Scheme for minorities to study in foreign varsities underway

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April 17, 2015

Telegana government has said that a scheme which would enable students from minority communities to study in foreign varsities would be formalised by the end of the month.

The scheme, based on the Ambedkar Overseas Vidya Nidhi (AOVN) meant for students from the Scheduled Castes, seeks to provide a grant of Rs 10 lakh to applicants based on certain conditions. Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao recently announced a budgetary allocation of Rs 25 crore for the scheme. Sources said that the guidelines would closely resemble those of the AOVN.

An official from the Minorities Welfare Department (MWD) told the media that the file seeking the CM’s approval has already been circulated. A cabinet note would be prepared if it is to be put up before the cabinet, the source added. Explaining the guidelines, the official said, “An income limit of Rs 2.5 lakh per annum has been fixed. The age limit is 35. The funds will be released in two installments as and when the students get admission in the university. The fee of the visa will be reimbursed to the applicant once the visa and valid receipts are shown. The student will have to submit utilisation certificates.”

Furthermore, a scheme is to be announced before the fall intake by MWD. “The scheme will help a lot of our students who want to but are unable to go abroad for post-graduate studies. We will make sure that the government order (GO) is released much before the fall intake. We are certain that the CM will look into the matter at the earliest,” said MWD special secretary Syed Omar Jaleel.

Two new varsities to be set up in Gujarat

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April 17, 2015

In order to set-up two new universities in the State, the Gujarat government is taking to ordinance. In addition, it will bring changes in the geographical territories of Gujarat University (GU) and Sardar Patel University (SPU).

Media reports state that the government has decided to bring four ordinances shortly regarding the four universities. The government has decided to exclude Kheda, Anand, Panchmahal districts from the affiliation territory of GU.The new university in Junagadh will have jurisdiction over Junagadh, Gir-Somanth, Porbandar and Amreli districts, while the university in Godhra will have jurisdiction over Panchmahal, Dahod, Mahisagar and Chotta Udepur districts.

“At present, Vallabh Vidyanagar-based SPU can affiliate institutions in its 8-km periphery. By the ordinance, the government will amend the SPU Act and expand its jurisdiction to whole of Kheda and Anand districts. In the process, 22 institutes under GU will come under SPU,” a media report states.

It further states the state education department has been asked to start the process of appointment of vice-chancellors, registrars, academic and administrative staff for the two new universities. Allocation of land and financial resources is under way.

One in four special children out of school in Tamil Nadu

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April 17, 2015

Although Tamil Nadu in today’s date tops literacy drive, and edges out Kerala, children with special needs are not in a very favourable position in the state. According to a national-level survey, one in four children with special needs is out of school in Tamil Nadu. The survey was conducted by Educational Consultants India Ltd and the Union ministry of human resource and development.

There are 87,603 children with special needs in the 6-13 age group in Tamil Nadu. And, according to the survey, 23,627 of them, or nearly 27%, are out of school. Nationally, the situation is even worse, with 28% of children with special needs not attending school.

“Many schools hesitate to admit children with special needs because they lack infrastructure,” said Meenakshi Balasubramanian, projects coordinator of Equals – Centre for Social Justice, an organization working for the rights of disabled people. Experts opine that most schools in Tamil Nadu, especially private institutions, are not accommodative when it comes to children with special needs.

The NGO surveyed 36 schools in Chennai last year to check their willingness to accommodate children with special needs. It found that only around 20% schools were open to admitting such children. “Around 90% of the schools lacked basic facilities like ramps and toilets for such children. All these are a part of an inclusive environment for a special child,” said Balasubramanian. In many instances, family members were seen accompanying such children to schools, staying with them throughout. “This is considered loss of a source of income for the family,” she said.

RTE Quota to be applicable from standard 1

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April 17, 2015

Maharashtra State Education Minister, Vinod Tawde recently held a meeting with educational officers and clarified that the RTE quota for admission would be applicable only for children between ages 6 and 14, i.e. it should be for standard 1 and above.

In the earlier announcement by the State education department it was mentioned that 25% quota admission under RTE would be from nursery onwards. Until now, the RTE admission quota was given for pre-primary sections.

In a meeting recently held with the State education department Tawde said, “We want to make it clear that we can control the hike only in primary schools, and not pre primary sections. Since the RTE is applicable from standard 1 and the State can intervene only in primary sections, therefore the 25% quota should be reserved for standard 1 and above.”

He has also mentioned that the previous government has appointed the committee for deciding the fee structure for pre-primary sections and that the present government has received the report from the committee to take action on it.

