Infosys co-founder Kris Gopalakrishnan, Hexaware founder Atul Nishar invest in education startup Avagmah
The Times of India | Shilpa Phadnis | TNN | March 16, 2016 |
BENGALURU: Infosys co-founder Kris Gopalakrishnan and Hexaware founder Atul Nishar have invested in Bengaluru-based Avagmah that enables universities and distance education providers to make higher education accessible to a broader audience. Avagmah, which means understanding or intelligence in Sanskrit, was founded in 2013 by NIT Kurukshetra alumnus Karthik KS, Sankar Bora, co-founder of Myntra, and Prasad Palla, who previously worked with Microsoft and Informatica. The company has raised $5 million in funding in last 18 months. Avagmah’s existing investors including Lionrock Capital, Singapore, Ganesh Krishnan, serial entrepreneur, and Neeraj Bhargava, founder and CEO of Mumbai-based investment firm Zodius Capital have also participated in latest round.
Avagmah equips universities to enroll working professionals to pursue higher education from remote locations through its SaaS-based technology platform. About 45% of those enrolled on the Avagmah platform are from tier 2 & 3 cities. “Students pursue courses that would supplement domain knowledge, but having a degree is important to get them a job,” said Karthik. Avagmah currently works with three universities — Pondicherry University, Bharathidasan University and Los Angeles-based UCLA Extension. In the last 18 months, it has enrolled 3,651 students. Avagmah offers MBA, BBA courses and other post-graduate degrees like those in finance and human resources. The opportunity is huge as the enrollment ratio for higher education in India is 24% and the government has set an ambitious target of it to grow 30% by 2020. This would practically mean setting up of 1,400 colleges to meet the requirement, which is difficult. Gopalakrishnan said he current brick and mortar higher education system s facing major challenges of excellence and access. – Courtesy /
Avagmah: In keeping with this commitment, we work towards enabling universities and distance education providers leverage avagmah’s state-of-the-art education technology services that we call – ‘avagmah technology platform’ or just ‘ATP’. The ATP is an amalgamation of cloud-based software-as-a-service technology and managed services solutions that enables universities increase reach and appeal of their programmes. With this, we offer a complete bouquet of services that include marketing, student counselling, virtual classroom, student engagement and retention in a seamless manner. The ATP, thus furnishes universities with the desired, comprehensive operating infrastructure they need to reach, attract, enrol, educate, support and graduate students; blending technology with their core i.e. academic curriculum and faculty expertise to extend high quality degree, diploma and certificate programmes to the deserving. – http://www.avagmah.com/
A husband-wife duo is building a platform that can handle textbook preferences of 20 million students: pustakkosh.com
Yourstory.com | Vishal Krishna | 17 March 2016 |
Do you remember those college days when you had to buy those expensive academic books? The books were hardly used only for two months before the exams, or when panic was struck, in our minds, by firm teachers. After the exams, they become part of the home furniture. Worse, although they are not even coffee table books, they last in to your adulthood and manage to remind you of the sweaty nights of hard work that you train your mind to forget. What if there was a startup that made sure your future was secure and these books did not remain in your hands for life. Wouldn’t that be a good thing? Shachindra Sharma and Ruchi Sharma built Pustakkosh, an online text book rental company, around a social network for used books. Founded by the husband and wife duo, Pustakkosh aggregates curriculum books from publishers and rents it out to graduates. It also buys used books from students to add to the collection. The process is very simple. All a student has to do is to get on their platform and rent a book, which will be delivered to their campus at a convenient time. Prior to starting up, Shachindra finished his MS in Computer Science from University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA. He worked for 15 years in software product R&D and team management in MNCs like Cadence Designs Systems. Ruchi finished her MBA from Amity University, in 2006, and worked in business development and IP Management in companies like Jubilant Organosys.
The genesis and the business
While shifting homes, in 2011, they realised that they had a huge collection of college books. Many of them very sparingly used during their MBA, Engineering, and MS courses. “The costs of these books would have escalated many times today and that’s when we realised the entire student community may be looking for cheaper seconds on a rental basis,” says Ruchi, Co-founder of Pustakkosh. Most of the books are needed temporarily in higher education streams and students need not buy these expensive and heavy (by size) books. Going on a rental basis brings down the cost to only 25 per cent, of the cost of owning a book, for the entire year. Towards the end of 2011 Ruchi began piloting, in Amity University, the idea of renting books. “We received an overwhelming response, in fact many orders were received on the first day itself,” she says.
