The 10 Best EdTech companies across globe 2020 by The Knowledge Review

2020 | VOL-11 | ISSUE-04

THE

BEST

ED-TECH COMPANIES

ACROSS GLOBE

2020

EDITOR’S NOTE

MAKING ONLINE LEARNING FUN AND INTERACTIVE

ombining education and technology to make learning easy for students has not been a new thing. EdTech companies have been around since quite some time with digitalisation entering into the education sphere and consequently changing the education landscape. EdTech companies have redefined how students learn and have simplified learning through Apps. The EdTech companies have diversified and percolated into various related sectors of education, viz, training or coaching professionals and employees at all levels. The pandemic has only increased the demand for EdTech companies more than ever before. The United States of America has the largest number of EdTech companies in the world followed by India, according to reports of several surveys. With the help of number of Apps suitable for all age group of students and professionals these EdTech companies are bridging

the gap between theoretical knowledge and practical skills. These Apps also help the student think on his or her own before seeking help from the tutor. The edupreneurs behind these learning solutions are generally young enterprising minds. These companies were booming long before the Corona pandemic shook the entire human race from its inertia. Now, the need for such online learning has become more pronounced. Some of the schools have tied up with EdTech companies in the recent past. The pandemic has thrown lot of challenges but also created lot of opportunities for the sector to improve, grow and sustain since the need for online education and distance learning have grown at an unprecedented rate.

The 10 Best EdTech Companies Across the Globe 2020. For the cover story we have Ouriginal that checks plagiarism by combining text-matching system with author recognition. This makes it unique in checking plagiarism and thus stand apart from its counterparts in the competitive market. We have also featured CoachHub that is coaching employees at all career levels, EarlySalary that is changing the way loans are taken in India and few others. Do read the articles curated by our inhouse editorial team and CXO standpoint as you ﬂip through the pages of the magazine. Have a great read! T R

The EdTech sector will continuously evolve with constant newer technological advancements. On this backdrop, we at The Knowledge Review, have come up with some of the brilliant companies in this sector, in our latest edition -

Sumita Sarkar sumita@theknowledgereview.com

The Complete Originality Check

08 Cover Story Article Tech Talk

The age of autodidacts: Technological revolution in education

CXO

T N O

S T N E Healthy Vibes

INTERVIEW

The Importance of Positive Teacher-Student Relationship

EarlySalary

CoachHub

Ushering in an Era of Digital Transformation in Fin-Tech and Money Lending

Enabling Personalized Coaching for Employees at all Career Levels

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THE

10 BEST

COMPANIES ACROSS THE GLOBE 2020 T R

Name of the Institution

URL

Brief

Andela

andela.com

Building remote engineering teams that work to construct and manage high performing teams

Coach Hub

coachhub.io

Enabling organizations to create a personalized, measurable, and scalable coaching program for the entire workforce

EarlySalary

earlysalary.com

An innovative money lending platform that aims to change the way loans are taken in India.

Edunguru

edunguru.com

Offering the best online education courses for preparing for IIT, NEET, SSC, UPSC

FutureLearn

futurelearn.com

Teaching new skiils online with world-class universities and industry experts

iPortfolio

iportfolio.co.kr

Transforming the way people learn and teach English

KUBO Robotics

kuboeducation.cn

Ensuring that students or teachers who do not understand technology can learn programming easily and happily

Ouriginal

plagscan.com

Checkimg plagiarism by combining a textmatching system with author recognition

Qridi

qridi.

A disruptive pedagogical tool that has power to transform learning from passive to active

Sana Labs

sanalabs.com

The global leader in the development and application of AI for learning

Voxy

voxy.com

An innovative digital English language solution that has been used successfully by hundreds of organizations around the world

Cover Story

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BRINGING MORE TRANSPARENCY IN DETECTING PLAGIARISM

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The Complete Originality Check

THE

10 BEST

COMPANIES ACROSS THE GLOBE 2020 T R

“

hat sets Ouriginal apart from its counterparts is that it combines a text matching system with author recognition.” – Andreas Ohlson, Chief Executive Oﬃcer of Ouriginal.

Also, by combining the technologies of these two companies, they plan to optimize their existing products into one solution that exceeds the performance and functionality of both single products.

