Exclusive Interview with Piyus Kanti, CEO, Cloudstrats

In an exclusive interview with DQ Channels, Piyus Kanti, CEO , Cloudstrats talks about the future of Hybrid learning culture in the education sector, different opportunities for partners and how EdueBook.in and PartnerWins.in will help partners in this transformation journey.

One prominent trend that is now emerging is EduTech and hybrid work culture. Especially in the education domain, now the work system has moved from work from home to a hybrid system. So, how do you view the growth of EduTech in the hybrid work culture and how do you plan to harness this opportunity?

With regards to education and India, you see a tremendous amount of change that is happening. And over the course of the last one year, a year and a half, actually, if you look at how digital learning has come to the forefront in India, because of COVID. And I think people are now realizing the value that technology brings to education, we have basically initiated our journey with our entrepreneurship with education. And that's why we're very passionate about that. I think in terms of hybrid learning, that's the way to go for the future. It basically enables a more future ready, modern education system for our country. And I think if you look at the benefits that we get from it, it allows much better learning inputs, and those learning inputs then contribute to a much better learning outcomes scenario. If you see the objectivity things like with which a lot of OEMs internationally, have been doing for a long time, but the adoption of that has been a bit relatively lower here in India, if you will see the Microsoft suite of products, right. So what Microsoft has been doing for education here in India has been really great, especially in the last two years, I think that has picked up a lot of paces, in terms of how educators look at technology, and then how they're using it to modernize their classrooms.

We always used to talk about smart boards, we used to talk about how children could use tablet-based learning, or children would use e-learn content. But I think we moved the journey from just being a content-centric or a Device Centric education to a more meaningful way of doing education. So if you see in terms of the things that are now as value propositions for educators, you will see a ton of new tech innovations, the first one being Microsoft Teams if you look at how the educators have been using teams as a platform to sort of giving remote learning to not only a wider population in India, but also globally. Similarly, if you look at what value it brings to the table in terms of the teacher and student relationship in terms of keeping them engaged at every level, I think in a classroom or a traditional classroom scenario, even there, it makes a ton of sense where a lot of things can be enabled for the student to actually do at home with the platform, and a lot of new innovations are coming within the platform. And this was not only from the from one OEM strategy in Microsoft, but also some of the other innovators have been doing tremendous amount of work, which has actually contributed to education now being a more well rounded. Space.

Hybrid is definitely the way to go. If you look at how some of the top universities of India have adopted it during the COVID period, as well as it has increased the pervasiveness of education to the masses. And everybody now is talking about it. I think even there is a ton of work being done not only on enabling people to learn, but also assessment of students when students come back and probably gauge themselves with a pen and paper test, but also can just take a test on a team's platform via online survey or a poll. And that enables them to understand what is the crux of the learning that they would want to carry back for themselves.

What are the unique features of Indian EduTech and how can the partners help it grow?

This is a great opportunity for all of us. You look at the ecosystem of partners that have been working with Microsoft and some of the other OEMs, to the forefront you would look at a company like Microsoft enabling partners in a very big way. They have a ton of information readily available for partners, which helps them to understand the system, and also brings the new tech way easier for the customers.

Now, one of the things is that now it is up to the onus is basically on the partners to make sure that they carry this tech and can envision bigger and brighter solutions for the tech space within the education system. So if you will take some scenarios, like, if we talk about how teams as a platform is helping, I think a lot of partners can not only just pass it on as a platform, but also enable the educators and the system in its own self, to make sure that you're building new applications, you building new innovations on top of it, which will basically be driving much more efficiency and pervasiveness of digital education in India that's where partners can contribute, they can help partner with the education systems, and understand what the challenges are, based on those understanding of challenges. They could devise the innovations based on a platform that is ready, and you don't have to do it from scratch, you basically now doing it from a place where you already settled in, and you have all the background support from guys at Microsoft. And then you can take this to a much bigger level for your customer base. So that's where I think partners can definitely help the adoption of hybrid learning and digital education in India.