After starting the business in Amity University, they expanded the model locally to another couple of Noida-based institutions. Their pilot found that around 65 per cent of the college students began to get on to their platform. Pustakkosh has about one lakh users and over 30,000 transacting customers every year. Although the business has scaled in the Delhi region, it is yet to hit a million dollars in revenue. But the duo maintained that the business is profitable and they shy away from disclosing revenues. This is how the business works.
- When students rent books from Pustakkosh, they pay a security deposit along with the rent. The deposit is returned as soon as the book is returned.
- For students who do need books for ownership, the company provides an option of buying pre-rented books, marked for sale, which again brings down the cost. This option is available to students across India.
- Students can sell their books to Pustakkosh too.
- The startup works with leading distributors and publishers to predict the obsolescence of certain books. Besides publishers, they work with college professors to forecast inventory needs and ensure that institutions need not create any other resource for books for students.
The bottlenecks
- The business is dependent on logistics boys to deliver and pick up books. Initially, logistics posed a big bottleneck because courier companies would not serve a startup company. Based on customer analytics they came up with innovations, like fulfilment centres, closer to colleges, which helped them overcome the challenge of working with courier companies.
- Digital content: The company needs to move beyond physical books.
The market size is huge for the book rental business. According to AICTE, India has one million engineering graduates, and more than five million graduates from other streams passing out each year. The country has at least 20 million students at any given point in time who have enrolled in colleges. Around 60 per cent of the graduates are from Tier 2 and 3 cities, and the opportunity for book rentals in these cities is huge. The competition for Pustakkosh is the 3,00,000 kirana book stores across the country. Flipkart and Amazon India are not competition in the direct sense. But the two e-commerce giants focus on selling books and not in renting them. The duo wants universities to focus on teaching and in turn they want Pustakkosh to become the book sourcing hub for all students in India. Presently, the business has scaled only in the Delhi and Noida region. They must scale up soon. – Courtesy
www.pustakkosh.com : Rent Books| Buy Books | Sell Books | Second Hand Books
40 engineering colleges to be shut down this year in Telangana
THE HANS INDIA | March 16,2016 |
Hyderabad: About 40 private engineering and polytechnic colleges, that are offering programmes in engineering, polytechnic, management and computer applications, are on the verge of closure in Telangana.
- Lack of students, strict implementation of rules compel closure
- More will be closed once govt clears the fee reimbursement dues
The All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) which had called for opening and closure for colleges has received about 40 applications for closure from private managements from Telangana. That apart, more than 300 colleges have approached AICTE for reducing intake for undergraduate and postgraduate courses for the next academic year citing non-availability of students. According to sources, not many college managements were inclined to start new colleges in the next academic year 2016-17 as there were no takers for engineering programmes. While there were 86,313 convenor quota seats in 228 colleges, only 53,347 were filled and more than 29,000 remained vacant during 2015-16 academic year. Besides, five colleges registered zero admissions and 29 colleges registered single digit admissions.
The strict guidelines laid down by the Jawaharlal Nehru Technological University Hyderabad (JNTUH) for affiliation has compelled the college managements either to close or to go in for slash in the intake. Sources said the private college managements were apprehensive that they may not get their due share of fee reimbursement arrears from the government. “More number of colleges is likely to be closed once the government releases fee reimbursement arrears,” said the owner of a private engineering college. A member of Telangana Private Engineering and Professional Colleges Managements Association said the government had assured the colleges to clear the tuition fee arrears by the end of March. According to sources, the colleges should pay Rs 3 lakh and have no objection certificate from the university concerned for shutting down. “After verifying documents, colleges will be inspected. If everything is satisfactory, colleges will be allowed to shut down,” said sources. – Courtesy
Skill Development ministry emphasis for ITIs equivalent to class 12: Rajiv Pratap Rudy
IIFL | India Infoline News Service | Mumbai | March 16, 2016 |
As engineering colleges down shutters, is a dream ending?