With too much information available at the click of a mouse or a touch on your smart phone, plagiarism just cannot be ruled out. Despite the Copyright Act and Intellectual Property Rights Act in place, gross violations of these have been noticed.

To cut it short, together, they can address the needs of the market as well as existing customers when, and how they require it in the best possible way.

Advancements in technology led to the advent of software systems and apps that could check for plagiarism in a content. This made it easy to detect the ‘copy-paste’ matter in any text. And while there are many software programmes or apps that detect plagiarism, Ouriginal came up with a unique plagiarism detection and prevention system. It combines a text-matching system with author recognition. This innovative technology is aimed at providing fairness and help people assert their originality. The combination of Urkund and PlagScan gave rise to Ouriginal, and its users ranging from corporates, to individuals to education institutes and universities worldwide can vouch for its efficacy and reliability. Urkund was founded in the year 1999 and PlagScan in 2009. They joined hands this year with a common goal and founded Ouriginal. “Ouriginal was born out of two companies that not only developed equally good, cutting-edge plagiarism detection software but were also driven by the same goals and core values. Both Urkund and PlagScan were established by people that came from an educational background and discovered the need to protect something that is increasingly endangered by modern technologies: the freedom of every student to develop their full potential by original thinking and creative writing. This is the reason why we developed a solution to help teachers save time while correcting student’s exam papers and to safeguard Academic Integrity and the quality of education,” shared Ohlson. Ouriginal offers wide benefits for both new and existing customers: together, they are bigger and better in many aspects. By choosing the best solution and processes from both companies across all departments, they are confident of delivering ‘best of breed’ performance in many facets.

The Inspiration Behind the Concept of the Company Ouriginal wants to provide an environment in which fairness sparks personal development and enables people to strengthen their original voice. The company strongly believes that every human has great potential that just waits to be unlocked and developed. Yet sometimes, insecurities, stress, anxiety, or simply life get in the way and people tend to use short cuts. Using Ouriginal will help one assess any type of text for their authenticity and tackle questions of academic integrity at any institution. In addition, by using our solutions, educators and other users will save precious time to focus on their real work. Ouriginal aims to: • Help students learn the right methodology to prevent unintentional plagiarism • Ensure schools and universities stay respected institutions that provide highly relevant degrees • Support businesses to validate their content and guarantee its authenticity On why the company is called ‘Our’iginal, Ohlson said, “Because we believe that promoting and developing original thinking is not just the responsibility of a single person, of one single parent, one single teacher, professor, or mentor. Unlocking people’s full potential is actually OUR responsibility and our goal.” Exhibiting Quality Ouriginal is a text-matching software that can assess the authenticity and originality of any given text. This software is often used as plagiarism prevention in education institutions or as an authenticity solution in corporations. It can easily and seamlessly be integrated into already existing workﬂows and processes, either through a learning management system (LMS) or as a stand-alone solution. With its feedback and digital examination capabilities, it oﬀers a state-of-the-art solution to meet the requirements of an increasingly digitized education landscape.

Being in the business for over 20 years, Ouriginal has gained lot of insights into the market - and especially to the needs of educators. Cutting-edge technology such as machine learning algorithms allows training its software to get smarter every time a text is analysed. In the near future, ghost-writing detection and crosslanguage text matching will be some of the new features. Redeﬁning the future of the ed-tech sector Currently, education itself is redeﬁning Ed-Tech and its future – accelerated by the pandemic. This removes the stigma of Ed-Tech as a niche market. Before the ‘new normal’, digital solutions were perceived as a ‘nice-to-have’ add-on to courses and processes within an educational organization. Nowadays, digital and personalized learning tools like that of Ouriginal, are becoming essential. They are now not only important as a tool to enable online courses through a new medium but are also needed to ensure institutional quality control. This is a major shift and Ouriginal is playing a vital role in this. With the exponential growth in demand for Ed-Tech solutions, the company will be enabling new ways

