AI, Education, and the Future of India | Will We Make the Leap?

0:00 Even though 50 faculties together cannot do the work that one good faculty has done in my entire life, many times it used to happen that for a subject that I am studying for four-five days, there are some students who remember better grades than that after studying it in one night. The kind of work you are starting and the kind of work that IITs and NITs have been doing in our country for the last 30, 40, 50 years and IITs have been doing it for the last 70, 75 years. From where the children who come out after studying can create their own startups. Build deep tech startups. He should also do research and whichever company he goes to, whether it is Google or Microsoft, he should go with an entrepreneurial spirit and very good skills along with this, what are the challenges in your opinion that are coming because of the AI. There were proper riots in Uttar Pradesh that they will

0:45 take away our jobs. There were protests against them. It was broken by la la on the road. China brings its own deep seat. We know that Gemini and Sora and other platforms are quite fast. You are giving a very very sorry picture of the current state of awareness. Whether it is all lost or not there is still hope. Why in the Hurry and Why? Hello friends please welcome to Sidam and we are here with you today in yet another edition of Casual Doc. When we talk of a university, when we talk of an educationist, generally the kind of images that come to our mind are of a crone up person and

1:32 people involved in research, who will have a lot of publications , a lot of books and based on that, they will have an understanding of education. But the world is changing and our country is changing. The guest who is with us today is among those educationists of a new generation. He is one of those educationists who are yet to see their 30s and 40s properly. But they have set out to transform universities and change our educational scape. So I want you to welcome Siddharth Maheshwari from Newtons School of Technology NST. Welcome. Thank you sir. I will start with a very basic thing. I am a university teacher. And when we are recognised as educationists

2:20 , we are used to looking at the people of our generation or even those who are older than me. At this age when you should have been dating, you should have been playing sports. You should have done other enjoyable things or if you wanted to come into education then you should have done research in labs and when you would have had 100-50 publications, then you should have thought about why the hair and why education. When NASA launched the Apollo mission, the average age of their scientist at that time was 25. Today, the people who work in Tesla are dreaming of going to Mars. The average age there is

3:08 around 27-26. So only young people change the world. When a person sees so much of life, sees his own life, then a cynicism also develops in him. That revolution that you need from a youth is found only in the youth. So that is why I feel that the youth will change the world. There is no better way to change the world than education. We all are products of this system. We all are created through education. So that's why I think there is no better way than education. Let us try to understand this first. Siddharth, you said that you have come out of that system. First of all, tell us about your background and what problems did you see in the education system you were a part of, which made you feel the need for a new kind of thinking

3:57 ? So, I'll start from a very small place about myself; I am from a small place in Uttar Pradesh where even today there is no railway station and from there, first of all, due to education in life, my father brought me to a fairly big place, i.e. Gwalior, my schooling started there, we did schooling etc. One good thing that happened there was that we had a shop, so my father brought a computer for accounting in it, so I got a computer in the third class, when the world did not have it in those days and because of computers my world opened up. Internet was also installed in it. I started exploring it a lot. Now there is a 7-8 year old kid who lives in the middle of the market and he does n't have many friends and nothing. For him, the internet opened up like a whole new world.

4:42 So there my knowledge or education you can say started in a very good way. I used to read a lot. I used to read whatever book I could get my hands on. After reaching 10th, I came to know that there are places after doing IIT. Computer science is taught there. And by then I had started doing a lot of coding in computer science. I had my own blogs. I used to run a website development studio and I had so much power over the internet that I started earning more than my father at that time. So I understood that this is where I have to make my career. It is a lot of fun too. You are getting to make something. So there are IITs, it has a Computer Science branch, there is some JE exam, so I also started preparing for the JE exam, fortunately I stopped at IIT and reached Computer Science, I can say with certainty that IIT changed my life, this is

5:29 a point which I want to be underlined because I will be coming back to it, yes, but at the same time, with how much excitement I had gone there, I would get such an environment there that the faculty would want to discuss research with me day and night. Would like to talk a lot about technology. At least during my time, when I went to the initial faculty classes, I did not enjoy it. Yes, the teachers in JE used to teach very passionately. And when it came to classes here, a teacher definitely came. It doesn't matter, he has delivered his class and left. And they are typically age 50-60 years old faculty. There I met a young faculty of Electronics. It also so happened that I had a tutorial class. That is, basically the MTechs that are taken were in that, on that day the MTech would be sick, so in his

