Education Technology | Innovations and Insights - Edinbox

With the corporations adapting at the rate of growth intensifying at an unthinkable rate, businesses need to evolve the culture of continuous learning so that they always outdo the competition. Providing learning material to the employees readily, i.e., Internet learning modules, seminars, and professional courses, is all about structuring an organizational culture where learning is work by default.

Learning culture is the heart of leadership. Leaders will be motivated to learn themselves and make others learn through their team members, by doing. Growth mindset and feedback culture are the central point for propelling long-term growth.

India Today had an interview with Priyanka Anand, VP & Head HR, Southeast Asia Oceania and India, Ericsson as part of an effort to better understand how organizations can develop employees and become competitive.

ALIGNING LEARNING WITH ORGANISATIONAL GOALS

Learning activity organisational goal-based is guaranteed to bring returns on the organisation and employees. Organisations have structured development and enhancement programmes based on industry requirements, reflecting their continued pursuit of learning and growth.

EVALUATING SUCCESS OF LEARNING AND DEVELOPMENT INITIATIVES

"In an effort to construct an end-to-end representation of Learning and Development (L&D) intervention influence, organisations must develop a multi-dimension measurement framework. They are Business Impact Analysis, Performance Metrics, and Behavioural and Cultural Observations, all of which are geared towards L&D effectiveness measurement," Priyanka Anand said.

IMPACT OF DIVERSITY AND INCLUSION ON EMPLOYEE DEVELOPMENT

Diversity and inclusion (D&I) programs are held accountable for creating feelings of belongingness among the employees in a manner that each and every employee feels valued and hence empowered. Through these programs, they have an equal opportunity for learning and development and wish to continue learning throughout their entire lifetime, which leads to more motivation, satisfaction, and turnover.

INNOVATION FOR SKILL DEVELOPMENT

"Innovation and technology are great facilitators that drive employee growth and learning through efficient, agile, and customized learning. Artificial intelligence, machine learning, and virtual reality technologies augment experiential training experience and personalized learning journeys, while enhancing learning," she added.

To project Learning and Development interventions from organisational values and goals, companies must conduct rigorous needs analysis, engage leadership with programmes, integrate corporate values into training, and audit learning initiatives periodically and make modifications as well. This makes L&D interventions real, significant, and responsive to emerging business needs.

Google is providing eligible Indian college students with a free one-year Google AI Pro plan worth Rs 19,500. This Google AI Pro plan provides access to Google's powerful AI tools that students can utilize to assist with homework, writing, and video creation.

As a part of this offer, Indian students 18 and older can enjoy complimentary access to Google AI Pro plan for 12 months. The plan offers a full range of premium features such as Gemini 2.5 Pro and Veo 3, its video creation AI model. The plan also offers 2TB cloud storage and AI features in Gmail, Docs, and other Google tools.

Google emphasizes that the AI Pro plan is designed to assist students in a broad range of use cases like research and study, interview preparation, as well as idea generation. Among its AI-driven tools and services are:

Homework Assistance & Exam Preparation: Study up to 1,500-page textbooks with the help of AI.

Study Assistance: Study long textbooks (up to 1,500 pages), assist in exam preparation, as well as comprehend tough subjects.

Writing Tools: Create drafts, proofread essays, and structure ideas

Video Creation: Convert text and images into brief videos using Google's Veo 3 system.

NotebookLM: Enhanced research with greater audio and document summaries.

Gemini Integration: In-line AI assistance in Gmail, Docs, Sheets, and more apps.

Cloud Storage: 2TB of Drive, Gmail, and Photos storage for saving assignments, projects, and media files.

How students can obtain free Google AI Pro

Google states that the free plan is available to students only if they are eligible and can validate their student status.

To avail of this, students need to validate their status. Here is how one can do it:

Go to the Google One student offer page.

Input the details as required, school name, name, and date of birth.

Provide documents if asked to confirm attendance at an accredited university.

Upon confirmation, sign up for the AI Pro plan in the Google Play Store.

Please note that the redemption period for this offer is 15 September 2025, and it is open to users who do not possess an active or higher Google One subscription.

In parallel, Google has also stipulated the eligibility and terms to qualify for the offer. These are:

The student should be 18 years and older.

Reside in India.

Use their personal Google Account (supervised accounts prohibited).

Offer a valid school email address or proof of school enrollment when asked.

Not subscribed through third-party sites.

Have an active form of payment linked with their Google Payments account (for billing on the trial).

Google indicates that the subscription is totally free for an entire year, but students need to cancel before the trial period's end in an effort to prevent automatic billing at regular prices. The subscription will renew automatically once the free time has elapsed unless canceled manually.