25,000 seats are lying vacant in Karnataka state, and the situation is no different elsewhere
A decades-old trend among students to make a beeline for engineering colleges to graduate from is on the wane. That is what statistics of student intake and its consequences on the economics of engineering colleges in the state reveal. In fact, at least seven such colleges have shut down in the recent past and more could follow suit, according to sources in the collegiate public state university of Karnataka, the Visvesvaraya Technological University. Speaking to Bangalore Mirror of the change in students’ choice and its consequences, a VTU official predicted that of the 205 engineering colleges in the state only 150 could sustain the decline in their demand in the next few years. “It will not be surprising if as many as 50 colleges shut down due to reduced student strength,” the official said.
Going a step ahead, Karnataka Unaided Private Engineering Colleges Association (KUPECA) secretary MK Panduranga Setty said, “If things go the way they are, apart from 25 colleges, all others will shut shop.” So, why are engineering colleges doomed? Analysts say the result is because of a combination of issues plaguing engineering colleges. “For an engineering college to break even, it needs to have an intake of at least 300 students. There are too many colleges resulting in the intake not even crossing 100 in many colleges. One college had to make do with an intake of just six students,” said Setty. “The pay structure is also very high. We need to cough up at least `1 lakh to hire a faculty with PhD. Now, with the seventh pay commission in the offing, salaries may go through the roof. Around 25,000 seats are lying vacant in Karnataka. The accreditation process being made mandatory is only adding to our woes. “Recurring expenditure and enhanced HR is worsening matters. For example, in RV College of Engineering alone, the cost per student is `3.8 lakh. Quite a few colleges are coming up for sale, which industrialists are eyeing to be able to utilise for their land and structural value. The future certainly looks bleak,” he added.
The opinion of former VTU vice-chancellor K Balaveera Reddy is no different. “Earlier, we used to have a single CET with a provision for non-Karnataka students. With the present multiple entrance tests and increase in number of colleges in neighbouring states, the number of non-Karnataka students here has hit the intake and finances of our colleges,” he said. The bleak scenario is not limited to Karnataka alone, as the same is the case with the neighbouring states. Around 30 engineering colleges in Tamil Nadu and 50 in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana face closure. Sources say, the poor job market and lower demand for IT courses is another reason for the poor outlook for engineering colleges. On the other hand, the recent trend among students to opt for BCom is not doing engineering colleges any favour. However, Reddy sees a ray of hope as he says, “If we can bring back the single CET system and intake non-Karnataka students in large numbers, our colleges can be revived.”- Courtesy
NITI Aayog suggests roadmap to allow foreign universities in country
Economic Times | By PTI | March 14, 2016 |
NEW DELHI: The HRD ministry today said that the NITI Aayog has suggested a roadmap involving a four fold effort on the issue of allowing foreign universities to set up their campuses in the country. In a written reply to a question in the Lok Sabha, HRD minister Smriti Irani said the NITI Aayog has opined the roadmap would involve raising educational standards, attracting investment, leveraging India’s soft power and strengthening regulation. She also said that the UGC has proposed fresh regulation for promotion and maintenance of standards of academic collaboration between Indian and foreign educational institutions with a view to streamlining its regulations in the matter. The minister also said that during the consultation process of the new education policy, states were requested to give their views on various themes, one of which is “Internationalisation of Education.” – Courtesy
LearnEngg.com: Delivering engineering content across, the 3D way
The Hindu | VISAKHAPATNAM | March 13, 2016 | |
In a major move to address the core issue of embedding work skills along with the curriculum and making the engineering graduates job-ready by the time they step out of the institution, Andhra University College of Engineering launched 3D models in the classrooms on Saturday. Compiling a 45-hour-long content for each subject, the 3-dimensional medium ‘Learn-Engg’ of Info Plus Technologies Limited caters to streams such as Triple-E, Mechanical, Electronics and Communication, Computer Science, Information Technology, and Civil Engineering. With a team of 200-plus retired Professors from renowned universities across the nation designing the content, the customised digital platform aims at enhancing the retention capabilities of the students through 3D visualisation. “Though 70 per cent of the engineering syllabus is common across the nation, 30 per cent variation continues to be inevitable in the content. This will be redefined according to the needs of each university,” says S.M. Nabi, director of Info Plus Technologies Limited, adding that there is no need for internet connection to go through the entire digital content.