6:15 place a young faculty had joined at that time who was from IIT Bombay, he took that tutorial class and he taught that subject so passionately that I later went and met him because it was the first time I saw someone teaching with so much passion, that too a tutorial class, and even a complex subject like electronics I started understanding after listening to him, then when I talked to him and did other things as well, I was in good touch with him for the entire 4 years, he gave a lot of direction to my life also, so even if there were 50 faculties there together they would not have been able to do the work. That one good faculty changed the direction of my entire life. So the role of education is very very important. There were so many challenging peers in IIT, almost all the friends were very competitive, the PR was also very good. But he is also very intelligent. Many times it used to happen that I was studying for a subject in four to five days. There were some

7:01 children who would get better grades than that after studying for one night. So IIT opened up a whole world for me. Well Siddharth now I am coming to that question which came because of IIT. I have been to almost all IIT campuses. Inf people have met for the first time on campuses at different times. Brilliant students come to these campuses and it is a very competitive environment and because of the way the culture of JE has been built, they also come through a filter and you yourself have come from IIT Roorkee. IIT Roorkee is also a beautiful campus, wonderful everything. The kind of work you are starting and the kind of work that IITs and NITs have been doing in our country for the last 30, 40, 50 years and IITs have been doing it for the last 70, 75 years. What is the

7:48 major difference in that? Why should you lockdown the IITs, that is any person coming to this country, and say that you are not able to give that. If I give better than you then teacher and I will be successful. I will ask you very seriously and with great doubt, tell me what is it? What is it? So first of all I want to make it absolutely clear that we are neither competing with IIT nor can we do so. We want to set up an institution parallel to IIT. The people who come to IITs, the faculty who come, are very good in research. They are the best of people. Now I have many friends who did their undergraduate studies from IIT during my time. Have done PhD from outside. He had

8:33 offers worth crores there. He left it and became a faculty at IIT. Even though he may not be very good at teaching, he is very good at research. He is the one who is taking India's science and technology forward. No one can do what IITs have done for the country. What we are trying to build at Newton School of Technology is an undergraduate focused tech education system. From where the children who come out after studying can create their own startups. Build deep tech startups. They should explore different interests in entrepreneurship. They should also do research and whichever company they go to, whether it is Google or Microsoft, they should go with an entrepreneurial spirit and should carry very good skills along with it. This is our effort here, so all our faculty comes from the industry, they come from companies like Google. Basically you started with coding.

9:21 Ok? I frequently meet people who are developers and who have built their own strong records in coding. Later people trained other people. Currently, there is a big crisis or challenge in coding which is coming from AI and the thing that earlier 1000-500 people used to be involved in coding and then one thing was ready by making different modules. Now a large part of it is being done by AI. So when you see this change and then you say that you are coming up with a new venture. Whereas those who are already running are still not sure whether they will be able to move forward or not. What are the challenges in your opinion that are

10:07 coming because of the AI not only to just coding but also preparing coders. Absolutely. So technology, be it AI or any other, has always been a disruptor for the society. Today, when computers came, you might remember my father told me that there were riots in UP that these will take away our jobs, there were protests against them on the streets, remember when I was a student, we used to participate in debates which used to say that with the advent of computers, jobs will be lost, absolutely similarly, if we see, for example of banks, technology has ideally made your banks what you want, whatever work is done in banks, depositing or withdrawing money, whatever transactions you have, all that can now be done on a computer in today's era. So there was a time when

10:54 banks also felt this to be a big threat. Will there be only one bank left due to technology and internet and all the bank branches will almost disappear? If you look at it, just the opposite is happening. The reason is that when there is economic growth, when the economy here grows rapidly, then more things are needed. So it remains to be seen what kind of impact it will have on jobs. Some impact will definitely come. Some low level jobs where the developer is just writing a syntax or just writing a basic code. That type of job would be in danger. But will the need for problem solvers disappear? The need for problem solvers is going to increase. If you look at even coding, coding used to be very hard in the past. At that time, there would have been about

