Learning Matters: Enhancing learning outcomes with tech tools and AI

Learning Matters is an ed-tech organization headquartered in Bangalore. The firm was founded by Ramamoorthy G (Moorthy), Gowri Mahesh and Saraswathy Ramamoorthy. Gowri, Saras and Moorthy are from the education and technology domains in which they have worked for about 20 years each. The Founders share that they focus on one of the largest problems faced by the Indian education sector – falling quality of learning outcomes in the majority of students. “We use tech tools and AI to solve this systemic problem and to scale the solution effectively, for…

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The valuation of unicorns – A Finance 101 interpretation1

Last week a leading financial daily reported that several unicorns had suffered write downs in their valuation.   You can read it here. https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/tech/technology/blackrock-cuts-byjus-valuation-by-over-60-to-8-2-billion/articleshow/100627551.cms For those who have been observing the startup space even from the periphery, like me, this was not completely surprising.  News about write downs had been trickling in for a while from 2022.  What the news story did was to pull into one place the names of prominent venture capital (VC) funded companies and the extent of write downs they had suffered lately.  The story suggested…

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IIMB interviews co-authors of ‘Found Again: Real Stories of Women, Work & Flexibility’

The book tells stories of 20 women who have found their way back to professional fulfilment, creating their own unique career paths aligned to their life needs Interview features co-authors Shreya Prakash, Deepa Narayanaswamy and Rashmi Rammohan, alumni of the PGP 2008 batch and co-founders of FlexiBees 1.What was the reason behind choosing the title ‘Found Again’ and what motivated you to compile the narratives of these 20 women? Most of us know that women’s workforce participation in India is at an all-time low currently, at 23%. To put it…

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Figure 1: (left) Screen grab from Urban Clap app showing haircut prices, (centre) Sugarcane juice at Rs 20 in Bannerghatta Park, (right) Sugarcane juice at Rs 30 in Bellandur, Bengaluru Urban

IS IT TIME TO RE-VISIT INDIA’S EXCHANGE RATE POLICY? By Ram Iyer

I remember visiting India in July 2014 after a five-year hiatus and paying Rs. 250 for a haircut in a Mumbai suburb. In January 2023, I visited the locality again and a haircut cost me the same Rs. 250. I am reasonably certain that the barber didn’t charge pro-rata to account for my much-receded hairline over the last decade. This observation could be termed anecdotal. The below snip shot from the app Urban Clap has haircuts prices at about Rs 250 as well. Why have haircut prices not increased in…

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Terracotta by Sachii: Crafting sustainable yet contemporary lifestyle products

Terracotta by Sachii is a designed and curated collection of contemporary lifestyle products in traditional terracotta, from heritage pottery clusters of India. According to the Founder Sachii Tripathii, the brand was born in September 2020 with a vision to bring indigenous pottery crafts into the mainstream and help customers live healthy, sustainable and environment-friendly lives, while also helping the artisans sustain themselves as well as helping preserve an integral part of India’s cultural heritage. Says Sachii, “I blend my design skills with handcraft skills of the artisans to co-create contemporary…

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From Climate crisis to health- this World Health Day, there is a need to tackle this through a holistic lens

‘This year’s World Health Day will shine on nurses and midwives, the on-the-call, relentless workforce that revolutionized the healthcare industry as we know it today,’ says the World Health Organization (WHO). The International Confederation of Midwives, an association with 108 member associations in 98 countries, projects a global shortage of 900,000 midwives and those in the sector continue to face discrimination, poor working environments and unequal pay. They are left out of health leadership. “Midwives need an enabling environment. Strategic litigation for better salaries is the need of hour,” says…

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The High and Lows of Indian business: Four stories unravelled G. Sabarinathan shares his takeaways from Nandini Vijayaraghavan’s recent book, ‘Unfinished Business’

I first heard about Nandini Vijayaraghavan a couple of years ago, when a friend of mine forwarded a short review of her translation of Shri Krishnamoorthy’s Tamil classic, Sivakamiyin Sabadam (Sivakami’s Vow).  Tamilians of my generation, and that of my parents, grew up waiting for serialized version of this and his other novels in the Tamil weekly, Kalki.   You can get a glimpse of Shri Krishnamoorthy’s life and work at  https://www.thehindu.com/books/how-kalki-penned-ponniyin-selvan-dipping-into-archival-books-in-an-old-steel-trunk/article65949508.ece and https://www.thehindu.com/books/kalki-krishnamurthy-his-life-and-times-more-than-just-a-biography/article65296015.ece Unfinished Business is no work of fiction, although as Vijayaraghavan notes in the book, quoting Aldous Huxley,…

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IIMB & SWAYAM: A fruitful five-year association

SWAYAM is the digital learning platform launched by the Govt of India. The platform hosts many courses on several subjects from several universities across India. This effort aims to make available the best teaching and learning resources to the remotest area free of cost with the help of this platform. IIMB is one of the nine national coordinators of SWAYAM and has offered more than 50 courses on this platform since 2017. Universities and institutions, across India, send their proposals to IIMBx, the digital learning vertical of IIMB, and the…

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STEMonsters: Making science appealing to kids

STEMonsters is a learning ecosystem for school children, aiming to build, in them, a strong foundation in STEM concepts through interdisciplinary, application-focused programs. According to the founder, Dr. Sonali Dasgupta, the programs help develop a problem-solving mindset while instilling confidence in children to explore the unknown and keeping them engaged and curious. Dr. Sonali Dasgupta adds, “We offer weekly, after-school science and technology learning programs for children (pan-Asia), in the age group of eight to 14 years, wherein they learn by experimenting and building on their own, right from their…

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The roadmap to boost brand value: Copylove

Founded in 2015, Copylove is a boutique copywriting and strategic content solutions studio that offers branding, copywriting and strategic content solutions to corporate enterprises, brands, businesses and entrepreneurs.  The Founder Gunjan Pai says that they specialize in creating a wide variety of niche brand work including naming, taglines, positioning, short-form content such as social media, and long-form pieces such as whitepapers, publications, etc. She adds, “We are a lean-principled firm with a collaborative DNA. Our all-women team works remotely from Mumbai, Delhi, Bangalore and Goa. The team makes high-quality, persuasive…

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