As edtech platforms move towards deploying artificial intelligence tools to enhance offerings, a clear divide has emerged within various segments of the industry.

While higher education and upskilling startups are anticipating greater benefits from the technology, those servicing schools and students on a large scale may run into some headwinds, founders and executives at edtech companies told ET.

Mumbai-based skilling and workforce development startup Upgrad is looking to utilise AI to translate its popular bootcamps and certificate programmes into vernacular languages to improve its product offerings and expand reach. In the initial stage, translations will be available in Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada and Bengali to serve the Indian market. Subsequently, the company plans to extend this to foreign languages such as Spanish and Chinese.

Noida-based edtech unicorn Physics Wallah is also set to officially launch its generative AI tool, Alakh AI, later this month. Named after one of its cofounders, Alakh Pandey, it will serve as a personalised tutor for students, helping them with queries, providing summaries, and acting as a “study companion”.

“Most of the jobs are in tier-I markets, but roughly about 40-45% of our learners come from tier-II and tier-III towns and cities. While they all want to give interviews in English, for the learning purpose they do need a vernacular approach,” said Upgrad cofounder and managing director Mayank Kumar.

Upgrad offers online and hybrid degree courses, pathway and study-abroad programmes as well as certification and bootcamps, diploma, master’s and executive doctorate programmes for working professionals. The firm said it records high demand from places like Bengaluru, New Delhi, Mumbai, Hyderabad, Odisha, Pune, Chennai and Kolkata.

According to Kumar, AI is a significant investment, not only for teaching and learning but also for pedagogy, sales and driving conversions. “We will also leverage AI in various other initiatives at Upgrad…We are also trying to bring AI into our approach for mock interviews,” he added.

Around 80% of Upgrad’s business is from India. Kumar said the platform plans to target international markets such as the US, Europe and the Middle East from a business-to-business standpoint.

Prateek Maheshwari, cofounder of Physics Wallah, said: “With over 2 million daily active users, the method of having teachers or subject matter experts to directly address students’ doubts and issues is not feasible. This approach is both high-cost and operationally intensive. To overcome this challenge, we have implemented GenAI to develop ‘Alakh AI’”.

Alakh AI will expand its services to include, resolving doubts in class, semantic search, teacher support and evaluating answers, he added.

Resource limitations

For startups in the edtech space that offer services to schools, while AI presents a large opportunity, lack of enough resources at schools is a challenge.

“AI is still in a very early stage and is continuously evolving…any integration of technology as such presents a huge challenge. AI will require continuous upgrades and investments to ensure the tools don’t become outdated,” a senior executive at a unicorn edtech startup said.

“There is also a new challenge of ensuring data privacy and protection at schools with a certain amount of tech deployment that goes beyond AI,” he said, adding that a significant investment needs to be made in training teachers as well as ancillary staff at schools.

From a students’ point of view as well, human instruction is necessary, another executive said, adding that going forward, AI will be able to assist in pedagogy development by analysing and identifying learner patterns. “The biggest question, though, remains. How many schools and students will be able to spend on these tools…companies can target the top 10-15% of the schools but it will take years for AI to penetrate on a broader scale, especially at state board and government schools” the executive said.

To be sure, there are more than 1.5 million schools in India, as per education ministry data.

Talking about the potential of AI in the edtech space, Kiran Raj, practice head of disruptive tech at GlobalData, said: “As we navigate changes (in the edtech sector), it is imperative for stakeholders to foster an ecosystem where AI acts as an ally to educators, rather than a substitute, ensuring the edtech sector’s resurgence is both ethical and impactful.”