At Cloudstrats, one of the things that we've been doing is that since our inception, for the last seven, eight years, we've been working with a ton of educators will be it in the state governments, we didn't central education agencies, or by private institutions, and universities. So we've been working with them to sort of adopt technology and enable them to provide digital education in a hybrid model for the students also enables them to keep parents at pace with how the child is learning and understand what are the gap areas where they could pitch in for the well rounded education of the student. we basically at Cloudstrats, we've done a couple of deployments of not only the entire stack, but also taken in some cues from the market understood and learned a few new things which were required by the education systems. And based on that we built our own solution on top of the Microsoft stack. And something like we help some of the state governments does integrate the command and control center. We've done that for a few of the large state governments in India, and where it enables them to look at one pane of glass to essentially understand how's the entire system based on the infrastructure based on the attendance based on the teacher-student ratio, based on the type of books that we read the type of hybrid content available, of what is available in digital and what is available as standard brick and mortar. Stuff like that we've taken in as inputs of learning. And with those inputs of learning and the interventions which are required, we've tried to understand what's the impact of that education on basically the student's performance and where they go. And not only within the primary education, but even the higher education and similarly in the quality of education, there is a ton of things that can be brought in by solutions like these, the command and control center basically allows the not only the educators at the top level, but also at the individual levels to understand how their school is doing visibly somebody else and what is it that they have as key performance indicators, and where they stand at that. And also, it helps them to sort of digitized most of the information dissemination that we do to the students today. For example, if somebody wanted to just connect with a principal or a teacher, or a student whose performance within the whole scheme of things has not to be up to the mark or is not meeting KPIs. The command and control center can basically then reach out to them over a Microsoft platform, and then just talk to them to understand why they are not there yet and be notified about it. So they will, these soft and hard interventions can then help basically improve the quality of education important, and the quality of the absorption that the students do for themselves.

Microsoft has introduced partnerwins.in. And eduebook.in. So in your opinion, how is Microsoft enabling the partners/ ecosystem?

There's a ton of work that Microsoft has been doing overtime. And if we just start with not only the new ones that have come now, but even the platform in learn, gives a great understanding not only to the partners, but also to prospective clients, as well as the people who would just want to sort of just sign up and then learn technology at their own pace. So it enables a ton of information provided to the partners as well, and which the partners can then sort of understand and then devise solutions on top of it, this enables the partner to go to market really, really fast. And that's the value that things like partner wins and edubook, bring to the table. And I think one of the great things that Microsoft that is happening is that the kind of people that Microsoft has, is a testament to excellence. So these initiatives that the company is sort of engaging in, and the kind of support that you get from the Microsoft fraternity together is like a killer combination.

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What are the different opportunities for Partners in the Edu Tech sector?

If you look at it, there's a ton of opportunity for partners. And I think, especially with the wide base that our country has, and not only within the country but also some things that we as partners build today can be replicated to not only our country but also to at a global stage. And that's where there's a, there's a ton of opportunity there. If we are able to understand our market in a much better way with the help of tools like partner wins, Edu book, learn the platform, then the LTI integrations and enable those over a hybrid learning concept. I think that enables the partner to have sort of a vertical for themselves, that focused is completely focused on education, and then an innovation in education that brings a ton of energy to the partner. I think one of the great things that can happen is it's a ton of revenue that can be generated for the partners as well. So obviously, any organization that is in this space would want to be having the right calls to make enough inroads in their customer ecosystems. This enables that, if you look at it, we have tremendous population, inroads, where the scale can be leveraged for the partner. So if we have one solution that works in one particular place, you basically are looking at a plethora of opportunities across states across the municipal government bodies, where they run a lot of schools. And I think, especially in today's day, and age, skilling, women development and other initiatives, which are again, touchy areas very near to education can also become lateral opportunities for partners, because what you can do for primary, and if you understand the Higher Secondary Market a bit better, then you can go ahead and do that day. If you know how to leverage that in a skilling scenario, then you could leverage a lot of private organizations as well as a ton of public aided organizations as well. And I think we've been working with a lot of NHRD initiatives and we see a lot of value that they want to bring strategies enabling learning in the entire country in especially the public school scenarios, all of this is basically a tremendous amount of opportunity that we can tap in. And I think it just depends on how you see it as a partner, and if you are focused on it, and you are a child to the needs of the market. If you are, then definitely it gives a good amount of inroads for you and makes you enough revenue for us?

Well, I think in the context of Cloudstrats, one of the things that we've seen is that, since the time that we've come up with our solution around the command and control center, and the use cases that we've enabled education to adopt, we saw, we started with primary education, then went on and did higher secondary. Now we're doing a couple of initiatives around translation services with a lot of large organizations within the country and also enabling them to read,
rebuild the content. So for example, if the content is there in a particular language, can we enable them in different languages, and thereby enable for wider reach of the content? Similarly, how can we make be in a lot of scenarios, state governments as well as a lot of educators have invested a lot of money in tab based learning, personalized adaptive learning, those are grey areas that have not picked up that well. And I think the advent of tools like WhatsApp for learning, or bringing in teams as a stack, especially as a platform helps the partner engage in a much deeper conversation with the customer. And that enables a wide opportunity for them. So that's, I think, is really key for partners to understand and then probably go from there.