Class Saathi

The lack of accountability in the Indian Public Education system affects over 150 million students it is designed to serve. This leads to poor learning outcomes of students, many of whom also drop out. Can this problem be really solved in schools that don't/can't have proper monitoring systems let alone internet connectivity?

Class Saathi can help because it helps not only to do formative assessment at scale thus quantifying learning data but it also seamlessly shares that data with all parents, teachers, administrators and other officials. It gives accurate evidence on the performance of all the stakeholders so that necessary interventions can be staged promptly.

Class Saathi is designed to be curriculum and language agnostic which means that it can be scaled globally. Lack of accountability, which is an issue in most public schools can be easily addressed with Class Saathi thus making sure students actually learn at school.

There is a glaring issue of accountability in government/public schools in India. Since there is no objective data around learning and teaching, there is no way to know which stakeholder(s) did not do their part. Through our system, all stakeholders including the school administrators, governments, teachers and parents can see performance reports of students as and when they happen in real time thus giving policy makers quantified evidence to act on.

Our fully integrated learning platform fosters accountability and evidence based intervention modules. Our core philosophy is, “we cannot manage what we cannot measure” and with our system, we are enabling administrators to lead the change based on clean and untarnished data points. 

We believe that aggressive reporting will help administrators see the problems plaguing the education system at both micro and macro levels and this is instrumental in arresting problems like student attrition and learning lags.

India sees over 150 million students across 1 million government schools and our technology has the power to gather, collate and report on the key performance indicators of these students with zero hassles. 

Our solution, Class Saathi is a clicker based learning platform that enables formative assessment at scale in any classroom. Class Saathi is a combination of a clicker (student response device) for each student and an android smartphone application for teachers, parents and administrators. 

All the students' clicker devices are connected to the teacher’s smartphone via bluetooth beacon technology. The Class Saathi app is designed to conduct quick formative assessments as and when a teacher finishes a concept or a chapter in class. Students use the clicker device to respond to questions post which their responses are immediately collated and published to the various stakeholders in the learning ecosystem. 

Our system is bridging the gap between teachers and their desire to address learning lags at the most nascent level by giving them an immediate overview of all their students’ understanding, which is otherwise impossible given the sheer number of students in a classroom and the infrequency of examinations. This helps teachers stage meaningful interventions right when it is needed the most. 

These results are also published immediately for school administrators and parents to see thereby cultivating a learning system that holds stakeholders at every level accountable to their students’ learning goals.

The 150 million students in India’s public education system need equitable access to learning. Policy makers around the country and the world have offered solutions based on tech integration. In a country where 364 million people are below the poverty line, integrating digital solutions into this demographic is not just a challenge but a deep seated issue that goes against the ethos of education as guaranteed by the constitution of India. 

Private school students have access and resources that guarantee them an equal fight for their future whereas students from underprivileged backgrounds and under-resourced schools have always had to pick their daily battles. As an organisation consciously working towards creating equity in education, we understand that students from the public education system have opportunity gaps which continue the cycle of poverty, unbroken. These students are not equipped with the confidence or knowledge that they need, to break into the highly competitive professional world. We want to disrupt this systemic problem by offering them a fighting chance through our low cost technology that has been studied to improve student performance and attendance, during our pilot tests (with over 1000 students) across 2 states in India. 

To cement this problem further, the pandemic surfaced the issue that Class Saathi has been committed towards solving - the digital divide. With more students from the public education system dropping out of the system due to the lack of digital equipment to further their education, we have only seen a validation in our belief that technology should be low-cost and dynamic. Our solution is both. 

We are currently partnering with Non-Government Organisations (Case in Point - KEF) to enhance the learning experience through technology with our solutions, especially during the pandemic. Along with that, we are continuously partnering with state governments to tackle the challenges continuously exposed due to the growing pandemic crisis. Through constant research and collaboration, we are formulating changes to our system that are simple yet highly effective. 

Once the pandemic is over and the students can go back to school, they can rely on our system to ensure that their time out of school has not posed much of a threat to their chances at an equal future. We believe that our presence, especially in this moment of crisis, has instilled faith in government administrators to ensure students can integrate back into their regular schooling systems with very surmountable difficulties. 

Our solution increases the engagement of learners even in classrooms that have no internet connectivity. Also, the data gathered from the teachers enables them to pay personalized attention to the students. Moreover, seamless data sharing with administrators help keep the system accountable. 

Most technology projects have been put off by public education systems globally citing lack of infrastructure to support the move. This overhaul is expensive and time consuming. Our solution can work optimally without requiring schools to have internet or electricity - two major issues cited to justify the lack of digitization in public schools across the globe.

We pilot tested our clicker based learning platform in 2 states (Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh) in India with over 1000 students in 2019. Both the states offered us official invitations to scale our solution to over 2200 schools combined (links below).

1/ CNBC Coverage of MP State Invitation to Deploy Class Saathi in over 2000 schools

2/ Coverage of UP State Invitation to Deploy Class Saathi in 200 schools in just one district

Class Saathi is the world-first clicker based solution designed to pair with a smartphone app that can work in schools with no internet and no electricity. The implication is that schools do NOT need to upgrade their infrastructure to use Class Saathi. 

