Digital education for the masses

Indian vendors are trying to cash in on the opportunity in digital education with low-cost Android tablets for students. By Heena Jhingan

Manufacturers of IT equipment are ensuring that learning can be fun. Following the launch of Aakash, and other attempts by various smaller brands, Indian students are likely to have a choice when it comes to tablets for the education sector.

The Indian market is witnessing a spurt of low-cost tablet introductions. Education is the vertical with the highest propensity for consuming these products with a large number of models positioned for this segment. 

Targeting educational institutions, HCL Infosystems recently launched a couple of low-cost Android tablets the ME U1 and the MyEdu, priced at Rs. 7,999 and Rs. 11,499, respectively. With these products the company, that garners a significant amount of revenue from its learning business, intends to cater to the needs of students across schools and colleges by providing personalized and collaborative learning.

Keeping pace with the trend, handset maker Micromax has launched Funbook, which it claims will be the ultimate edutainment device. It has partnered with leading players to provide education and entertainment content. The Funbook will be available in the market for Rs. 6,499 bundled with a Tata Photon Plus EVDO card.

According to Gautam Advani, EVP & Head, Mobility, HCL Infosystems, the potential of tablets in the Indian market is huge. He said, “In 2011 the market for tablets was 350,000 units. In 2012, it is likely to be over a million and, in 2013, the demand is expected to go up to over 2 mn units. With the capabilities of these products that play a significant role in the education space, tablets have been transformed from an optional to a must-have device,” he reasoned.

Prices could drop further provided that demand soars as expected.

Vertical-specific solutions

Analysts commented that vendors had been toying with vertical-specific strategies in their attempts to capture a share of the emerging tablet market. Players like Dell, Motorola, Lenovo and Cisco have all experimented with business tablets with a focus on empowering the tablet with a operating system that has been ruggedized in terms of security and beefed up with additional ports, docking stations, keyboards and enterprise-oriented app stores.

Identifying a large addressable market in the education space, vendors are designing feature-loaded tablets and packaging them with innovative offerings for entertainment and gaming applications besides the course material.

Pre-packaged content

The go-to-market strategy that these players have crafted is directed towards students and parents and the digital course content is available bundled on the device. Micromax offers the course content preloaded on SD cards that can be accessed offline. The company believes that the availability of digital course content in this manner will enable students located in areas with poor Internet connectivity to be a part of the digital learning revolution.

Deepak Mehrotra, CEO, Micromax, said, “The first few units of the product have been sent to students in the far flung areas of Guwahati.”

In order to make learning more  interactive, the HCL MyEduTab will enable students, teachers and parents to share information and collaborate over the Cloud. Teachers can upload content to the Cloud allowing students and parents to access it over their devices.

HCL is already working with a number of schools to set up digi-learning platforms on campus and this ties into that.

“With the kind of content that has been packaged, we expect the device to play an important role in schools. We already have 20 educational institutions using the MyEduTab,” informed Anand Ekambaram, Senior VP, HCL Infosystems and Head, HCL Learning.

It is vital to have a complete ecosystem of hardware, connectivity and content for the successful adoption of these devices. For this, vendors are entering into partnerships with both service providers and content developers.

Micromax has tied up with Pearson that provides content and learning technology and services to institutions and also with Everonn, a key player in the technology enabled learning space. Everonn has about 17,000 points of presence across the country and it has partnered with several state governments to deliver computer-aided education.

Given the fact that initial reviews of Aakash haven’t been as impressive as they were expected to be, eyes will be set on the upcoming tablets  that are likely to shake up the Indian education segment.

heena.jhingan@expressindia.com