of learning and teaching in a new, digitized world. Growing and Sustaining Ouriginal has been able to grow and sustain in the everchanging market by being adaptive and flexible in an industry that can be complex and rigid at times. And by putting its customer’s needs above all. To ensure it sustains its position and keep challenging the status quo, it decided to join forces and further establish one true European heavyweight on the Ed-Tech market. With their combined expertise of over 30 years in the industry, Ohlson is very confident that they are well aligned to react to developments that lay in front of them. The company boasts of an extremely talented and hard-working team behind Ouriginal from extremely diverse backgrounds, ready to tackle the future. Staying at the Top with ‘Ouriginality’ Ouriginal originated from two relatively small companies. Both companies were very customer-centric and driven to excel in customer satisfaction. Being small, both companies could react very quickly, agilely, and efficiently to customer’s wishes, needs, and demands. This has been the company’s legacy, and this is what Ouriginal continues to

do: Treating customers with respect and really caring about them. Proof for that can be found in every aspect of the customer journey and user experience. Ouriginal offers a sustainable and transparent business model that works well for customers financially and is easy to understand and forecast. The development of its features is not driven by what its engineers could develop to make the company look super-techy, but what the customers really need. The company’s thumb-rule is to listen, learn and implement. To enable customers to easily integrate the services into existing workflows and processes, the company focuses on developing reliable partnerships and support integrations. Also, with its truly European roots, it firmly believes that protecting user data should be one of its core responsibilities. Their solution is - it is up to the customer to do with their data whatever they want: Store it, archive it, or delete it – whenever they want. The customers help to keep the balance between product diversification and adapting to the evolving global education landscape while safeguarding originality in all its different shades.

Andreas Ohlson, Chief Executive Oﬃcer of Ouriginal has a long history and proven track record in the Ed-Tech industry, starting way back in 2004 when he was in charge of operations at PrioInfo, the then market-leading Nordic distributor for digital distribution of content working with most of the leading publishers. He has been CEO since 2007 and has been responsible for developing Urkund from a small Nordic player into a market leader in a sustainable and responsible way.

Overcoming Adversities Ohlson emphasises that they are here because they had the chance to develop into what they are today. They were given the chance; they have had the stamina and perseverance to get exactly here. What else does one really need than knowing that one could give others exactly the same opportunities with what one does? As former niche players in the plagiarism prevention market, it was and is the company’s driving force to safeguard integrity while inspiring originality - by listening to its customers. Every time educators provide feedback to them that Ouriginal’s tool made their life better, easier, and saves them tons of time. That is what drives the company to perform better. It’s the many success stories that keep the company moving successfully and the fact that its software is such an integral and essential part of academic life that it is part of comedy videos on YouTube and in some parts even thought of as a governmental institution. Latest Developments and Staying at Pace with Them The pandemic has of course had a huge impact on how education is managed and distributed. From the company’s perspective, they have seen a massive increase in usage since plagiarism detection is even more important when students are working from home and not sitting in a classroom. Ouriginal believes that this will accelerate a change where distance and remote learning will be more common, especially in higher education.

By combining the strengths of Urkund and PlagScan, he is now establishing a company with global presence and inﬂuence. His expertise from leading one the biggest Contact Centre operations in Sweden, where he delivered state-of-the-art customer service to both B2C and B2B publishers, is deﬁnitely a great asset in creating a global heavyweight within the Ed-Tech industry. Andreas has seen many technology shifts during his career and has managed to tackle these along with the skilled development team. This will help Ouriginal immensely to stay at the forefront, especially now in times where we see a transformation and real shift of education globally towards digitalization.

This will demand the customers to ﬁnd better solutions to craft for their needs and Ouriginal wants to be a part of this conversation to understand what it needs to improve or develop. In this backdrop, it has already started a project where it interviews quite a few of its customers in diﬀerent regions to understand better the challenges they face and based on the outcome of that Ouriginal assumes that a number of activities will follow to stay at pace. Foresight about Ed-Tech There are predictions that in 2025, the Ed-Tech industry will already overtake the healthcare industry by revenue. The Earth’s population is growing, technologies are developing further – and why should people not get the chance to learn? This is a huge opportunity, but also a big responsibility for a company like Ouriginal.