11:40 500 coders in the world, I think. Coding is becoming simpler with time. The frameworks that are coming out now are becoming so simple that learning coding today is much easier than it was 20 years ago. But even after that, the number of coding jobs or people doing coding has increased. I think with AI this number will increase maybe 10 or even 100 times. Maybe everyone can do coding. So then what changes will those people have to make in themselves so that they can be competitive in this new environment. Absolutely. So I think there are two-three fundamental changes which are very necessary here. First of all, whatever skills you have, you will have to be very good at computer science. You will have an in-depth understanding of that thing. You will have a good in-depth understanding of coding. Only then will you be able to give directions to AI as to what to do. AI can make your job easier. AI still can’t do your job. Full time

12:26 I teach at a public funded university. I am a teacher at Delhi University. Just now you yourself said that you came from an area of Uttar Pradesh where even there was no railway station. When you talk like this that in future either you will have very good infrastructure and good knowledge of things, then you will survive. Otherwise you will not be able to do it. In a country like India, where there is such a huge digital divide, we, the people in towns and villages, are at the other end of the digital divide. Are you saying that their situation is going to get worse with the advent of AI? It's going to get worse. They will be left out. They will be excluded even further. I would say it will be the opposite. Ok. Tell me how easy it is going to be

13:12 for everyone. Entrepreneurship is going to become easier for everyone. In today's time, anyone can create their own image. Anyone can make a poster. Can generate marketing materials. Whether I run Instagram sitting here or from a village in Uttar Pradesh. Instagram is going to remain the same for me. So technology has always reduced distances. Especially if I look at the example of Internet technologies or even AI. Today take an example of chat GPT. You can have deep conversations with him. You can talk about technical learning. You can pick up any topic. From the universe to God to anyone in any corner of UP, or Ambani who is the richest man in the country, they also have the same. So, according to me, technology creates a level playing field in the world. So with their arrival it depends on how we use it. In which direction do you take me? As I see now, many kids

13:58 use it for cheating also. You are a teacher, one of our biggest tasks is to find out whether that chat is GPT Dash or not. Whether the em dash is there or not is AI generated or not. Of course, children will always be one step ahead. Now it is my job to make this thing AI proof and also teach children the good use of AI. AI is used so what exactly for example what is the policy in Newton school about AI used by students when it comes to their assignments and evaluation so it depends on subject to subject, it is like maths so when you are initially learning maths then we will never tell you to use a calculator, you will say that first you learn the fundamentals, learn it very well, once you are in 12th then you will be encouraged to use a calculator so that you can

14:46 go to one more abstract level of the problem, similar to it is with us also, we first encourage the child and also make sure through assignments etc. in such a way that he learns coding well. Even now AI is not able to do complete coding well. But after that, if you are going to create anything, anything for the world, then you should make the best use of coding and AI. Well, let's encourage the children. We understand it in sense. When we used to do coding. You guys, I'm a computer guy from the 8088 processor era at that time. We used to code in these languages - BASIC, COBOL, Pascal. And when we used to do coding, the biggest problem in coding was just remembering this syntax. And we always used to imagine that why is it not possible to do coding in natural language. Is it

15:32 okay? Why can't coding be done in the language you are talking about ? Let me simply say that it should be a computer program and computer programs should work in the same manner. Do you believe that after the advent of AI, the gap between coding and natural language has reduced significantly. Of course, this gap is gradually decreasing and there seems to be a future in which perhaps whatever work you tell AI to do in the world, it will be able to do it. Not just coding, not just your image generation, but you will give commands to the AI, it will probably go and instruct the robots that now you have to pick up this thing from here and keep it here. Anything can be done. So he can do anything for you. In the future ultimate future which looks 10-15 years ahead, there is also the possibility that AI can do almost all the work in the world.

