Tata Trusts, the principal shareholder of the $109b Tata group has partnered with Khan Academy to Endeavour its ‘traditional brick and mortar’ approach towards education. Khan Academy is an American online education provider which has reached 2.6 crore students worldwide.
Ratan Tata, Chairmen, Tata Trust said “This is a concept which is refreshingly different, extending free education and knowledge to anyone, anytime and anywhere which can change the world of illiterate to literate. We expect this initiative to make a tremendous difference to the present and future generations.”
The partnership which will last for next five years, will provide free education in faculty of Maths and Science to everyone who seeks for it in India in local languages. The initiative aims on designing and improving Academy’s content creation capacities, focusing on students of middle and low income groups, residing in urban areas during its two years. In the following three years will put efforts on reaching students of the rural areas.
In addition to reaching for student communities, the joint venture is also projected to add more teaches as a content creators and knowledge seekers, who are looking to improve their own skills.
The Khan Academy, founded by a former hedge fund analyst Salman Khan with roots in India, was introduced to Tata by a common friend. “We connected the dots very quickly when we started talking a year ago,” said Khan.
Success of such initiatives primarily rests on accessibility to internet, mainly to the underprivileged and those in rural areas.
The success of an initiative in this genre rests primarily on easy access to the internet, especially for the underprivileged and those in the rural areas. Tata was not predominantly worried about this part as he believes that the government will get its act together on this issue, moreover increase in demand will naturally trigger rapid expansion of connectivity.
The core focus areas of the partnership will be the creation of adaptive learning platforms, developing an android- based smartphone app that incorporates major functionality of the desktop experience and improving platform performance. Both Khan and Tata indicated that they are open to broad collaborations in this space.