Especially in the light of the pandemic, the company notices that education per se, as well as its demands for digital solutions, has changed and increased tremendously. With the ‘forced’ demand of higher education for distance, online and blended learning during the times of the pandemic, educators are forced to face a digitized reality in their classrooms. They needed to get accustomed to a new normal in terms of teaching and online learning, and this has already changed their mindset regarding digitized learning. According to Ouriginal, there will be a huge increase in online classes and degrees from universities across the globe. Students will not need to go abroad to study for a degree. They can, for example, continue to live in Stockholm and get a degree from a university in Australia.

Future Goals In the short-term, the company’s focus is to merge its companies both from an organizational and a product perspective. This is of course a challenge, especially since the world is in the middle of a pandemic, with high usage of Ouriginal’s product and many new customers. It helped that both companies shared the same ambition and goals while embarking on this project. It is their firm belief that when they have finalized this stage, they will have an organization and a product ready to serve and support their current and new customers even better. In the longer-term, the company’s aim is to use its combined talent to improve its core product, use technology to find new areas of application - either on their own or together with their partners from within the Ed-Tech sector. They are striving to build joint products that provide their users with enhanced workflow, improved user experience, and most importantly create a better environment for students to learn and be Ouriginal. T R

“

Cutting-edge technology such as machine learning algorithms allows training our software to get smarter every time a text is analysed

“

Ohlson is convinced that within a timeframe of 5-10 years, the educational landscape worldwide will have changed profoundly. This will also have a great impact on the company as a technology and solution provider. Here, the relationship with the customers will be crucial. He believes that only if they listen to the demands of the customers in terms of new products and solutions, they will be able to serve the market and education as before. And this is exactly what Ouriginal is planning to do.

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Enabling Personalized Coaching for Employees at all Career Levels

oaching is the second-fastest-growing industry on the planet, only second to the IT industry. Digital coaching has been a rising trend in coaching, rapidly increasing year on year. In fact, a recent Hype Cycle 2020 Report by leading research and analyst, Gartner, stated the business impact of the democratization of coaching and mentoring as being “transformational for the development and engagement of the workforce.” This is exactly what CoachHub strives for, an executive coach for every employee, regardless of location or time zone. CoachHub is a leading global talent development platform that enables organizations to create a personalized, measurable and scalable coaching program for the entire workforce, regardless of department and seniority level. By doing so, organizations are able to reap a multitude of beneﬁts, including increased employee engagement, higher levels of productivity, improved job performance and increased retention. CoachHub’s global pool of coaches consists of over 1000 certiﬁed business coaches in 42 countries across six continents with coaching sessions available in over 30 languages.

booking a room etc. As previous entrepreneurs, they decided it was time to start a new venture together and combat these issues with digital coaching. CoachHub is the digital coaching provider, oﬀering holistic people development to forward-thinking companies on a global scale. Licenses are sold to organizations, allowing their employees in-app and web access to a global pool of certiﬁed executive-level business coaches. The HR dashboard then provides a company-level view of coachee progress to CEOs and HR directors, giving measurable development results and ROI. With CoachHub, employees at all career levels can now have access to executive level coaching, anytime, anywhere. Since its launching in Berlin under two years ago, CoachHub has expanded into European territories consisting of the UK&I, France, Nordics, Benelux and Southern Europe. The overall workforce has now exceeded 150 people.

Earlier this year, the company also launched its CoachHub4Good initiative, whereby it oﬀers free digital coaching to aid organizations which have been particularly aﬀected by the pandemic.

Matti and Yannis are entrepreneurs at heart, having founded several successful startups throughout their careers, with CoachHub being their fastest growing one. In fact, it has been listed as the fastest growing startup in Germany, with a goal of hitting 200 people by the end of 2020. This is thanks to them securing a total of $21m investment from ﬁve diﬀerent investors, accelerating their mission to democratize coaching to employees at all career levels.

