

Q&A with Pearson Education Services' CEO & MD

Pearson Education Services, which provides education solutions and services for students and teachers is hoping to clock strong growth in India, despite the weakness in the domestic economy. In an interview with Bibhu Ranjan Mishra, Pearson Education Services' CEO & MD Meena Ganesh says even schools in the remotest part of the country are also willing to spend on technology to improve their efficiency. Edited excerpts.

You are addressing a segment which is said to be recession-proof globally. What is your experience in India?

Yes, but it is certainly more so in India. Because whatever may happen, people in India continue to spend heavily on education. Interestingly in some of the other countries, more students go back to schools when there is recession, in the hope that they can get additional qualifications to get a better job.  So, sometimes education space gets a boost by recession.

Is the education sector in India turning to be a big spender on technology now?

Yes, but not as fast as we would like it to be. I can say that there is a huge amount of opportunity which is still unfolding. Of course, all the schools are now talking about technology in the classroom. More than 3,000 schools in India now use our DigiClass solutions, which help the teachers to improve the teaching process. There are about 1,20,000 private schools of which about 100,000 are unaided schools. Presently DigiClass or similar solutions from other industry players cover only 10% of the total number of classrooms. So, the market is very huge.

How can technology play a role in education sector?

While most of the solutions that are available at the moment are aimed at empowering the teachers, we are expecting to see a trend when students will actually take home many of the tablet based solutions. I think in the next 2-3 years, you will see a remarkable change. India can actually be a leader in terms of determining what kind of education solutions you can provide on the mobile platform.

How are the government initiatives helping the adoption of technology in schools?

Most of the government schools now do have an ICT lab. So students can take the help of those labs to learn computers. Slowly government is also showing interest in provide the school with digital content. The next level is making the classrooms digitized what the private schools are doing now. We have customers all across the country. But now we are getting customers in smaller towns which haven’t been heard of before.

Which are these smaller towns?

For example, there are schools in towns like Nagercoil (Tamil Nadu), Faridkot (Punjab), Baru Sahib (Himachal Pradesh) who have deployed our solutions.

What are the solutions you have for the school education?

Our DigiClass is a solution what schools can deploy in all its classrooms. Typically in a classroom, there will be a projector and an interactive white board. There also will be a PC in which the digital content can be accessed from. If it is a multi-classroom solution, then it can connect to 10 classrooms at a time. Then, we have DigitALly, which is content management solution. This will help the teachers to access relevant digital content and present it in the classroom. 

Is it financially viable for schools to afford these solutions?

Typically, installation of solutions like ours cost around Rs 2.5 lakh for each classroom. We also, based on the requirements, manage that on build-operate-transfer basis. If we manage the entire solution for a period of 5-year in a classroom of 40 students, it could cost each student around Rs 100 per month. And if the school manages to do two shifts in the same class, the cost can come down to as low as Rs 50 per student per month. This is big advantage for schools since they don’t need to invest capital up-front.

What other areas you are planning to foray in education space?

If you look at remote delivery of education through VSAT (satellite), it is really a great opportunity to reach out to inaccessible areas which don’t have quality teachers. We have started delivering that. We run a school in a place called Sohagpur in Madhya Pradesh. We use VSAT to provide coaching classes to students for preparing for IIT entrance exam.

What kind of growth you are witnessing in India?

We are a closely held company, thus don’t share our revenue figure. But we grew by 250% last year, and we expect similar kind of growth this year.