At present, the 3D models are launched for first year engineering students along with a few colleges affiliated to AU on a special offer. Director of the company G.V.H. Prasad says that the e-platform will be introduced to all the engineering classrooms by June. After launching the e-content, MP and BJP State president K. Haribabu said that the avenue provides a new learning experience to students. Vice-Chancellor (in-charge) E.A. Narayana and Principal of AUCE Ch.V. Ramachandra Murthy said that the alternative method of teaching was sure to strike a chord with students and leave a lasting impact on them. – Courtesy / http://learnengg.com/index.html
India and MIT: How we became a technological force to reckon with
First Post | by Rohini Nair | March 12, 2016 |
The year was 1882 and a young man from Pune, Keshav Malhar Bhat, was on his way to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the United States of America. He studied there for a year, before returning home. It would be 20 years before the next Indian student would be enrolled at MIT. When they did, however, the floodgates opened. Over the course of a century (and a few decades more), several prominent Indians would study at the prestigious institute. Among the early pioneers, most would return and play an important part in making India a force to reckon with in the world of technology. Among these were Lalit Kanodia and FC Kohli (of TCS fame). Other MIT alumni like Anant Pandya (who spearheaded the Vaitarna Project; to double the water supply to the city of Mumbai), architect Charles Correa, Durga Bajpai (who designed the Jehangir Art Gallery in Mumbai), and the heirs of prominent business families, like Adi Godrej and Aditya Birla, made their own contributions.
The story of how these Indians went on to study at MIT is as interesting as what they managed to accomplish when they returned home (this, in an era when they got little or no recognition for their efforts, and certainly didn’t have as much opportunity for financial reward). It is also the subject of Prof Ross Bassett’s book, The Technological Indian. Bassett was in Mumbai this week, giving a talk at the Godrej India Culture Lab, and he describes how he got started on this quest to trace how MIT helped shape the “technological Indian”. It was about 13 years ago, when Indian software firms, Indian technologies and technocrats were making news that Bassett (who has always had a deep interest in India) began to wonder: How did a people of whom the Britishers said in the 19th century, “The Hindoos are not a mechanical race” change that perception so completely over the next century?
Bassett’s research (which took over 13 years) began with the IITs. In a visit to the library at MIT, however, he came upon the commencement announcements of students. It listed their names, the places where they came from — and there were quite a few Indians among them. Barrett describes it as finding “1300 mini-biographies” and asking himself, “Would these tell us something about India?” That Keshav Malhar Bhat had been at MIT all the way back in 1882 was an interesting finding, but Bassett wondered, “Was it just an outlier?” Or was there a back story that would provide some context to Bhat’s being at MIT a whole 20 years before his other countrymen got there? In the hope of answering that question, Bassett focused on Bhat’s hometown Pune, and found that a prominent resident of that city — Bal Gangadhar Tilak — might have had something to do with the student’s decision to go to MIT. Going through over 30 years’ worth of Tilak’s newspapers — the Mahratta in English, and the Kesari in Marathi (Bassett jokes that his task was made a little easier because “these were weekly publications”) — the professor found that MIT had been praised highly within their pages.
Nineteenth century globalisation — characterised by steamships, thetelegraph, steam printing press etc — brought news from all parts of the world to India, and the Mahratta was avidly covering the technological developments of the day (in addition to its criticisms of the British, of course). There was perhaps a sense that India was being left behind, Bassett believes, which might have reflected in an editorial in the Kesari on the “need for an industrial school which would teach (Indian) students western skills”. That editorial would end by asking permission to “introduce readers to the world-renowned Massachusetts Institute of Technology”. Another three-part series in the Mahratta would also focus on MIT, and call it “the best-conducted institute in the world”. During World War II, as large numbers of American soldiers poured into India, an American library was set up in Mumbai. Among the titles here was a catalogue on MIT. Bassett says that the trained librarians deputed here reported that “Indians had a lot of interest in learning about America, and about technical education in America”.