How it all Started Having experienced the power of coaching in their previous roles at McKinsey and LinkedIn, brothers Matti and Yannis Niebelschütz co-founded CoachHub in 2018. One thing that was hindering their coaching experience, however, was the logistics around their coaching sessions – having to travel to a diﬀerent city to meet their coach,

Staying Ahead of the Curve The quality of its product is what really sets CoachHub apart from the competition and has helped propel it forward. At the core of its product lies its coaches. Its global pool of an almighty 1000+ coaches, of 30 diﬀerent languages, across six diﬀerent continents, is continuing to grow. With established partnerships with world leading

November | 2020

coaching associations, including the International Coach Federation (ICF), the applications to become part of CoachHub are growing at a rapid rate. Behind its product is its Coaching Lab, a think tank that drives behavioral research and development in the coaching space. It provides a repository of expert insights and tools to support the development of coachees, such as how to optimize their workplace performance and thrive on a personal level. Its last round of funding was invested heavily in its coaching lab, which includes some of Europe’s leading professors, psychologists, coaches, researchers and learning experts. The fact that its product is something that positively impacts and contributes to the world, is what keeps CoachHub going. Digital coaching is an incredibly powerful tool for many things, but in particular to help with November | 2020

Our vision is a personal coach for every employee, accompanying them as a guide to measurably advance their careers 19

November | 2020

THE

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COMPANIES ACROSS THE GLOBE 2020 T R

stress management, resilience and agility - all skills that are critical in today’s climate. Keeping at Pace Diversity and inclusion (D&I) are hugely important for CoachHub now. How D&I affects employee wellbeing has become all too familiar today amongst HR professionals and C-suites. The institute is currently developing a D&I coaching framework to help organizations with its D&I initiatives. Other trends, particularly in the coaching world are largely around artificial intelligence (AI). CoachHub already has its own artificial intelligence matching tool for employees to the right coach, but it will certainly continue to see AI disrupt the coaching world. Its innovative product team and Coaching Lab, together, ensure that the institute keeps up the pace with the trends both from a technology perspective and a coaching perspective. CoachHub plans on reaching a total of 200 employees by the end of 2020. Its ultimate goal is to become the leading digital coaching provider across the globe. T R

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Healthy Vibes

The Importance of

POSITIVE TEACHER-STUDENT

RELATIONSHIP

n average, a student spends almost 2000 hours per year in school. That is a significant amount of time that should be utilized well in order to ignite a student's lifetime love of learning. It is also a significant part of a student’s life, not to be wasted on unhealthy teacher-student interactions. Experts argue that a good teacher-student relationship is critically important to the direction a kid’s future takes. Some of the ways through which a teacher can build healthy relationship with each student in the classroom include communicating positive expectations, being fair when implementing rules and regulations, being caring, providing all learners with reasonably fair assessment, and developing classroom pride. Educators can also leverage strong relationships with their students to make teaching fun and effective. Healthy relationship between teachers and students can significantly boost a kid’s self-esteem, especially for the kids who are not fortunate enough to have supportive families. Here are four more benefits of establishing positive student-teacher relationship: 1. Overcoming behavioral issues Most behavioral problems in the classroom result from kids feeling alienated from the community around them. It is normal for a young kid to hate school, but it is not okay when their dislike of school starts to affect their academic record and spoils the classroom environment for other kids. You can prevent this by relating at a personal level with every kid and understanding why the problem kids behave in the manner they do. Being friendly, calm, and approachable will help you understand the socio-economic

background of every kid, so you will know how to approach every problem kid without igniting the resistance in him/her. Building a strong relationship with learners helps the kids feel like they belong - like they are a part of a bigger group and a bigger purpose. 2. Boosting academic success Part of this is the precipitation of good behavior. When you make a kid feel like at home and want to be a part of a greater purpose than just being naughty, the kid is able to repurpose his energy from being rebellious to working hard in the classroom. That will more often than not translate to academic success. Having a strong bond with your students also helps you to clearly communicate your expectations to and for each student. You are able to motivate struggling students to work hard and the bright students to outscore their current score. In this context, you can motivate them to take additional training classes such as assertiveness training that can help them improve the overall interpersonal skills and gain more self-respect. On their part, the students trust in your ability to help them, so they listen to you more and respect your orders without any resistance. They are also very comfortable consulting you whenever they encounter a hitch in their coursework. All these factors combined boosts the students’ performance. If you are working remotely, that means that you will be sending a lot of academic materials online. Thus, make sure that the students understand the technicalities of sending emails, sharing ﬁles, and converting ﬁles into pdf, and the likes. Having a holistic understanding of such technicalities will evade them being discouraged, and actually focus on mastering the material, and succeeding academically. November | 2020

