“Completely Online Educational Solutions won’t Work for India”

Over the last few weeks, we have covered a number of e-learning solutions. Ever since we started researching for the Edustars campaign about a year ago, the amount of activity in the education sector in India has astounded us. And within this, the e-learning vertical has especially received a lot of attention. And from content providers to platforms and enablers, there is a common thread connecting all of these solutions – the use of cloud technologies. It enables unprecedented accessibility and the distributor can forego the problem of buying and maintaining servers. But does the Indian ecosystem have the infrastructure to support and provide cloud based e-learning solutions to the masses? The reality is that high bandwidth internet is only available in urban India while 70% of India suburban and rural have sub standard connections. The question to ask here is that do these solutions address the masses? With internet penetration deepening but only still at a miserly 10%, the larger problem lies in taking the education to the wider cross section of the population. Understanding the nature of this ecosystem is very important and Suphalaam is possibly the only one of the organizations we encountered that addresses the problem of the masses. Technology Solutions in Education for India Suphalaam Technologies Private Limited designs cost-effective embedded system products that bring rich multimedia applications into the hands of consumers. Multimedia is a powerful agent in education and it is has been fully leveraged in their range of educational products. Suphalaam is headed and co founded by Purushottam Mishra who is an IIT B aand ARM Aluminus and Mr. Arun Kumar, who has also ex-ARM. Together, they have led Suphalaam’s drive towards some innovative solutions in the technology eneabled educational products such as a hand held device which aids in preparations for competitive exams. Their most recent product is a tablet based learning platform which aims to make quality learning resources from coaching institutes availible in a portable and interactive platform. In a conversation with Mr. Arun Kumar, co-founder of Suphalaam, we were introduced to the infrastructural shortcomings of India and how they have a stop-gap solution that overcomes it. Tablet is the way forward; fully online solutions, not so much “One thing people have got right is the migration to tablets and personalized learning solutions. Every child has his/her own pace of learning and tablets are a good medium to learn as they are more portable and more interactive.” “What won’t work currently for most parts of India are the fully online solutions; the ecosystem doesn’t support it. We cannot assume that everyone will have a high speed internet connection. We need specific solutions for India.” Arun also believes that there is more scope for e-learning platforms than content based solutions as the former can fit into other people’s systems better. Less online, more offline Suphalaam has tied up with 4-5 key players in the coaching industry and are rapidly expanding the availability of their system in other parts of the country. “I worked at ARM before and so our organization has a good understanding of system hardware requirements. We have tied up with a premier OEM as our device partner. As for content, we have tied up with famous coaching institutes such as Sriram academy in Chennai, who have converted their coaching material for digital distribution. We now have 10 clients and over 3000 students using our system.” Says Arun on the success of Suphalaam The secret, he revealed, lies in the independence of the system from the Internet. “We courier content to the users on mass storage devices and only require a low bandwidth connection for tests and assessments. This makes it easier to access content and is not limited by a transmission medium,” reveals Arun. This model can suit any coaching institute in India and quality content can reach the masses without any limitations. “We have made substantial revenue with this model”, he adds. Suphalaam are looking for funding to scale and provide this service to a larger number of people. While the long term solution would be better IT infrastructure spread uniformly across India’s geography, solutions such as Suphalaam’s is an effective alternative which ensures that the masses of India are not deprived of technology enabled learning. www.suphalaam.com

Tablet based elearning solution

SmartBox tablets are creating revolution in the Indian education system

C/JAVA/Andriod Developer required

Want to work at Suphalaam?

Suphalaam is looking for smart, ambitious people who have fresh/experience in embedded software(C/C++ or JAVA).

About Suphalaam:

Suphalaam Technologies Private Limited designs cost-effective embedded system products that bring rich multimedia applications into the hands of consumers.

It designs handheld devices,develops robust software systems and creates high quality multimedia content to address the needs of education, health and energy sectors, especially in emerging markets. The company is located in Bangalore, India and can be contacted at contact@suphalaam.com.

Suphalaam's SmartBox on National Television - CNBC TV 18

Hi,

Glad to share that Suphalaam’s SmartBox is being aired on national Television – CNBC TV18 - on their “Young Turks” show this week.

The program is being aired as per the schedule below –

12 :00 noon Saturday 7th May IST
7:30 pm SAT 7th May (Today) IST
12 :00 noon Sunday 8th May IST
7:30 pm Wednesday 11th May IST

You can also catch the show on Suphalaam on their live web TV at http://www.moneycontrol.com/tv/ as per the schedule above.

Three companies are covered in the show. Suphalaam is covered as the third company in the show.

Regards,
Arun

SmartBox is available for a personal demonstration on request. Please write to contact@suphalaam.com or contact a Suphalaam representative @ +91 9886132507

YouTube video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KI6Wjj927ww

Get your physics lecture delivered while eating fries

HANDHELD devices seem to be moving from the briefcase to the backpack.
The latest educational gadget doing the test rounds in Bangalore is a ` 3,000 box the size of a pack of cards, full of science, math and language lessons - and a promise to be cheaper by half.

The SmartBox that won the best product award at the India Semiconductor Association ( ISA) Vision Summit 2011 here on Monday has been designed for schools. Puru Mishra, the boss of the startup Suphalaam, would like to see his device in every student's instrument box.

While working with the British chipmaker ARM, Mishra, an IITBombay electronic engineer, had engaged with village students in a voluntary initiative that helped many of them move to better schools. " But even then the teaching standards were not good enough." With its multimedia content SmartBox tries to chip in with good teaching practices. Open it and you can hear a lecture on gas laws – or modern Kannada poetry for that matter. While the lecturer explains how gases behave under different conditions and how molecules move around to make it happen, the touch screen displays bubbles shrinking and blowing up.

" It allows the student to access content in school, at home or while travelling," Mishra notes.

" Then it allows him or her to test and track progress." For the teacher, it is a tool that enables paperless attendance, instant class polls, homework distribution, tallying test results and so on.

While an entry level SmartBox costs ` 3,000 ( including taxes and import duty on components), a WiFi enabled Pro version that syncs with the teacher's display costs ` 4,000. Mishra wants to sell the basic model for ` 2,000 and then introduce a no- frills, blackand- white box that replaces the touch screen with buttons for ` 1,500.

Coming ten years after the Simputer, the ` 9000 simple computer that was designed by four Indian Institute of Science professors, the new box could be a " killer", Mishra feels. Simputer was used in a literacy drive in central India before a booming handheld market shunned it. SmartBox, however, is different as it is not a netconnected device. Suphalaam is talking with private groups, NGOs and the government for partnerships that would hopefully spread the technology.

Palmtops and handhelds are increasingly being used worldwide for school work. In the US and Europe students use them in science and math classes to record graphs and data and crunch them.

While observers see them aiding children's exposure to an increasingly wired world, they also raise questions.

" Many companies are pushing such devices, the government has its own cheap laptop programme, and then there are proven schemes like One Laptop per Child," said Anivar Aravind, a Bangalore- based IT observer. " The question is what does the government want to promote and how such technologies will help in the new national curriculum framework," he said.

For more information please email contact@suphalaam.com or call us at +91 9886132507

Suphalaam'​s SmartBox for Students and Teachers