IGNITE

Pradipta Banerjee XLRI, Jamshedpur

Reasons for Not going to School and High Dropout

 Child has to look after younger siblings

 Has to work for wages/attend other domestic activities
 Financial constraints
 School not located conveniently
 Inability to cope with failure in studies
No one in the family has ever been to school

Can be Addressed by the Plan



 Lack of funds and poor infrastructure in rural schools

 Parent/Child not interested in studies
 Unfriendly atmosphere at school
 Language problems
 Uninterested teachers and government apathy
 Fear of corporal punishment
 Education not considered useful
 Poor quality of educational content
The Business Model
 Interesting and relevant digital content for primary education to be
generated and sold to the government/government run bodies or agencies
running schools. Advertising to generate additional revenues

 Content to be used in primary schools in rural areas as a

substitute/supplement to primary teaching

 The content will be initially taught by volunteers and later on by primary

teachers.

 The idea is to make a difference by educating disadvantaged children in

an interesting way that makes them want to come to school rather than
achieving a minimum level of literacy

 The model is scalable and sustainable. Will also be profitable from

approximately the 4th year onwards.
Step 1: The Set-Up
 Hire 2-3 professionals (basically educational consultants) and a few
volunteers (local youth, students, young working professionals)

 Select quality content available on the internet for primary

education as well as let the professionals design content

 The content should be:

 Graphical, audio-visual, including colored, animated pictures and
models
 In synchronization with innovative pedagogy
 Local content so that children can relate to surroundings

 The volunteers will disseminate the content in the chosen schools and
also give feedback for designing further content
Step 2: Content Generation
 Use of open source software to translate content from:
 English to Hindi (and gradually to other regional languages)
 Handwritten to digital format

 Some of the NLP software tools that can be used are:

 MANTRA-Rajbhasha (http://mantra-rajbhasha.cdac.in/mantrarajbhasha/)
 Anglabharti (http://www.cse.iitk.ac.in/users/langtech/anglabharti.htm)
 SCIM (http://www.scim-im.org/downloads/scim_download) – For writing
Indian languages, it has at least 3 IMES available: i-trans, inscript and
phonetic
 Free OCR software for Indian languages can be used to upload handwritten
vernacular content (e.g. quality notes in vernacular by some expert teacher)
Step 3: Selling the Content
 Creation of internet portal where the content will be uploaded
and sold to local primary schools either through the:
 Government
Advantage: One large customer instead of several small customers
 Governing bodies of schools/local governing bodies like
Panchayats and Nagarpalikas
Advantage: Better dissemination and collective responsibility

 Another source of revenue will be advertisements on the portal

 Companies targeting rural customers – tractors, insurance etc
 Aggregate ad spend on the internet in India expected to rise
to $220 million
Project to be piloted in Himachal Pradesh

 State government has about 1400 schools with minimum of 5

computers. Total of around 10,500 primary schools
 Not all computers connected to the Internet but not a big
problem for schools to get the same
 Medium of education is Hindi
 Project can be started targeting 20 schools in first year, 100
schools and gradually expanding to cover the entire state by
4th year
 States like Maharashtra are also trying to implement
computerization of primary schools under the Maharashtra
School Project scheme
The ifs and buts….
 Why will the government buy such content?
 Many agencies of the government are fishing for such projects for SSA
 Many NGOs are facilitating primary government schools in urban, semi-
urban areas in such initiatives
 What are the glitches foreseen?
 Encountering government red tape and bureaucratic delays
 Getting internet connection in the schools
 What is the alternate Plan B in case there is no computer/internet?
 Laptops can be carried by the volunteers. Cost to be factored in while
negotiating with the government
 The content will be made available in a CD
 The advertisers will be accommodated in the content, e.g. showing a
particular brand of Tractor being used by the animated character
The ifs and buts….
 Why will the advertisers support the project?
 Rural markets have huge untapped potential but rural marketing is tough
 It can also be pitched as CSR for the organization
 Internet penetration pegged to reach 6% (72 million subscribers) by 2011
 Who will be the volunteers and why will they be selected?
 The volunteers can be students or working professionals with a passion to
make a difference and equally committed to the cause of education
 Initial selection through personal contacts, with increasing scale, maybe
interviews and aptitude
 Volunteers get a stipend, based on the hours of work put in, say 10K per
month
 What is the approximate break-even period?
 The project should break even in approximately 3-4 years at most
Cost & Revenue Estimates
Cost Head
Initial Set up cost (office and others)
Salaries (5 employees+10 volunteers)
Other variable costs
Miscellaneous
Amount (Rs)
0.5 million
1.2 million per annum
8,000 per school targeted annually
20% of sum of above costs

Revenue Source Amount (Rs)

Sale of solution 20,000 per school annually
Advertisement on the portal 0.3 million annually (expected to grow
with increase in number of schools)
Assumptions:

 One more employee required for an additional set of 10 schools in 2nd

year and one per 20 schools in 3rd year
 Straight line depreciation at 20% of all fixed costs