About the author Tringa Bells is a physical therapist student and loves everything related to exercising and outdoor activities. She loves spending time with her family, her friends, loves traveling and coding. Her hobby is writing, and she loves to express herself through words. In her free time, she loves to take care of kids and works as a nanny. 3. Enhancing students’ social maturation The nature of rapport a kid has with the adults in his/her life determines how well his social maturation process pans out. A teacher is the non-parental authority ﬁgure the kid spends most time with. If you create a positive environment where they can grow their emotional and social intelligence, they are able to mature well in time. Remember that these kids trust and respect you when you are friendly with them, so they will always feel privileged to have such a wonderful adult in their lives. They will want to emulate you and grow into as responsible and caring as you. 4. Improving students’ mental health Healthy student-teacher relationships translate into reduced stress and anxiety, especially for the students who come from poor socioeconomic backgrounds and who experience any disorder. One such problem would be children with speech disorders, who because of their problem can be marginalized from their peers, which in turn can cause problems in their mental health. In such cases, teachers November | 2020

should support them in their speech therapy and help them get integrated into the class. Such kids might be living in neighborhoods filled with hate and crime, meaning that you could be their only source of protection they know besides their parents. Kids who suffer from learning difficulties, on the other hand, usually suffer from low self-esteem. Your love and care will help them develop a sense of self-worth; a sense of pride. That is good for their mental health. Conclusion It is not uncommon for teachers to have challenging relationships with their students, especially when the kid is rebellious and poorly behaved. However, a bad relationship only exacerbates the problem. The kids continue being rebellious, the teacher finds more reasons not to like the kids, and the kids find more reasons to not like the teacher. In the end, your career stagnates and your dreams of changing lives through teaching are shattered. You must start looking for ways to engage each one of your students in a positive way.

The age of autodidacts

Technological

revolution in 26

education November | 2020

Tech Talk

generation of autodidacts educated by the internet and leveraged by technology will starve the industrial education system. Welcome to the technological revolution in education. These are exciting times in the landscape of education. Where once the time-honoured tradition used to be sitting in a classroom or a lecture-venue, the concept of classrooms has now been thrown wide open in a way that has never been seen before. Once again, man ventures into the unknown with this revolution that the education sector is experiencing right now, and we will see the fruits of it in the coming years. How is technology changing the way we learn? Technology is transforming education in multifarious ways. From helping students to learn more anytime anywhere, empowering teachers all over the world to develop innovative instructional aides and methods, technology and digital learning are leading the way to show the world how much more we can do. • People now receive their instruction and data online and can even sit in a remote location and enjoy classes from a place totally unrelated to their subjects in a virtual classroom environment • Parents and guardians, especially of young children, can keep a closer watch on what kind of education their children are receiving. • Props and learning aids are also changing – study guides, e-books, white papers, audio books and other useful resources are fairly new and well-received methods of education. • Instructional technology – instructional technology is the branch of education concerned with scientific study of instructional design and development. The main purpose of instructional designers is to create engaging, effective learning experiences. There are a variety of models – ADDIE, Backward Design, ASSURE, etc. which focus on creating engaging and effective learning experiences for people. • E-learning also makes students naturally adept with digital technologies. Digital literacy and digitally literate professionals are in demand like never before. • Self-assisted learning – students do not necessarily have to visit a campus in order to receive a lecture or hand in an assignment. Also, students can interact with each other in a virtual space and share material, quizzes, files and so much more. • Online tutors – real life tutors are now available continually on call to assist with a problem, question or challenge. November | 2020

