The quest for ABDCE( A billion dollar company in education): to help n India’s March towards a $5 trillion economy. 

As we begin the New Year, it is time for reflection and making future plans, and pursuing the goal ( not the dream) f India becoming a trillion dollar economy by the year 2024. There are a large number of ‘professional pessimists’ in whose view these are very bad times, and we are headed for much worse, and the 5 trillion dollar Indian economy is a pipe dream. That attitude is self-fulfilling, and the coming years could  confirm their worst fears.

At the other end of the spectrum are perennial optimists who always think that the future is several orders of magnitude brighter and full of opportunities. These are the ones who launched satellites, put a man on the moon and recently on October 23rd Google achieved Quantum Supremacy, meaning thereby that their 54 Qubit Sycamore Quantum Computer could do a calculation in 200 seconds, that the fastest classical super computer, the Summit would have taken 10,000 years. This event has probably a much greater significance that a man landing on the moon. Just imagine what is coming in this decade. 

We are already in the era of reusable rockets and soon commercial space travel. About 400 years ago, the famous Isaac Newton had put it beautifully. “ I do not know what I may appear to the world, but to myself, I am like a child on the seashore, looking now for a smoother pebble it a prettier shell, while the vast ocean of truth lay undiscovered before me.” 

As we begin the 3rd decade of the 21st century, there is a vast ocean of opportunities to be explored and exploited, and learning is the most crucial element for leadership in the knowledge, creative and innovation economy. 

This is the right time to work towards creating a great educational enterprise with huge revenues and valuation. 

Evan Williams had identified the formula for building such an enterprise. 

Take a human desire, preferably one that has been around for a really long time…Identify that desire and use modern technology to take out steps…..Evan Williams ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evan_Williams_(Internet_entrepreneur))

The following text is extracted from the famous book ‘ Schools that Learn’ by Peter Senge ” The drive to learn is as strong as the sexual drive,” writes anthropologist Edward T Hall ” It begins earlier and lasts longer.” The drive to learn: an interview with Edward T Hall Santa Fe Lifestyle ( Spring 1988) pp 12-14 ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_T._Hall )

In the coming decade, the stages of education will change from the multiple stages that we have today to the 3 broad stages of (a) pre-natal, neo-natal and pre-school learning (b) becoming an autonomous self-directed learner during school, college or university and (c) becoming a lifelong learner. 

According to Kim and Mauborgne, authors of ‘ Blue Ocean Strategy’ competing in overcrowded industries is no way to sustain high performance. “ Lifelong Learning” is the Blue Ocean in education space. 

The new education policy 2019 draws attention to the importance of lifelong learning first in its very first page at the third paragraph :0.3. Indeed, with the quickly changing employment and global ecosystem, it is becoming increasingly important that children not only learn, but learn how to learn.  It is again mentioned in its para 4.5. “The key overall thrust of curriculum and pedagogy reform across all stages will be to move the education system towards real understanding and learning how to learn.”

Thomas Frey, the senior futurist at the Da Vinci Institute think tank has been predicting that by 2030 the largest company on the internet is going to be an education-based company that we haven’t heard of yet, This is the result of disruptions in education caused by Technologies Disruptively Transforming Education :5G: very high bandwidths with low latency ( death of distance)

Big Data : learning analytics : search, compare, rate, review : recommendation engines, Blockchain : Smart contracts ; EDU-blocks, Augmented & Virtual Reality: immersion learning, AI and Machine learning : Watson, Chatbots etc. 

A major disruption will be the evolution and proliferation of Co-learning space and Emerging Technologies Experience Centres: 

Such a centre is a dedicated flexible physical space, with a better learning environment than either home or a traditional classroom, conducive to self-directed learning, where a number of co-explorers who are eager to be well prepared for the 21st century can find others members with similar dispositions  and it becomes a co-learning space for the AI and emerging technologies learning community.

Levels of such centres :

“Co-learning Space and Emerging Technologies Experience Centre”:

Level 1: All learning resources and infra-structure and experiencing as well as developing new Alexa Skills. Experiencing Virtual Reality with Oculus. Experiencing Augmented Reality. 

Level 2: Level 1+ Hands-on Indipi, Smarthomes, Deeplens etc.

Level 3: Level 2+ Developing AI solutions/ projects from IBM, Amazon and Microsoft cloud resources

Level 4: Level 3+ Quantum Computing: knowledge resource base and cloud services from Microsoft, Amazon and IBM

This is also an important element in India’s March towards a $5 trillion dollar economy : https://youtu.be/lxkhumAnQlE

If you find this challenging and worth your while to pursue this niche in entrepreneurship, feel free to contact me by sending a WhatsApp message at : 9810073724