The State education department will soon bring a circular on the same.

FreCher ensures revamp in teaching structure

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April 17, 2015

SKOL System has developed a 360 degree support system ‘FreCher’ for the coaching institutes that ensure freedom from developing study material, preparing tests on different parameters, evaluation & ranking and developing supplementary audio-video content for more interactive learning.

FreCher helps coaching institutes in building a trade network, enhance knowledge and skills of the teaching staff through regular training programs by specialized resource personnel. In addition, the customised study material helps institutes to do their own branding.

It is not only beneficial for teachers, but it also makes learning easier for students. It overcomes all kinds of examination blues, hectic preparation menaces and stress through a customized study package researched and developed by academicians of immense experience. Study material, notes, mock tests and all relevant information required by a student to take the exams with confidence and enthusiasm.

“Following the program which meets the requirement of a particular subject, a teacher can make interactive and impressive lecture, ignite the potential of the students and can make learning more interesting, easier and focused.” said Damanjeet Kour.

India Canada signs 13 MoUs to bolster Skill Development

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April 17, 2015

With the objective of providing job related training for India’s rapidly growing youth population, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s three day visit to Canada proved to be beneficial for the Indian education. Through international collaborations, National Skill Development Corporation (NSDC) signed 13 Memorandum of Understandings (MoUs) with 12 Canadian institutions, including 9 colleges.

The objectives of these MoUs are for starting Academies of Excellence for training trainers and assessors, and to create Transnational Standards with Canadian Sector Skill Councils. Each Canadian college will be paired with an Indian partner that’s focused on a specific sector, such as aviation, healthcare or agriculture.

The Indian partners will pay the colleges for their services, which could include curriculum development, education for Indian trainers and assistance with accreditation systems. The colleges will work through centres of excellence overseas that have been established by India’s National Skill Development Corporation.

Rajiv Pratap Rudy, Minister of State (I/C) for Skill Development and Entrepreneurship recently launched the Human Resource and Skill Requirement reports across 24 sectors in India which will serve as the baseline for all skill development initiatives being planned across the country. According to the findings of the research reports, the incremental human resource requirement across these 24 sectors is nearly 109.73[1] million whereby the top 10 sectors account for about 80% of requirements.

He said, “India is a human resource rich country which needs to empower its youth with training and techniques to build a more powerful workforce. It is only when our youth are trained and skilled as per international best practices and standards that we can become the ‘Skill Capital’ of the world. The transfer of knowledge between India and Canada will enhance our capabilities and help us become ready for jobs across both the countries and still maintain quality standards for industries. We are honoured to be partnering Canada on the skills agenda.”

Dilip Chenoy, MD & CEO, National Skill Development Corporation said, “This is another important milestone in our efforts to reap India’s demographic dividend. These MoUs are a part of the ongoing collaborations that we’ve been having with various developed and developing countries across the world such as Australia, Germany, Iran, U.S.A., UK, etc. adopting best practices from each. This will help us prepare a workforce that will be industry ready not only for India, but for the world.”

Improvising on quality of education and learning

Startup News

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April 16, 2015

Arijit Chatterji, CEO & Co-founder, Eukti Learning Solutions explains how this endeavor can improve the learning outcome by better engagement and better quality, reduce overall cost of ownership and increase the employability and enrollment.

Give us the brief of the various reasons behind starting the venture.

Eukti Learning Solutions was founded for the purpose of increasing the access to quality of education and learning. We believe that education, and especially higher education, should deliver higher quality, higher engagement and eventually better outcomes. Also, primarily easy access to good quality content is a must. It is important that lack of good faculty should not become a bottleneck for students to enhance their learning.

What are the various difficulties encountered in doing business on ground level?

A major challenge is adoption. Many Institutes are not geared to adopt new technology based solution and their comfort zone lies with chalk and talk, making it very difficult to help them grow beyond. Infrastructure is also a major stumbling block, where many institutes are not IT ready. There is the administrative challenge as well where some institutes do not allow digital devices in the college/campus.

What is the market size of the services offered by you in India at present?

We aspire to have 40 million users by 2018 and the market potential is over 12,000 crore.

What are the major benefits for organisations / Individuals adopting your solutions?

There are various benefits of adopting Eukti solutions. Those using it can improve the learning outcome by better engagement and better quality, reduce overall cost of ownership and increase the employability and enrollment.

What is the vision of your company for next two years?