• AI-driven applications in education are still in their infancy, but this nascent market for AI in education is expected to reach $6 billion by the year 2025. Artificial Intelligence in education typically focuses on identifying what a student does or does not know. This helps the AI to subsequently develop a personalized curriculum for each student. As the world still reels from the devastating effects of the Covid-19 outbreak, we can observe its impact in every sector around the world. We can attribute many things to this pandemic – from the massive death toll to enforced lockdowns, from massive economic strife to supply shortages in basic amenities. But we must not fail to attribute one more thing to this global epidemic – it fasttracked the technological transformation of education in India and around the globe. The outbreak of covid-19 initially had very detrimental effects on the students’ life. In India, around 32 crore learners stopped to move to schools/colleges and all educational activities halted in India. Soon this became the catalyst for the educational institutions to grow and opt for platforms with technologies, which have not been used before. The education sector has been battling to survive the crises with a different approach and digitising the challenges to wash away the threat of the pandemic. But this transformation is a double-edged sword. The long list of advantages of technology in the educational realm also come with another expansive list of drawbacks. So, as we move into this new age in terms of education, let us examine various positive and negative effects this may cause in its wake: Pro(s): • Democratising educational opportunity – Students will now have their pick of the lot to choose from in terms of how they learn, what gadgets they use, whether they prefer a class in the audio format or the text format or the AV(audio-video) format. • Easy process in delivering the material to students along with ease of access to different resources without any trouble • Students also have the freedom to choose their preferred courses and their preferred teachers. Connects students, teachers, parents across different geographies.

• Gives students and teacher the premise to experiment and innovate • In India, with the new education policy (NEP) 2020 being implemented, students in graduate studies also get the opportunity to leave their field, if they so choose, and join another area of interest. With digital availability of many of the courses, students can use this opportunity well and make an informed decision about their future. • Flexibility of timing as courses and study material can be consumed any time of the day giving learners the longawaited right to set their timetable. • This dynamic form of education with the help of appropriate guidance can lead to dramatically deeper student engagement and boosting creativity. Visual aids and pros boosts participation. Con(s): • Children are naturally exhilarated creatures with little means to modulate their emotions and control their desires. Technology is distractive. The attention span of a child and even an adult gets diminished with digital tools. • This can also contribute to digital addiction, mental fatigue and poor modulation of neurochemicals. • Limited due to affordability and availability of tools and technologies • Being faced with technological tools can heavily affect the natural circadian rhythms of children and adults. The disruption of sleep-wake cycles come with their own host of mental problems. • Personal interaction between students and teachers or peer interactions will inevitably reduce. This can lead to poorly formed social skills • Pervasiveness of technology is also an important issue to consider • The credibility of information available online is questionable at times • Inappropriate content, video games, especially violence can impact the minds of young adults.

A futuristic school that aims at high academic excellence, and a sound value system, is what is needed. Navigating in the global world with technology and shaping students into explorers, innovators, thinkers and citizens of the future is what would count as a remarkable diﬀerence. But as we move into this new system, we must keep a watchful eye to the shape this transformation takes. T R -Aditya Umale

November | 2020

Ushering in an Era of Digital Transformation in Fin-Tech and Money Lending

arlySalary is an innovative lending platform that aims to change the way loans are taken in India. Being a new age online brand, the company brings together new credit scoring systems for superior customer profiling. In an interview with The Knowledge Review, Akshay Mehrotra, the Co-Founder and CEO of EarlySalary shares his opinions about the company, the various services it offers, various organizational policies, and its future plans. 1. Kindly tell us how your company is revolutionizing the digital money lending and fin-tech industry in India? EarlySalary is leading the digital salary advance and instant loans space and has gone on to become India’s largest mobile first consumer lending platform for salaried individuals. Currently, disbursing over 80,000 loans a month worth Rs.125 Cr, the company has already disbursed 900,000 loans. EarlySalary aims to achieve full stack credit product portfolio to cater to all customer’s need. They are also focusing on achieving customer engagement from the start of customer’s credit life cycle & growing with their needs. The company also focuses on gaining a highly scalable, tech-enabled automated underwriting & risk management system. EarlySalary successfully went on to become the preferred credit line which grows with their customer to cater to his/her life’s every need by providing: - Instant loan with tenure starting form 1 month to 3 years - Shopping loans on Amazon, Flipkart & Big Bazaar - Present in across 40+ Big Bazaar stores through feet-on-street personnel - Salary card for universal payments - Education fees payments in EMI -100+ tie-ups across the country with education institutes 2. What are the employee benefit programs initiated by your company and what steps are you taking towards employee development of client organizations? EarlySalary started with a team of around 8 people in 2015 and has reached 250 employees today. The company works towards creating a company culture that encourages a healthy work-life balance while giving creative freedom to their