16:18 So then the question that arises for the people of our country, in fact for your students, our next generation, is that China brings its deep learning. We know that Germany and Sora and other platforms are moving very fast in this race, where is our youth in this race? We, as always, will continue to be those outsourcing people, who will be the coding coolies, who are being used by the courts in the Silicon Valley and China, and we will sit here and earn ₹00-₹400 per month just punching in the courts, or we will also be in the role of a leader, there are two things in this. So Sir, if we look at the kind of work that has come to India, the quality of work is increasing. The

17:05 work that GCC used to get done earlier in India was completely code [ __ ] type of work. Today there is a very high quality job available in which you need more problem solving skills than coding. So such work can grow further in India. Now we also have an opportunity. If we adopt technologies like AI and make our entire population adapt to use it, then we can grab more of these opportunities. So the first thing is this. The second thing, if you are asking where is our own Open AI or where is Deep Sea? I would like to tell you that we are behind it right now. The truth is that such talent does not even exist in our country. In fact, we are going to launch a dedicated program for this thing where we will teach the selected students in a completely practical oriented approach that you have to

17:51 become an LM from day one. That talent is still very less in India compared to China and US. Secondly, apart from talent, this whole model of creating your own AI has one very important thing and that is your computer power. In that, we do n't have any company that can create its own compute power. We will rely on Nvidia or IMD and they already have supply constant. Meaning, they are not even able to meet the demands of the world. The entire India does not even have one 10th compute of the level at which Open AI will create a model or the cloud will create a model. In today's date you are giving a very very sorry picture of the current state of affairs. Whether it is all lost or not there is still hope.

18:36 I think more than just hope, we should look at it as a national mission. We definitely must make it. It is like nuclear power, or it was trying to point towards nuclear power, that we are in a very turbulent world. Do we know what was going on between Gaza and Israel right now ? It is currently going on between Israel and Iran. Russia is fighting against Ukraine. Even between North and South Korea, we are in a very competitive and very fierce and unfortunately very violent world. And all these things are connected. We know how, because of its enormous computing power, Israel is able to carry out assassinations in a very pinpointed manner. Is able to reach the individual level. And this means that our national security and other things are also linked to all these things. So if you are assuming

19:24 that there is still a long journey left. How do you believe that your efforts having this undergrad program and having multiple campuses tries to take it in this direction. What contributions do you see of your faculty and your students after 15 years, if we look at the world, as of today, if you take the example of Israel, America or China, all these people have made extensive investment in their human capital. They have very good universities. All of them have very good education system. All of these have top faculty. And those who come out from here as students are the ones who

20:09 start advanced tech companies. These are the people who start defense tech companies. And these are the people who take their countries forward. So, no matter how far behind we are, I think we will have to take steps. It will have to be taken some time or the other and that step should have been taken yesterday but even if we start it today, it is still important. But if we look at it honestly, the changes taking place in the world of education here, be it IITs , NITs or Central Universities, are generally the responsibility of the governments. It is also believed all over the world. The countries you talked about made large scale public investments in them. China did it, even America does it. Other countries do it too. On the other hand, our public investment is decreasing effectively.

20:55 If you assume that the government's budget allocation for education is simply indexed with inflation, then it is understandable that it is either static or is decreasing. In such a situation, do you expect anything from the government or do you think that the private sector is sufficient to look into this matter as your university is doing an experiment in this matter. In a sense, this is a new kind of experiment on your part. This is why I want to know. Absolutely. I think both will put in efforts and things will happen only with the efforts of both. The government will do its work. But the government will always have its own constants. How can they operate? How fast can you move? How many policies can be changed? How fast because they have to take care of the whole country. If they change the policy at a school level, millions of schools will be impacted. Even if changes are made at the university level, it will happen. And even after that I will praise it here. The

21:42 changes that UGC has brought in over the last four-five years are very positive developments. In that, a lot of effort has been made to bridge the gap between the industry and the academy. There have been multiple such programmes, multiple such initiatives where the government has brought about a major change in skills but we do not see it in rankings etc. I'm not a great voter of rankings. But you will see that if you imagine the top universities of the world, very few of our universities reach 50th, some reach 70th. I don't know since when I've been dreaming about being in the top 10. What's your take on the rankings? Because before coming I was trying to understand what is the ranking scene of your institutes and I feel that you do n't have much faith in your ranking. My

22:28 personal take is that we should probably not think too much about rankings right now but instead think about building human capital. We need to create a very elite human capital in very large numbers which is technically very sound, ethically very sound and which takes the country ahead. Recently our students returned from China. Companies like Alibaba and JD came there. Went to Shingwa University. So he went on the study track. When he comes back because we make our kids work very hard. So we asked him, do you think now that we should go there and see who works harder? His answer was that the big people there who are in very good positions also work much harder than us. So after coming here, his eyes opened to the world as to

