Digital India is the need of the hour

Digital India  initiative has the potential to transform the entire service delivery system in the country. It has the caliber to induce economic activity, accelerate growth in terms of productivity, employment, and literacy even in areas that are not digitally connected. To get more insights on this, Dataquest spoke to Beas Dev Ralhan, CEO and Founder, Next Education India. Excerpts

Can you demystify Digital India?

Digital India is an idea of high speed ‘Digital Highways’ to unite the nation. This may mean ensuring quality education reaching the most inaccessible corners driven by digital learning, quality healthcare services percolating right up to the remotest regions powered by e-healthcare or cyber security becoming an integral part of our national security.

Prime Minister’s vision is to ensure everyone has smartphone and then that infrastructure becomes the backbone to deliver essential services and this connected economy will spur growth in the country.

What does Digital India mean for the Indian businesses?

Digital India is the need of the hour, it is essential that companies adopt themselves with the current trend. It is a great platform for the Indian businesses to connect with their customers and provide expected services. From Internet to short message services; it is the time to connect holistically taking into consideration all the digital sources and transform the delivery mechanism.

What is the scope of ‘Digital India’ initiative by the government?

‘Digital India’ initiative has the potential to transform the entire service delivery system in the country. It has the caliber to induce economic activity, accelerate growth in terms of productivity, employment, and literacy even in areas that are not digitally connected. The high intensity tool will transform India into a connected knowledge economy offering world-class services at a click.

What are the perks and challenges of starting up a venture in education sector?

Education is one sector with which association brings satisfaction of being a socialist and a capitalist at the same time.

While feeling proud in contributing to one of the most important pillar of the nation by participating in building and securing India’s future in the world, one can never afford to compromise on the responsibility of ownership that this sector demands.

Riding on the technology boom in the country, technology-based education consumption is becoming a trend setter in the education sector paving way for mushrooming startups in the education sector.

How has been the acceptance of technology-based education consumption?

After making its mark in foreign countries, EdTech is slowly gaining acceptance and popularity in India also. What is needed to accelerate this slow growth is a platform where all stakeholders can get the 360 degree view of every child’s need and deliver an individualized learning experience. It is essential for teachers and students to learn, un-learn and re-learn new trends in education to keep abreast of the new teaching and consumption methods respectively. Education is becoming need of the hour. Moreover, as teacher cost is increasing, productivity gains which technology brings are now resulting in better cost benefit results

What are the future trends?

Looking ahead, the future of digital education seems to be bright with more and more educational institutions and individuals adopting technology based learning, in-turn, making life easier for students and educators.

Since the digital education industry has projected a significant monetary growth in no time, therefore it’s worth taking notice of how Individual adaptive platforms become primary learning tools in future. Teacher will take up the role of mentor and school/colleges will be places to hangout for something extra (research, peer analysis) beyond primary learning or guidance.

Lastly, what do you think is the scope of digitization in the education sector?

Digitization in the education sector will ensure access to quality education in every nook and corner of the country. Broadband at multi-service centers in every village will grant access to information, quality teaching, and study material. This might be in the form of virtual classrooms, e-lectures, web conferencing, online courses or other digital learning tools with no barriers.

Hence, digitization is the cheapest scalable solution available to counter both the parallel problems of scarcity of quality teachers as well as reach to tier-3 and -4 cities of the country.