November | 2020

Interview with The Knowledge Review workforce. Creating a strong, positive corporate culture helps their employees feel and perform their best at work. The success of an early stage company can be measured with their ability to attract talent from all over the world to build a next level organization. EarlySalary is one of those few companies who have been successful in attracting the best in class talent. Moreover, EarlySalary’s participation in corporate programs, where they have now collaborated with around 350 corporates encourages financial wellness at workplace and offers salary-advances to their employees. Along with the millennials, they also aim to benefit the blue-collared and entry-level skilled workers working with the corporates. 3. Please tell us about yourself. As a leader, what steps are you taking to spearhead the company towards development and prominence? I completed my Master’s Degree in Business Administration from Symbiosis Institute of Management Studies, Pune. Now I am spearheading EarlySalary along with the Co-Founder Ashish Goyal. Prior to this, I gathered 16 years of experience with brands like Future Retail Ltd, PolicyBazaar.com, Big Bazaar, and Bajaj Allianz Life Insurance Co. Ltd. My business acumen and attention to detail has assisted me to achieve the “Most Talented CMO of the Year” award in 2013 – 2014 in the retail space, by CMO Asia. In the last few years, I have led EarlySalary through various phases where funding cycles were critical, and came out with flying colors with marquee investors like EightRoads (Fidelity) Ventures, Chirate (IDG) Ventures & DHFL backing large funding rounds. Today EarlySalary has raised not only $23 Million in equity but also raised more than $50 Million in debt to build and over Rs.1500Cr have been disbursed. Growth cannot happen without building a strong team and hence at EarlySalary we have built a team of nearly 250 people comprising of data scientists, core technology developers, risk & underwriting, collections, product and marketing units which has helped them grow in a highly automated manner. Large customer acceptance is critical to any early stage business and today EarlySalary has over 9 Million app downloads, disbursed over 900,000 loans and tied-up with over 400+ large corporates along with 100+ education institutes to help kick start hyper growth. 4. What are the various loan facilities offered by your company, and what is the eligibility criteria for availing the same? The various loans are: Shopping Loans–Instant credit facility of EarlySalary made it easier to shop on EMIs and get vouchers for both Amazon and Flipkart. Whether its electronic appliances or household items - everything is accessible and affordable with our buy now pay November | 2020

later options. Travel Loans–EarlySalary doesn’t limit your travel plans with it’s no cost EMIs and partnerships with India’s leading travel agencies - Yatra and MakeMyTrip. Education Loans–EarlySalary shares the same sentiment you do for education - which is why we’re making it easier than ever to cover the cost of fees. Our program called FeEs, is designed to take the financial burden off your shoulders and allow you to provide the quality education you need, uninhibited, and uninterrupted. Eligibility – 1. Should be an Indian Resident 2. Should be a working professional/salaried person 3. Salary should be above Rs 18,000 5. In addition to instant cash loan, what additional benefits does your company provide? EarlySalary is a customer focused organization and our mission is to provide financial assistance to the underserved classes. Consumer lending is fueled by an immense rise in the young working population. Our ability to lend to young first time customers gives us a unique opportunity to create a strong niche and cater to a large underserved market potential. We believe that advisory efforts are required to help the young adults to take control of their finances, and make smart monetary decisions to ensure a prosperous and stable future. With its various product features like free monthly credit score report and providing knowledge through campaigns and on-ground activities, we try to encourage to understand their financial health and setting them on the right path towards making better financial decisions. EarlySalary believes such initiatives will go a long way to help people understand the intricacies of managing their credit well, and also pay a useful role in influencing their financial wellness. 6. Please tell us how your company is promoting a healthy work-life balance and positive work culture. EarlySalary employees can explore various opportunities where they can upskill themselves through various learning platforms and share their best practices at work. Thus creating a strong, positive corporate culture that helps the employees feel and perform their best at work. EarlySalary as an organization is committed to work towards diversity and inclusivity and encourages its employees to contribute towards it in various forms. 7. Kindly enlighten us about the future plans of your company. Our TG of young working professionals is the fastest growing segment in the country and hence we would like to build EarlySalary as a market leader in this category. And in next 3 years, we aim to build a billion dollar balance sheet. T R