Class Saathi offers government schools in the country an opportunity to leverage technology that do not need major investment or infrastructure upgrades. 

When the central government in our country launched its New Education Policy in 2020, it did so with the aim of digitizing government schools en masse in a bid to ensure equal access to tech based learning. However, most companies that work in this space operate at a premium since their target audiences are the elite, urban rich. This gave us a huge advantage over our competitors since we got first mover advantage in a space largely unexplored by our contemporaries. 

With two state governments in India already partnering with our initiative, we may lead the way for more states to recognize the need to do the same.

We currently serve over 50,000 students all across India.

In the next one year, we hope to serve over 500,000 students (did an MoU with the MP State government to target Grade 5 students all over the state). 

Given the simplicity and the utility of the system, we can expect to address over 10 Million students in 5 years. 

Below is a snapshot of users all across India (at 16:38PM local time  on June 15)

We measure our growth through the number of partnerships with the State Governments in India and the non-government organizations catering to public schools. Also, within a state, we would track the number of schools and students we work with. If we are really making an impact, we hope to get invited by multiple partners to cater to a wider audience.

Validation from the media and independent observers is another metric that helps us gauge our impact. For example, in June 2021, our CEO, Pankaj Agarwal made it to Fortune India’s 40 under 40 list. It is as important for us to measure our success through these self-esteem channels as well. More than recognizing us for our work, it validates our faith in the belief that our approach and our product/service is indeed of great value.

Aside from that, the regular and tried and tested method of setting and meeting targets along with ensuring our employees find potential to grow within the organisation are all good metrics to assess our impact goals. We believe that the impact starts from home and with a team full of satisfied employees, it is the first and most elementary metric we have secured.

We have 9 full time members in South Korea and 5 full time members in our India office. 

• India - 5

• Korea - 9

Operationally, we have integrated two teams, one in South Korea and the other in India. Our South Korean team of 9 comprises mainly developers and AI research engineers with a deep focus to solve problems in the education domain. Our India team of 5 handles the business aspect of operations which also includes marketing and other business development activities. 

The company’s Founder & CEO has around 10 years of experience working for Samsung across engineering and marketing functions. He is also an inventor on over 50 international patents. His network from IIT and Harvard (MBA, Class of 2012) makes it relatively easy to open doors to new partnership opportunities. 

Some members from the Korea team have also visited India in 2019 to witness the running of pilot tests in schools and collect feedback on new features. The team could see the value we are adding in the public education space and is excited about "making it happen".

We are a team of deeply empathetic and committed individuals who rely on key analytical skills to drive performance and growth.  

We have consciously decided to eliminate all biases right from the hiring process. We hire people for their skills and do not discriminate against all or any of their personal orientations. However, we have also made it a mission to promote gender equality in the workplace. We have four women to 5 men in our South Korean team and 2 women to 2 men in our Indian team. If and when the need arises to hire anybody with an orientation or gender identity different from these binaries, we will ensure opportunities for the same.

During our hiring process, we do not ask any candidate discriminatory questions, for instance, we reserve their right to a personal life independent of our organisation and as such we do not ask for the marital status of women as it is known to be discriminatory.

We give newcomers an opportunity to join our team and pay them competitive salaries that are industry standard.

We take into consideration what our employees need and as such, we cater to their well being by providing various avenues for them to exercise their comfort in order to work optimally.

As an organization that sees a shared union of operation between two countries, we are highly intolerant of any behaviour that is racist, discriminatory and destructive to personal safety and rights. We see great value in social and professional cohesion between our employees in India and South Korea and so it is of great importance that this union remain untarnished by all or any forms of this discrimination.

1. Get access to big name foundations who can "financially" help us scale our platform to some % of the public schools in India just in case the  government may not have the entire budget to support the deployment of Class Saathi.
2. Reach last mile connectivity through other organizations that have benefited from becoming a Solver.
3.  Connect with partners globally to help us create synergies. 

We are always looking for talent passionate about making a meaningful transformation in the public education system not only in India but globally. 

We would also like to get connected with prospective investors aligned with our mission. 

Moreover, we are looking for support with PR. We have a small team and cannot afford to hire a PR agency. 

We would like to partner with the following organizations. 

1/ MIT Media Lab (for joint research in big data and AI to make learning accountable thus increasing learning outcomes)

2/ Bill Melinda Gates Foundation, Ford Foundation (for funds)

Yes!

Class Saathi leverages AI to personalize learning experience. AI can help improve proficiencies and learning outcomes for children in resource constrained settings, and this prize will help us scale our impact in this area. For example, we are considering to build a AI system that will help predict the likelihood of student drop out in advance thus helping the administrators take corrective action.

We are qualified because we have already built some AI tools in our at-home learning app and witnessed some early impact. We will use the prize to partner with a leading AI research lab (at MIT/elsewhere) and also hire talent to help us build cutting-edge technologies.