We are looking forward to partner with over 100 institutions to drive this transformation

What are the various methods you are using to increase the visibility of your organisation?

Since this is a concept which needs to be understood by the senior management, we definitely engage in active decision with key stakeholders. In addition to this, we spend time in meeting various advisors in the education space.

How you can differentiate your services from competitors?

Our solution is unique and is customised for the institution. I am sure the level of customisation and personalisation that we offer is also a great value for our customers.

What are the ways of engaging the customers with you. Any special Case study?

We engage with our customers in various ways, which entails including them as thought leaders,pilot access for short time, acting as a complete solution provider. We are available all the time for any engagement.

What are the major stakeholders and sectors you are focusing on?

We are primarily focusing on higher education institutes. However, we have received interests from some of the international schools K-12 segment.

What are the various initiatives taken by your organisation to emerge as a market leader?

We have been busy engaging with our customers and that is the only initiative we have taken so far.

Feepal envisages to add immense value in fee mobilization

Startup News

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April 16, 2015

Ankur Sharma, owner of White Sepal Services opines that despite being one of the largest education markets worldwide,the level of automation and e-commerce penetration is abysmally low in the education sector. Feepal firmly believes that with the effective use of technology, the present inefficient mechanism of fee mobilization could be replaced by automated, simple yet powerful and cost effective system.

Give us the brief of various reasons behind starting the venture.

India is one of the world’s largest education markets. In monetary terms, around Rs 3 lakh crore annual transaction happens in the education sector. Ironically, unlike sectors like retail, travel, entertainment and food, the level of automation and e-commerce penetration is abysmally low in this sector. It’s astonishing that even the most renowned universities, colleges and schools in India are still collecting their fee in physical mode wherein the payers have to face issues like geographical constraints to travel to institutes, have to stand in long queues and encounter slow and manual accounting. Thousands of schools, colleges, universities and coaching classes across the country have similar arrangements for fee mobilization. Millions of payers have to face hassle in the current scenario.

Through Feepal (web portal or Android App) the payers can pay fee to our partner educational institutes in just 30 seconds from anywhere and anytime. Interestingly, for the partner educational institutes, this technological upgradation for fee mobilization is free of cost.

What are the various difficulties/ hurdles encountered in doing business on ground level?

Feepal is driven by first generation entrepreneurs and e-commerce businesses like this require a threshold scale to achieve break even. Therefore, the first hurdle is to generate working capital from the revenues.

The other hurdles is trust deficit, inertia and status quo in the educational institutes. Many educational institutes appreciate the value addition and technological improvement that Feepal brings, but are reluctant to adopt it because of trust deficit and the conventional approach of the decision makers; but now with about 100 educational institutes in our kitty the trust deficit factor is gradually getting diluted.

What is the market size of the services offered by you in India at present?

21st century India is bestowed with favorable demographic dividend. As per census 2011 the population below 25 years of age in India is about 55 crore. With literacy rate of 74%, there are around 35 to 40 crore students in various educational institutes across the country. About 13 crore of these are in urban areas where internet penetration is high. This is our target market, which includes students in preschools, schools, colleges and coaching classes.

In India, there are about 1.4 million schools, and 50 thousand institutes of these offer higher education. In terms of volume the size of Indian education market is about 3 lakh crore per year. We want to tap this market.

What are the major benefits for organisations / Individuals adopting your solutions?

As far as organizations are concerned, we work as the extended technical department for our partner institutes. Our partner institutes get additional e-commerce (web portal) and m-commerce (Android App) channels to mobilize their revenues. We are trying to provide an umbrella solution in terms of online payments for educational institutes. Thus, besides the online fee management system, we also facilitate them to sell their admissions form online and take their book store online. Feepal is a smart portal in which late fee and fines can be customized as per the need of the respective institutes. For account departments of institutes, we have a dashboard that helps them to reconcile the online payments. All these offerings are at absolutely free of cost for the institutes. We also provide customer support to the payers on behalf of the educational institute.

For individual payers,our main offerings are convenience and world class experience for paying fee. We empower the payers to pay the fee in just 30 seconds from anywhere and anytime, even on holidays. We have mitigated space and time constraints for paying fee.

What is the vision of your company for next two years?

Our operations started in July 2014, and in just three quarters we are now online payment partners for more than 100 institutes located in 11 cities across the country. In this short span of time we have successfully done the gross transactions worth Rs 3 crore on Feepal. At the current pace we believe in next two quarters we will successfully complete aggregated gross transactions worth 10 crore on Feepal. Once we reach this benchmark we will be actively looking for funding partners to scale up the business in different geographies. We would also like to have our footprint in the international markets. There are various international markets which are relatively less mature vis-à-vis India in terms of automation in education. They will be our potential targets apart from the domestic market.

