CXO of the week: Jaideep Kewalramani, Head of Employability Business & COO, Teamlease Edtech

TeamLease Edtech, is an leading Online Learning Services company. It helps universities launch, run and manage their own Online/ODL Programs, help Institutes improve employability of their students through our apprenticeship program and help corporates build talent supply chains and improve employee productivity. Through our cloud hosted, mobile first, managed services platform, TL Edtech provide a wide range of services - enrollment, learning, upskilling, apprenticeships, student support and assessment - helping customers improve access, learning outcome.

TeamLease Edtech have an exclusive partnership with 40 of India’s largest Universities across 16 Indian states, it trains 3.5 Lakh students on their platform through 9 Indian languages, work with 500 corporates in their upskilling/skilling initiatives and manage over 200 degree, diploma, certificate programs.

Recently we have engaged in an interview with Jaideep Kewalramani - Head of Employability Business & COO, Teamlease Edtech. He talks about how Teamlease EdTech is different from its competitors and his journey so far and what Teamlease has been up to.

Read the full interview here:

Introduction.

Jaideep has close to 25 years of experience in leading and developing multi-million dollar businesses across Technology, Outsourcing, Digital and AI. He has worked in territories like India, UK and US. Jaideep repatriated to India in 2012.

He has managed complex portfolios for several Fortune 500 businesses and delivered impactful growth metrics of over 20% CAGR and 35% EBITDA. Jaideep has worked for large organizations like Thomson Reuters, Zensar Technologies, Datamatics, Aptech-Hexaware and boutique firms like 5F World & Legasis.

At TeamLease EdTech Jaideep is responsible for the Degree Apprenticeship Business and over all Operations.

He is an executive program graduate from Stanford University, MBA in International business and BCA in Taxation from Mumbai University. His MBA school, SIMSR, recognized him as a distinguished alumni.

Jaideep holds 4 patents in the Artificial Intelligence (AI) domain and has been recognized as an ecosystem contributor by IndiaAI (Govt of India Initiative).

He actively participates through speaker and panelist opportunities through forums like NASSCOM and CII. Jaideep is the founding member of Unmanned & Autonomous Vehicles Association of India.

Jaideep has authored several white papers and articles on subjects like disruptive business models, digital platforms, decision making & innovation. He has presented case studies at Stanford Conferences.

He is a hobby macroeconomist and an amateur golfer. Jaideep supports philanthropic organizations like JSS and is an active fund raiser for education initiatives.

How has Covid-19 accelerated the transition to digital for the Education industry? What will be the new normal in the industry?

The human impact of Covid-19 aside, the period was the fastest digital transformation accelerator across the board including the education industry. The rapid transition of Education from “Brick and Mortar'' to Digital channels was remarkable. Albeit we collectively failed to address the populus that did not have the digital tools to embrace this phenomenon. A lot of children were left behind simply because of lack of digital devices or decent internet bandwidth. We saw several dimensions embracing digitalization – student-teacher interactions, teacher-administration relations, institute-regulator engagement, content, testing and including aspects of labs. Everyone in the ecosystem had to quickly learn new techniques like video conferencing, digital classrooms, virtual exam formats, e-content formats and more importantly the teaching pedagogy.

Having said that, the ‘learning by doing’ & ‘in person interactions’ are very valuable to replace. Programs like ‘Degree Apprenticeship’ will be the new normal where students acquire theoretical knowledge from top class Universities and hands-on experience from corporates simultaneously.

The new normal will be defined by two phenomenons - ‘Synthetic Hybrid’ and ‘Democratized Learning’.

Synthetic Hybrid is where students will consume theory in a non-linear manner at their own pace using digital tools and the hands-on knowledge in an linear immersive experiential environment.

High quality education is being ‘democratized’ due to the boundary-less nature of digital. Students sitting thousands of kilometers away can engage with top class faculty and experience world class pedagogy without having to visit the campus. Rich content from leading experts is now available for everyone.

What, as per you, are the five important things that Teamlease EdTech should be looking at today?

• Accelerated convergence of Industry and Academia through innovative programs like Degree Apprenticeship
• Rich learning experiences through technologies like AI, ML & Metaverse
• Building a strong boundaryless eco-system of learners and experts
• Continuous & sustainable engagement for all stakeholders through blend of technology, content and interventions
• Digitalization of experiences to ensure smooth learning outcomes

Biggest USP that differentiates Teamlease EdTech from its competitors?

As a business we are focussed on solving real issues in a sustainable manner for our stakeholders - Improving the Gross Enrollment Ratio for Universities, Raising the Employability Index for Students and Building the Talent Supply Chain for Corporates. These are real solutions for real world challenges.

How did you adopt tech at your company?

Our technology adoption is driven purely by ‘User Experience’. It's a simple yet powerful approach. We constantly evaluate our Digital touchpoints and experience we offer our stakeholders. All our initiatives around AI, NLP Chatbots, Data lakes, Metaverse, Automation or Decision Dashboards are based on improving the user experience.

What changes is Teamlease EdTech bringing to the industry?

We are changing the core nature of the industry from making it ‘supply-oriented’ to enabling ‘backward integration’ at an unprecedented scale. The traditional model is to look at the higher education segment as a talent supply pool but the evident challenge is the skill gap between what the students learn and what they are expected to bring to the companies. By enabling alignment and convergence between industry-academia using technology we are helping companies create talent supply chains of the future. This shift reduces the skill-gap and makes the workforce day-1 ready.

What are your views on the Edtech industry post-pandemic, and what are some of the insights on the future?

The digital acceleration will continue post pandemic, maybe at a slower pace. The synthetic hybrid model is here to stay with stakeholders picking the best of both worlds. Over the course of next 3-5 years we will see increased industry engagement, greater focus learning by doing to develop skills, integration of new application oriented programs, immersive learning pedagogy on the back of technologies like Metaverse, NLP Chatbot assisted byte sized learning and AI based adaptive learning.