Following the growing demand for veteran professionals in the new technology area of artificial intelligence, the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi (IIT Delhi) has launched the second edition of its Certificate Programme in Generative AI. As a part of its Continuing Education Programme (CEP), this six-month online certificate program is open to working professionals with a view to acquiring freshest competencies in Large Language Models (LLMs), Natural Language Processing (NLP), and responsible AI development.

This sector-agnostic course is intended for professionals from any industry such as software development, data science, machine learning, digital product management, and applied research. It also includes educators and tech-enabling professionals willing to make a career shift to innovative AI applications.

Pragmatic AI technologies like Python, NumPy, TensorFlow, PyTorch, spaCy, and Hugging Face are learned by students. The courses include hands-on tutorials as well as industry-led capstone projects that are orchestrated to simulate actual deployments of AI in different verticals including healthcare, education, finance, and autonomous systems.

Evolving research entails evolving subject matter in the form of transformer models, neural architecture, parameter-efficient fine-tuning (PEFT) for low-resource settings, and multilingual NLP. Students study evolving model architectures such as GPT, BERT, and T5, and are exposed to evolving techniques such as instruction tuning, retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), reinforcement learning with human feedback (RLHF), and evolving prompting techniques in order to maximize model performance and usefulness.

Emphasizing the larger societal relevance of the program, IIT Delhi Electrical Engineering Department Professor Tanmoy Chakraborty added, "This program is a result of our conviction that Generative AI will drive innovation and decision-making in the future. We aim to develop professionals who do not just know AI technologies but also drive their use in industries responsibly with depth."

As the world undergoes a change with AI, industry reports have already established an on-demand demand for AI experts. According to studies by PwC, AI will add as much as USD 15.7 trillion to the world economy by 2030. The BCG report does, nonetheless, lay out that even though investments in AI are on the rise, there is a success rate of only 26% for organisations to apply these technologies in driving material value. While that, The AIDEA of India report by EY estimates the figure at USD 1.5 trillion by the close of the decade, i.e., from Generative AI alone to India's GDP.

The training is being imparted in a mix of self-study and live web classrooms, amounting to 60 hours of formal instruction and facilitated learning, and a 10-hour capstone project. The trainees can choose one-day campus immersion at IIT Delhi, experiencing the quality of research and academics of the institute.

For admission, the candidate should have a bachelor's or master's degree in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. On successful completion, the students are awarded an e-certificate by IIT Delhi CEP.

With a focus on cultivating applied skills as well as ethical innovation, the program is meant to build the future generation of AI leaders to make lasting impact in industry.

India's online tech ed and upskilling industry is booming at a rate of 25.7% CAGR, driven by flexible learning, technology platforms, and policy support in the pipeline

The Indian online higher education and upskilling sector is witnessing an unprecedented boom with the market expected to reach INR 13,200 crore in FY 2023 (2022-2023 financial) to Rs.41,500 crore in FY 2028, revealed Technopak Advisors and ResearchAndMarkets.com reports. A huge 25.7 percent CAGR growth rate, as such, reflects the nationwide transition to industry and adaptive, easy education. Upskilling is the sole answer for the evolving job market of today. Data science and AI, digital marketing, etc. are the options at present, and during FY 2021, almost 7 out of every 10 online school admissions were booked by working professionals with a maximum of three years of work experience. Upskilling to stay relevant is the new cool thing to stay relevant to the job market.

Transforming India's EdTech ecosystem

India is being reshaped by education through corporate giants such as Jaro Education, UpGrad, Great Learning, Simplilearn, TalentEdge, and TimesPro. These are the companies who partner with top-ranked universities and recruit industry professionals, merging their strengths with new models of engagement and technologies to drive rapid growth and expanding student pools.

Jaro Education can be defined in terms of teamwork culture and vision strategy, in the competitive landscape. With its chain of 100 of the nation's top nationally ranked accredited institutions like IIM Ahmedabad, IIT Madras, and IIT Delhi, Jaro has established a brand name that can be trusted as a credible cross-roads between school success and student aspirations. Jaro is an unparalleled range and diversity with 239 programs being offered in 34 partner institutions all over the world. Jaro Education is the market leader having very good financial numbers with respect to high EBITDA and PAT with respect to high margins. It has been performing well and consistently good with respect to margins, and also it is the market leader insofar as margins are concerned with respect to other players like Imarticus, TimesPro and Intellipaat.

Why is upskilling important?

Industry experts concur with the need for upskilling. LinkedIn Chairman ASM Group of Institutes Dr. Sandeep Pachpande believes, "Upskilling is no longer a choice. With the changing workplace today, lifelong learning is the only way to be relevant." Edtech expert Rohan Joshi (@rohanjoshi) commented on X, "India's online upskilling market isn't just increasing—it's emerging to be the foundation for our next-gen talent. Those providing industry connect with academic seriousness will call the shots."