If Tilak was a fan of MIT, there was another national leader who also had close ties to those studying at the Institute. Bassett tells us that right from the late 1920s to the early 1940s, a cluster of students enrolled at MIT had connections to Gandhi. Among these were Trikamal Shah — the registrar of the Gujarat Vidyapeeth and a Gandhian who went to MIT in 1926 to study electrical engineering. “He was the leader of the Quit India strike at Tata Iron and Steel in 1942 and was imprisoned for 18 months,” says Bassett. The other was Bal Kalekar, the son of Kaka Kalekar. Bal was raised at the Stayagraha Ashram, and walked alongside Gandhi during the Salt March. When he wanted to study at MIT, he wrote to GD Birla asking for his support — Bassett reveals that Gandhi himself edited Bal’s letter. Life wasn’t easy for these early students at MIT. “For Trikamal Shah, his time at MIT was rather difficult. He was married and had a young child back in India. He was much older than the other students — in his late 20s — and an introvert. He didn’t know much about American culture. He was a vegetarian and there were no Indian restaurants in Boston or Cambridge. He was also getting into debt by going to MIT. It was a challenging time, but he continued,” says Bassett.
Others, like Anant Pandya, had a somewhat smoother time. “By the late 1930s there was a larger group of Indian students who had an active social life with one another,” explains Bassett. When Pandya returned to India, he held a string of important positions: He was the first Indian principal of Bengal Engineering College in 1939, headed Hindustan Aircraft. Unfortunately, Pandya was killed in an automobile accident in 1951. In later years, the Indian graduates of MIT would go on to play a leading role in setting up IT companies that would do business on a global scale – TCS, Datamatics, Patni, and Bassett believes, Infosys as well (in an indirect way, since it was set up by those who had previously worked at Patni). Tracing how that came to be, Bassett says, “The modern computer was created to a large extent at MIT between 1945-70. Lalit Kanodia was among the students who were here during this time. In 1965, when Kanodia came back to India from MIT, he did a short stint with the Tatas and then convinced the company to let him start a computer operation. He hired two other MIT grads and set up TCS.” Another MIT alumnus would take on Kanodia’s mantle at TCS, in 1969 — FC Kohli. “Kohli played a crucial role in developing the IT industry as one that could win business from the United States,” says Bassett, before highlighting another prominent MIT graduate’s achievements: “During the 1950s and 1960s, SL Kirloskar worked to develop a business that could sell products globally. He also helped to make Pune the center of the mechanical engineering and automotive industry.” By 1977, TCS’ reputation had grown so strong that European computer professionals came down to India to “train with the best”. It was quite the morale booster for a country that had lived through the Emergency just two years ago.
The tide, however, was turning. By 1965, America had changed its visa regulations, and under less discriminatory laws, more Indians were able to stay back in the US. They did — setting off the phenomenon that has been called the “brain drain”. But from those years when the MIT-trained students were still returning home, Bassett has an interesting anecdote: A luncheon at which Jawaharlal Nehru had American ambassador John K. Galbraith as his guest. This was in 1961, when IIT-Kanpur had recently been set up, and Nehru was talking about the influence he hoped MIT would have in shaping it (Nehru had visited MIT back in 1949 with his sister. Incidentally, the “Corridor of Infinity” at IIT-Bombay is a replica of the one at MIT. And when GD Birla wanted to set up his Birla Institute of Technology and Science, he also had MIT in mind). Indira Gandhi was present as well at the luncheon, and mentioned that MIT was among the colleges her son Rajiv hoped to attend. Obviously, he never did. – Courtesy
Develop green campuses, UGC tells universities
Ishita Bhatia | TNN | March 11, 2016 |
MEERUT: To promote green cover and enable its affiliated universities to be energy efficient, the University Grants Commission (UGC) has asked them to send proposals so as to develop green campuses under the ‘Development of Solar Cities’ programme. A circular in this regard has been issued by UGC secretary Jaspal S Sandhu. The project under the ministry of new and renewable energy aims at minimum 10% reduction in projected demand of conventional energy at the end of five years. This will be done once colleges are shortlisted following which energy efficient measures will be implemented on the campus. As per the plan, measures such as energy-efficient street lighting system with proper control, low-energy fixtures, energy-efficient pumping system, energy-efficient motors and use of energy star rating equipment will be carried out on varsity campuses.