Business Model for Setting up Affordable Virtual Schools for Imparting

Primary and Secondary School Education in India

Area: Business Policy

Semester 4
Group Project Proposal

by

Amit Shukla
2235230
Mob.:9513007661

and

Tuhin Sengupta
2235953
Mob.: 9845137433

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About the students:

Both Amit Shukla and Tuhin Sengupta are students of ePGP batch 1 (2017-19), currently into the fourth semester of
the program.

Amit works with TCS Financial Services, currently heading TCS BaNCS Base Components (Technology
Development) and has 18 plus years of experience in IT, managing banking transformation projects and
architecting core banking digitalization.

Tuhin works with Tally as Chief Architect, designing and building one stop ERP solutions for Indian markets. He
has around 20 years of experience in IT as solution, integration, application and infrastructure architect for large
scale digital projects.
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Project Guide: Submission Date: 15th April 2019

Prof. Amit Karna
Business Policy
Chairperson, Placements
IIM Ahmedabad
Introduction:
A look at the percentage of children in government schools in Standard V who can read Standard II
level text for a period of 2008 to 2018, tells the sad story of India’s education system. As per ASER
(Annual Status of Education Report (Rural)) 2018 report, the percentage looks abysmally low across
the nation with some states not showing any signs of improvements despite increased government
spending in the sector.

Table 1: % Children in government schools in Std V who can read Std II level text, 2008-2018
Source: ASER 2018 – Rural [Date of publication: January 15, 2019]
2008 2010 2012 2014 2016 2018
India 53.1 50.7 41.7 42.2 41.7 44.2

States performing below national average

2008 2010 2012 2014 2016 2018
Assam 40.9 42.6 33.3 30.6 32.2 33.5
Madhya Pradesh 86.8 55.2 27.5 27.5 31.4 34.4
Uttar Pradesh 33.4 36.0 25.6 26.8 24.3 36.2
Jharkhand 51.9 48.4 32.5 29.1 31.4 29.4
Bihar 62.8 57.9 43.1 44.6 38.0 35.1

The above figures are reflective of the learning levels of the students at India level and in some of the
states who haven’t being doing well in education. The learning levels in any country are representative
of the effectiveness or productivity of the education system in that country. A further breakdown of
these figures between the government schools and private schools will help us understand about the
area of the problem.

Table 2: % Children in Std V who can read Std II level text, 2008-2018, government vs private
schools
Source: ASER 2018 – Rural [Date of publication: January 15, 2019]
2008 2010 2012 2014 2016 2018
Govt. 53.1 50.7 41.7 42.2 41.7 44.2
Pvt. 67.9 64.2 61.2 62.6 63.0 65.1

The gap in learning levels between the government and the private schools have widened from approx.
15% in 2008 to 21% in 2018. The parents and the children seem to have identified this gap and more
and more parents are now choosing private schools for their kids. Proportion of children enrolled in
private schools in rural areas has gone up from 22% in 2008 to 30% in 2018 [Source: ASER 2018 –
Rural]. This again reflects poorly on the state of government education system in the country.
Due to the low learning levels in Standard V, students will continue to struggle as the curriculum
becomes more elaborate in subsequent standards.
There are several factors which are contributing to such crisis in the learning levels. Some of these
being:

 Low education levels of parents - Lack of learning environment at home

 Inadequate school readiness to impart education – Lack of infrastructure to support children
especially girls, lack of monitoring and feedback mechanism, lack of quality assurance
 Conventional learning methodology which focuses more on rote learning
  Paucity of appropriately trained teachers – Unwillingness among urban teachers to be posted
in rural schools, teachers in rural areas opting to stay in nearby cities and preferring to travel
daily, low motivation and lack of appropriate training for teachers in rural areas.
 Lack of a system for identifying and helping children who are not making adequate progress
in the early grades.

Though no figures are available for sub-urban areas as well as locations within urban areas which are
economically backward (e.g. slums in almost all major cities), the conditions are not very encouraging
there as well.
While the problems are abundant, this project will try to focus on one of the reasons for poor learning
levels in Indian government schools especially in rural and backward areas, i.e. the paucity of
appropriately trained teachers. We feel that the availability of well-educated and motivated teachers
can do wonders to the learning levels of a kid.
The resource pool of highly educated individuals is primarily available in the urban areas. However,
this pool of highly educated individuals is not willing to relocate to rural or economically backward
areas. This gap could be bridged through the usage of technology, where technology provides the
platform for making such individuals available for teaching in rural and backward areas.

Objectives:
The project will aim at providing affordable technology solution for ensuring the availability of highly
educated individuals for schools in rural and backward areas. A business model, including the details
about the technology solution proposed, will be developed as part of this project. The model will help
budding entrepreneurs to provide technology solutions to government or private schools as well as
enable them to set up their own schools without the hassle of recruiting or sourcing well qualified
teachers for their schools.
The detailed objectives of this project will be –
1. Build an affordable technology solution to ensure the online delivery of lectures by well
qualified teachers for schools in rural or backward areas
2. An online platform will be developed with the following objectives:
a. Entrepreneurs or school promoters will be able to approach the solution providers
for availing such a solution.
b. Platform will provide a mechanism for well qualified individuals to register as
teachers.
c. Using the platform, the solution providers will be able to develop schedules for
teachers and schools for optimum utilization of the teachers.
3. Business model for making it a sustainable proposition:
a. Cost incurred in developing such a model
b. Price of the package for the school promoters and/or entrepreneurs
c. Expected returns on investment over a period for the schools and/or entrepreneurs
d. Potential benefits for the teachers
e. Expected returns on investment for the solution providers
Scope:
1. The project will aim at assembling already available technologies to provide a solution for
delivering online lectures by the teachers in urban areas to a remote rural or backward area
having paucity of well qualified teachers.
2. Development of new technology is not the intended objective of the project, however
developing a platform for providing the details about the solution, contact information and
registration of willing teachers in the form of a website will be required.
3. The scope will be restricted to primary and secondary school education.
4. Curriculum design, defining the course content or developing study material is out of the scope
of this project.

Methodology/Framework:
The methodology to be followed will be of first developing a solution map for the end to end solution.
The solution map will include the kind of devices, technologies and software required to meet the
intended objective.
Once the solution map is finalized, the assembling and integration activities will start to make the
engine work end to end. A proof of concept will be done with dummy teachers registering and
delivering a lecture from an urban location (Bangalore) to a school in a slum area in another remote
location (an NGO school in a NOIDA slum).
The complete technical solution including the platform for entrepreneurs and teachers, the business
model and the results of the proof of concept will be documented and submitted as the project report.

Bibliography
None

Source of Data
1. ASER 2018 – Rural [Annual Status of Education Report (Rural), 2018], facilitated by
PRATHAM, published on Jan 15, 2019.
2. Website – www.asercenter.org

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