Government programmes like National Education Policy 2020, Digital India, and Skill India, and increased budgetary support are also bringing digital education within reach and making it inclusive. All these programmes are also empowering women and students of second-tier towns to enjoy quality education and upskilling. Other such government programs like the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020, Digital India, and Skill India are being launched to make online education accessible and more inclusive in India and the world and changing the landscape. Online education integration at every level, specifically, has been one of the areas of emphasis for the NEP 2020 that demands that one must offer digital infrastructure, high-speed internet, and an access to digital devices to rural and urban students. Through technology-enabled education promotion, NEP 2020 has vision for why it needs to provide the digital divide so that students located in remote areas/small towns can utilize the quality study material and engaging contents devoid of geographic context.

The policy will also help create digital pedagogy, and there are professional teacher trainings to empower the teachers to utilize the digital tools to the best possible extent and get the students to think and solve problems. The direct impact of this policy emphasis is experience on such activities as PM eVidya and creation of digital repositories, virtual labs, and online course platforms. Flexible, competency-based, and customized learning pathway provided by NEP can be especially beneficial to women and marginalized group learners, otherwise limited access to mainstream schooling. Orientation to the future

Backed by growing government budgetary spending on education, the policies are not just democratizing education but also expanding it out to women and small-town students to access improved quality education and up-skilling opportunities that were not accessible earlier due to geography. This convergent approach is revolutionizing India's education culture and is getting society inclusive and resilient.

In a move to put Karnataka at the forefront of the world map of innovation, Visvesvaraya Technological University (VTU) has opened its Hub and Spoke Centre of Excellence at the university's regional office in Bengaluru. Not merely a cutting-edge facility, this centre reflects an increasing necessity to connect academic excellence with on-ground innovation.

Spreading over a staggering 1 lakh square feet, the centre is a collaborative venture between VTU, Visvesvaraya Research & Innovation Foundation (VRIF), and Telecom Centre of Excellence (TCOE), India. It is conceived as a national research centre addressing cutting-edge areas like 6G and 5G communication, artificial intelligence, quantum computing, augmented and virtual reality, and state-of-the-art healthcare technology.

Addressing the launch, Union Minister of Communications Jyotiraditya Scindia emphasized that innovation is not sufficient alone — startups and institutions need to be in consonance with India's developmental aspirations. "The future is in 6G, AI, quantum computing and beyond," he said. "We have to be ready to lead the change, not lag behind.

But above the buzzwords and big technology, what is exciting about this launch is the people-focused vision. The centre is not for ivory tower scholars in lab coats or super coders — it's meant to support entrepreneurs, students, and researchers with the passion to tackle actual problems that matter in people's lives. From rural health diagnostics to AI-driven disaster warnings, the uses being developed here could reach millions of lives.

With Bengaluru already referred to as India's Silicon Valley, VTU's new Centre of Excellence is bound to further embed the city's position in the making of the digital future. It also marks a subtle but forceful shift in Indian academia — from being all about the degree to creating innovation ecosystems.

For students and technology enthusiasts, this is not another institution — it's a marker that India's tech leap forward is very much in motion.

It was an outstanding leadership recruitment when Apple Inc. named Sabih Khan as its new Chief Operating Officer (COO) — a testimony to his incredible odyssey, from a Uttar Pradesh village town to the control centre of one of the globe's most powerful tech firms.

Khan's own biography is that of technical competence paired with worldwide aspiration. He has dual undergraduate degrees in Mechanical Engineering and Economics from Tufts University and a Master's in Mechanical Engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI). Such intellectual foundations have been a launching pad for almost a three-decade-long residence at Apple, where he has been instrumental in overseeing the company's enormous global operations and supply chain.

Born in 1966 in Moradabad, Khan was packed off as a child to Singapore when he was still in school. Early exposure to international systems and cultures could well have given him a problem-solving and innovative thinking model — traits that would characterize his professional life at Apple. Prior to joining the company in 1995, Khan worked as an applications development engineer at GE Plastics, where he had hands-on experience in using engineering to devise practical solutions to real problems. 

Khan rose through the ranks at Apple and was promoted to Senior Vice President of Operations in 2019 to be part of the executive leadership team of the tech giant. His hand is on all facets of Apple's very intricate, diversified worldwide supply chain — a tightrope act balancing logistics, sustainability, and innovation. Khan will now oversee Apple's entire operations ecosystem as COO, allowing the company to continue to grow into new products, services, and geographies.

His Tufts degree, which ranks among America's top 50 national universities, and his graduate degree at RPI, one of the world's highest-ranked engineering schools, have been key to his achievements. But also key is Khan's quiet effectiveness as a leader. It's something co-workers say will be absolutely critical as Apple moves into the next generation of technology revolution.

In Sabih Khan's professional trajectory, we hear more than corporate advancement. We hear education, global experience, and continuing education, and what they can do for a person, taking him from an Indian classroom to Apple's boardroom.