Bringing students, teachers and parents together on the same page: Why We Invested in Uolo

^{"By leveraging a low-cost and easy-to-use communication platform between schools, teachers and students, Uolo is taking a differentiated approach to improving pedagogy and parent engagement in K-12 schools, while providing schools access to learning and administrative products. A first of its kind model, Uolo will help build evidence around efficacy of tech-based solutions in improving education quality in a school setting"}

The New Education Policy (NEP) 2020 outlines India’s new vision for our education system places technology front and center in an effort to improve teaching, learning, educational planning, and management. It also puts forth many policy changes in the areas of pedagogy and teacher education, including early childhood education, inclusive education, and skill development. These are areas where innovative edtech startups like Kutuki, Vedantu, and Doubtnut have already created a substantial impact. But while edtech has disrupted the after-school learning space for students at an individual level, the use of technology by those running the schools, however, has been limited.

Most Indian schools are hesitant to adopt new technology due to several reasons - a lack of awareness, or low levels of interest by institutional leadership including principals, school boards and private owners or high implementation costs. Existing edtech learning products are not always conducive to integration into the regular workflow for teachers. This has led to further reticence and lower adoption of these tech-led products.

But is breaking through this barrier with an online platform that helps schools and parents to connect, manage and learn. Uolo brings students, teachers, and parents together onto a multilingual common platform to facilitate better communication, transparency, and eventually deliver better outcomes for students.

Founded by Pallav Pandey, Ankur Pandey, and Siddharth P Singh in 2013, Uolo is currently working with more than 3000 schools in over 200 cities across India. The company has three distinct low-cost and easy-to-use solutions. Its messaging platform gives schools and parents the control over how they communicate. A modular cloud-based ERP for school administrators helps simplify tasks like fee management, attendance and admissions. And, thirdly, a suite of learning products for live online classes, homework and test management. Uolo also creates in-house content to develop skills in English and communication, math, logic, reasoning, creativity, general awareness, social-emotional intelligence, and life skills.

At Omidyar Network India, we believe that to improve the quality of education, the community also needs to demand higher standards of delivery of learning. Our investment in Uolo stems from this core idea. We believe Uolo will be able to drive wide adoption of learning tools in its network and help teachers and parents overcome their reluctance towards technology by giving them support and demonstrating improved learning outcomes for students. Building evidence around the efficacy of tech-based solutions in a school environment could spur greater demand from schools, which in turn can eventually lead to a sector-wide evolution in Indian education.