In terms of technology and product, we would like to move beyond the core fee aggregation and would also like to sell other education related products and services on our portal such as summer camps for students, school uniforms, online courses, online test series etc.

What are the various methods you are using to increase the visibility of your organisation?

Presently, we have channelized all our limited resources for institute acquisition. We are using multiple sales channels for the same. For B2C visibility, we leverage upon the networks of educational institutes. We ensure our visibility in educational institutes on occasions like Parent Teacher Meet, Annual Days, College Fests etc.

How you can differentiate your services from competitors?

Our competitors are banks and payment gateways. In the context of education sector, we have a clear edge over both these competitors. Bank and gateways have online payment products but they are generic in nature. Feepal as a product is designed keeping in mind the need of the educational institutes.

Feepal is a plug and play kind of solution for the educational institutes. However, in order to integrate payment gateways, institutes have to incur a cost in upgrading their websites and technical upgradation. We also have provisions for admission form selling and automating the book shops of the educational institutes. Feepal Android App is the first payment App of its kind in India for the education sector. These are clear differentiators.

What are the major stakeholders and sectors you are focusing on?

We have our focus on the education sector. Our target markets are pre schools, schools, colleges, universities and coaching classes.

Apart from education, we are also trying to come up with similar online payment products for the Healthcare industry. We have already started a pilot project for revenue automation with three Bangaluru-based hospitals.

What are the various initiatives taken by your organisation to emerge as a market leader?

We want to be a one stop online payment solution for educational institutes (both e-commerce and m-commerce). Our customer centric approach and ability to design customized solutions makes us different from the competitors. Our approach is to add value in the ecosystem at zero cost for educational institutes.

We are well ahead of the market curve in terms of technological products. For instance we have recently developed India’s first Android app for the education industry where all our partner institutes shall be aggregated on a single platform.

India-Canada bilateral engagement: Education ‘key area’

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April 16, 2015

Education has been identified as a ‘key area’ for bilateral engagement by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Canadian counterpart Stephen Harper. In fact, both leaders have recognized that India is a `priority country` under the North American nation`s International Education Strategy.

In the joint statement released by the two leaders, Prime Minister Modi and Prime Minister Harper agreed to focus on greater student, faculty and people-to-people exchanges, affirming that cooperation in education should focus on building the quality of human resources in both countries.

Canada’s partnership in the Global Initiative of Academic Networks (GIAN) of India to enable Canadian researchers to cooperate in learning, research and teaching in select Indian educational institutions has been welcomed. Similar is the case with the first co-funded student exchange programme through the Ministry of Human Resource Development`s Technical Education Quality Improvement Programme and Canada`s Mitacs Global ink Program.

Prime Minister Modi and Prime Minister Harper also noted the socio-economic opportunities inherent in India`s ambitious goals of skills development and welcomed the MoUs between the Indian National Skill Development Council and 13 Canadian colleges, institutes, and Sector Skills Councils in the fields of agriculture, apparel and textiles, automotive, aviation, construction, green economy, healthcare, hydrocarbons, IT, telecom and electronics, sports sector, and water.

The two leaders also agreed to renew the Canada-India MoU on Higher Education on a rolling basis.

Studying medical, dental to get expensive

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April 16, 2015

Come the new academic year, and medical and dental courses are set to become more expensive. According to media reports, the fee for undergraduate and postgraduate medical and dental courses has been increased by 10%. The government, however, is still not vocal about this hike in fees. Presently, Private medical and dental colleges have only given verbal consensus to the agreement. As per the new fee structure, the fee for an MBBS seat allotted through CET will be Rs 55,000; for a BDS seat, it will be Rs 35,000. At present, the corresponding fees are Rs 38,000 and Rs 27,000 respectively. The fee for these two professional courses has also been increased for seats allotted after the ComedK entrance test. Candidates now have to pay Rs 4,25,000 for MBBS, and Rs 2,75,000 for BDS. Earlier, the corresponding fees were Rs 3,57,500 and Rs 2,53,000 respectively. However, seat-sharing has not been decided yet. At present, the seat-sharing ratio for medical seats is 60:40 — 40% in private medical colleges will be allotted under the government quota, and 60% the under private quota. For dental courses, the seat-sharing ratio is 35:65.

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