The latest entrant into the country’s booming information communication technologies (ICT)-in education marketplace is Chennai-based EdServ Softsystems Ltd (formerly Lambent Softsystems Pvt Ltd) — founded in 2001 as a mainstream software solutions company and transformed into a full-fledged e-learning company in 2008. A widely held corporate listed on the BSE and NSE stock exchanges, EdServ Softsystems (sales revenue: Rs.52 crore in the year ended March 31, 2010) provides a slew of teaching-learning products and services to students from pre-school-class XII, and all the way up the higher education chain.
“India’s education system caters to only a small percentage of the elite population and has failed to address the needs of the masses. The system does not track the aptitudes and skills of students from early age to provide education that matches their needs or the needs of Indian industry. Our objective is to bridge this gap by offering a wide range of e-learning products and services which suppl-ement school and college curriculums and provide job-related education and services to middle and lower income students at an affordable entry fee of just Rs.199 per month,” says S. Giridharan, an engineering alumnus of Anna University, Chennai; Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore and BITS, Pilani with wide experience of the IT and ICT industry as promoter-director of SSI Ltd (1992-97), Radiant Software (1997-2001) and Lambent Softsystems (2001-2008) which was re-christened EdServ Softsystems Ltd in 2008.
Giridharan’s major achievement, however, is an innovative school partnership model titled the Vidyadhana Academy which provides industry-demand aligned education by identifying the skills and interests of school students in their early years. “We have signed agreements with 60 private schools under the Vidyadhana initiative. Under this model, we invest up to Rs.40 lakh per school and enter into a five-year renewable joint venture with school owners to provide state-of-the-art infrastructure, content, multimedia learning aids, technology-enabled labs and teacher training. This results in improved learning outcomes and better revenues for schools, which is shared with EdServ,” explains Giridharan.
Also a vocational training provider for the Union ministry of labour and employment, the company has establ-ished 75 bricks-and-mortar learning centres to provide modular skills development training free-of-charge to the unemployed and underprivileged in five southern states and Orissa, with training expenses reimbursed by the government of India. Thus far, 80,000 students have availed EdServ’s vocational training services since 2010.
Buoyed by the encouraging response to its diverse ICT-driven initiatives, Giridharan has ambitious growth plans for EdServ. “We plan to increase our pan-India student subscriber base in our lampsglow.com division to 1 million this year in partnership with mobile, telecom and cable television companies. Our plan is to convert smart phones and direct-to-home broadband television into learning media. Also on the drawing board are plans to increase the number of schools under the Vidyadhana Academy initiative to 150 across Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh, and to 1,000 schools countrywide in the next three years,” says Giridharan.
Way to go, bro!
Hemalatha Raghupathi (Chennai)