Cisco has collaborated with EDUGILD, India’s first EdTech accelerator, to explore opportunities in supporting startups in this domain.

As a part of the collaboration, Cisco would guide the startups accelerated at EDUGILD with technology roadmaps and beta testing, wherever such facilities are available in India. On a need basis, the collaboration will bring together mentors in edtech space and leverage their networks to popularise the cause.

Sanjay Kaul, Managing Director-India & SAARC, Cisco, said, “Cisco is committed to enabling innovation that is aligned to the Digital India vision. As a large organisation, we can’t do too many things, which is why, we remain on the lookout for innovative ideas which help us not to miss any market transition opportunities.”

EDUGILD, set up by the Maharashtra Institute of Technology, currently houses four startups working in different areas in the education and technology space. Rishi Kapal, Chief Executive, EDUGILD said, “Edtech is not just e-learning but covers a lot of other aspects. We received 300 applications and out of which we selected four as we are focused on creating quality organisations.”

The companies selected are Instafeez, Classboat, Simulanis Solutions and Gradopedia. Instafeez is working at changing how fees are paid. Classboat enables to book non-academic classes online. Simulanis Solutions is working in the augmented reality space. Gradopedia simulates job profiles in advance for graduates. They will undergo a four month acceleration process at EDUGILD during which time they’ll receive seed funding, access to mentors and testing facilities.

Oracle, global software and cloud major, unveiled three big ticket investment plans, keeping its commitment to expand further in the country, to give a boost to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ‘Digital India’ initiative.

Safra Catz, CEO, Oracle, after meeting the PM in New Delhi on February 12, announced three major initiatives that include a state-of-the-art Oracle campus in Bengaluru, nine regional software and technology incubation centres across the country and an initiative to train over 500,000 Indian students every year.

Catz said, “Increasing diversity and creating opportunities for women in technology starts with investing in STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) and computer science education for girls.”

She noted that student learning and training has been a focus at Oracle for more than 20 years, and the organisation is expanding the curriculum to include girls-only programmes.

Oracle Academy currently partners with more than 1,700 educational institutions in India to advance computer science education and drive knowledge, innovation, skills development and diversity in technology fields.

Akshaya Patra Foundation, a not-for-profit organisation working towards eradication of hunger and illiteracy, has expressed concern over the current literacy scenario in the country, blaming it on below-the-mark budgetary allocations to a great extent.

Ajay Kavishwar, Head – Communications, says India’s literacy rate has perennially continued to be a drag factor for the nation. With 287 million illiterate adults and 1.4 million out of school, India’s education system is standing on a slippery ground. This is a direct consequence of India’s decreased GDP spent on education (3.3 per cent) as against the global average of 4.9 per cent, he adds.

The Akshaya Patra Foundation was started in the year 2000 to address two of the most immediate challenges India faces – hunger and education.

Kavishwar further says that India is also placed on the lowest rung when compared to its BRICS counterparts, who too spent an average of five per cent of their GDP on education. The predicament of India’s education sector, especially school education, has been further hit by decreased expenditure in budget allocation for children education, development, health and protection from Rs 81,075.26 crore in 2014-15 to Rs 57,918.51 crore in 2015-16.

“Threading from this, a vehement need to focus on education as one of the most significant public sector reforms is the need of the hour. Akshaya Patra strongly believes that the Union and the state governments should arrive at a roadmap to initially achieve a competitive spend matching the world average by investing more in school education and declaring the same as a national priority area core to the progress of India,” he adds.

Lemon School of Entrepreneurship (LSE) has announced the launch of its Spring 2016 Programme in “Global Programme in Experiential Entrepreneurship and Innovation” at Nagpur Campus. India’s first experiential entrepreneurship programme launched last year by Lemon School of Entrepreneurship, been fairly successful in terms of launching new start-up organisation.

Deepak Menaria, Mentor, Innovator and Idea-Change Catalyst, Founder & Chief Idea Farmer, LEMON School of Entrepreneurship said, “Last year our Monsoon 2015 batch was first-of-its-kind of experiential entrepreneurship course launched by any Institute in India. We were fairly successful in creating new breed of entrepreneurs, who are already into action and piloting their own start-ups as they complete their course. We are happy to look at more such candidates who have a passion to run their own ventures and committed to take a plunge, though in a systematic, guided and structured manner through Lemon School of Entrepreneurship.”

Entrepreneurs at LSE have started working on their start-up ventures within 4 months of the program. Some of these start-ups and their areas of interests are as follows:

• Upleap is working on career decision and passion discovery problem for school children;
• Happily Grounded team plans to use unused residential accommodation for travellers aligning their interest and flexible living options;
• CreatiFox is Design Studio and building platform for crowd sourced Indian images;
• Praccelerator is a software coding school for practical and application oriented coding;
• Pyrophyte is working on new fire retardant threads for fire safety gears;
• Flying Penguins is already catering to multiple clients for technology services;
• I-Yatra is building a new learning pedagogy through convergence of Education and Travel for specific domains through real life exposure; and
• Crafts katha is a platform for providing unique gifting options in form of handicrafts suiting the occasion.

Dr Rajeev Roy, Entrepreneurship Educator and Chief Gardener with LSE says, “Lemon School of Entrepreneurship is fairly exclusive and uses different pedagogies as compared to the best B-Schools in the world. A unique course delivery approach that focuses on doing and self-discovery rather only reading or teaching through traditional methods provides a closest to reality training and simultaneously creates an opportunity to develop one’s own venture. This USP of Lemon School of Entrepreneurship, we hope will continue to add aspiring entrepreneurs into our fold.”

Lemon School of Entrepreneurship also announces the admission for the prestigious Spring 2016 batch for GP E2I (Global Program in Experiential Entrepreneurship & Innovation) at LSE. The programme would address various aspects of venture creation, ideation, validation and real life immersion, technology usage apart from knowledge based management subjects. Lemon programmes have no qualification restrictions and are open for Indian as well as International candidates. Admissions are open for the new batch and the last date to apply is February 29, 2016.