Schoolnet acqui-hires AI startup NextSteps

Integrating the NextSteps team within Schoolnet will help develop a cutting edge product of Geneo for the K12 learning app business.

Leading Edtech company Schoolnet India Limited has acqui-hired NextSteps AI — a deep-tech (Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning) startup incubated at Hyderabad’s T-hub startup hub — into its fold. NextSteps has played an integral part in the development of Schoolnet India’s digital and deep-tech capabilities.

NextSteps is founded by Gowtham Kumar and Srinivas Adepu, and mentored by Shailesh Kumar, a globally acclaimed expert on AI and Data Science.

Kumar said, “We’re very happy to join Schoolnet’s team. The opportunity to become part of Schoolnet India will enable us to be integrally part of the revolutionary phase that our nation is witnessing now in the education technology space.”

Ever since its launch in 2016, NextSteps has worked with Schoolnet — jointly developing a skill exchange platform that evolved into Temasek-backed joint venture Good Workers in 2020. The NextSteps team has also played a pivotal role in developing the Geneo platform, Schoolnet’s K12 learning application.

“At NextSteps AI, we always believed in being a cohesive bunch of product innovators and we have been committed to building AI-based solutions that are intuitively personalized for the Indian education community. I am really stoked to share a common vision with such a mission-driven organization like Schoolnet India,” Kumar added.

Speaking about the partnership, Schoolnet MD and CEO RCM Reddy said, “As we sharpen digital transformation of our K12 business, as two primary and synchronized offerings: Geneo School (digital classroom solution for in-school learning) and Geneo (for seamless after-school learning), we have decided to integrate the NextSteps team within Schoolnet to strengthen our deep-tech capability. With this transition, we would be able to work as ‘one team’ and develop a cutting-edge and differentiated product of Geneo which will help in realizing our dream of building a sustainable digital business, integrating profit with purpose. The team is tenacious, passionate, and committed to collectively realize this dream.”

Schoolnet is one of India’s oldest Edtech service providers. The company provides its services to around 40,000 schools catering to 15 million students. It provides digital and digitally-enabled services to K-12 schools and students in the Middle and Bottom of the Pyramid segment.

Schoolnet’s Geneo platform offers students multi-sensory learning content based on a digitized version of the school textbooks. Along with live classes by teachers and mentors, the platform conducts continuous assessments to chart the student’s learning trajectory. The platform currently contains content in Hindi and English for Class VI-X students of the CBSE board and in Bengali for West Bengal Board students.

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