How former HCL head honcho Vineet Nayar is using AI to transform learning outcomes in government schools

Vineet Nayar, former CEO and chairman of HCL Technologies , is known for transforming the IT company from a fledgling $700 million to a $2 billion market cap through an employee-first strategy. He put the employees first and the consumers second. The belief was that empowering employees would result in greater accountability to the organisation, and they would, in return, be able to build a more valuable proposition for consumers. Although Nayar faced multiple challenges during his journey, he successfully managed to make HCLT one of the fastest-growing and most profitable IT services companies.

Nayar used the same principle of ‘employees first, consumer second’ when he scaled up his not-for-profit venture, Sampark Foundation, which works in the field of primary education. This time, he decided to empower the teachers of state-run primary schools in Maharashtra, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, Himachal Pradesh, Haryana, Rajasthan, UP and Uttarakhand.

“We have 17-18 crore children in primary schools, and most Grade V students can’t read Grade III text. The challenge of learning is high. Despite government spending increasing each year, learning outcomes have not improved. The idea was that if we could enthuse, encourage, and enable teachers at scale, we should be able to transform learning. But it would need implementation at scale. By working with 10 or 100 schools, it’s not going to work,” says Nayar, who is currently founder and chairman of Sampark Foundation.

The foundation partnered with state governments to transform all schools in the state and fund the entire transformation. Nayar was inspired by the ‘Good Morning Mumbai’ show anchored by Vidya Balan in Lage Raho Munna Bhai. “We said, can we bring a sutradhar, a voice and put it in an audio box and teach English and Math through songs and dance in a Vidya Balan equivalent voice. The voice was christened ‘Sampark Didi’ and the devices were placed across schools,” explains Nayar.

“That was our first innovation, which transformed our schools, and suddenly it became a place for fun. So, the learning didn’t improve, but the issue of attendance started improving. Then we brought in newer ideas and technologies every year to be able to improve the learning,” he adds.

The ‘Sampark Didi’ audio device was in the initial years of the foundation. Today, all the 1.4 lakh schools that the foundation supports have Android devices in their classrooms, along with a TV that contains all the necessary content. It includes animated content, lesson plans, and gamification of questions, and it is called Sampark TV.

“It overcomes the incompetence of a teacher. If she isn’t capable of teaching fractions, it tells her how to do it. “It has also reduced her time and effort.” The latest avatar of Sampark TV is an AI agent named Sampark Didi. The AI agent nudges the teacher on what to teach next. “Because there is gamification of answers, Sampark Didi is able to understand if the students have not understood the concept, therefore she nudges the teacher towards teaching it again.”

The nudges also include Sampark Didi giving cues to the teacher to teach decimals before teaching fractions. The gamification of lessons is like a Kaun Banega Crorepati quiz. After the teacher finishes a lesson on fractions, for instance, there would be 20 questions with a lifeline, and the class is divided into two groups. “Through facial recognition, we know the class participation. Sampark Didi nudges the teacher to gamify, asks her to divide the class into teams.”

However, more than nudging teachers to be more effective with students, the AI-enabled Android device tracks the data on what is being taught and how effectively the lesson is being learned. “One of the biggest challenges of education in India is that you don’t have visibility of what’s happening in the classroom. You can transform only when you measure the learning outcome during the event. Now, we receive the entire dataset on a daily basis. The AI engine computes and aggregates it and pushes a notification to the block officials and state officials.”

Nayar claims a 30%-40% increase in learning outcomes. “The Sampark TV technology is making the lives of teachers easy, and is making learning easy and teaching easier. Because of the data, the education system is now galvanised. It has visibility into areas where learning outcomes are high and those where they are low. Once we combine these two, we are able to predict.”

So, what’s next for Sampark Foundation? Is Nayar looking at replicating this model across other states? Not really. “If we continue with the existing states, we could go to 3 lakh schools. In Maharashtra, we have 25,000 schools, and we will go as deep as possible.”

Nayar had invested $100 million at the time of the Sampark Foundation’s inception in 2005, and the rule he and his wife, Anupama Nayar, co-founder of Sampark, made was that their investment per child per annum shouldn’t exceed $1. “It had to be frugal, and that is what we have achieved. Our entire programme is running at $1 per child per annum, and we have impacted two crore children till date.”