23:14 what was happening in the world. So I think we will still have to put in a lot of effort to create talent of that level and that will be through government effort as well as private effort and it has been like this in the world as well. Even in the US, many of your top universities are private. Even in China, some universities have just started functioning and are doing very good work in technology. Those Have Been Private. So it has to be a combination. Involvement of industry is also very important in this. The industry must also take steps on its own to educate, advance, teach and integrate with universities. And universities should try their best to bring the industry into them. This inclusion has many aspects. Firstly, as you said, people with different capacities

24:00 should be associated with universities and it should also be the responsibility of the universities to associate people with different capacities. But then at the same time this inclusion part has a social aspect to it as well. Children coming from those cities from which you said that you have come, children coming from different sections of the society, equal opportunities for both boys and girls in the society, what is your understanding about your university or your institute and also in general about this inclusion that people from different sections should be included, what is the importance of this process or can we say that no no, leave it, now have a simple race, gather the 15 boys who come first and run the country with them.

24:46 I will say something controversial in this. So some of the things that we have done are like, if we have to make our own AI, then in that, more than a democratic effort, at this time we need an effort like you know a startup to bring together the best of the best people. Give them as many resources as possible. There should be some clear decisive leadership there which can take it forward. So in such efforts we should still take a non-democratic approach. A very nimble approach must be taken. That means one should move quickly. Decision making should be given to some people and we should move forward. At the same time, when we talk about increasing the overall capability of the country, then here we should democratize it further. And in that, I think technology can play a big role. AI can play a big role. As you discussed, if you talk about it, in a way AI can also play the role of a teacher.

25:36 If AI creates the world's best teacher in time, it can reach every child in every village. If that child utilizes it well then he will move ahead. Now personally, whenever I give my example, I was from a very small place. If I didn’t have access to the internet I probably wouldn’t have gone as far. What are even IITs? I came to know about it because of the internet. So this is for us because you have started the discussion with controversial topics. So let's jump into the controversy a little more. I recently had a paper on LLM. I have been studying the interactions between LLM and social setups for the past few years. And some of the recent publications show that when you build these large models, for our audience, LLM means

26:22 in the sense of Large Language Model, you can understand that the same language model which is AI like chat GPT is also a LLM in itself which is a generative model on a generative LLM platform. So when we try to make such models and if all the people involved in it are of the same type, as you might have said, then they bring those biases into those models as well. They do not do it intentionally, they do not have any such intention, they were just writing the code, but they have those biases, so the same biases get carried into it as well, and we end up having LLMS which carry the social biases that are there of those people who frame it, so when you say that no, it can be left in the hands of a few people because

27:07 we have to move a little fast and they will all be people with the same kind of socio-economic background and same kind of technologies, then we fear that tomorrow the entire model that will be ready will also be exclusive. No, your question is very valid and when I am saying that we need such an effort, I am talking about India because we have lagged far behind. Right now whatever chat we create will be the earlier versions of GPT. So now whatever we make, we have to first try to come close to it. Now, when we make LLM, one important aspect in it is that of data. Yes. A lot of bias is determined by where the data is coming from and what is coming. If the data is coming from all sections, from all kinds of languages, covering everything

27:52 , then even if the person who is generating it, the LLM engineer, is biased, that bias will automatically go away because that data is clearing that thing. In the LLMs being trained today, everything comes from biased or unbiased data. In the earlier LLMs, human training had a greater role. Buyers had a bigger role there. In the current LMS, the entire role is of data. Siddharth, as I am talking to you and can see the passion, that passion, as soon as we talk about coding, about LLM, suddenly a spike is seen in it. How do you handle it personally? Because the work you are doing would be a huge task, a mundane one. This part,

28:38 which gives you excitement, gives you passion , may be 15% or 20%. 85% of the time you have to be worried about whether the compliances were done or not? What happened to IT ? What happened to the funders from whom the money was taken ? Are the UGC standards being followed or not? And so on and so forth. How do you personally manage this 85 and 15% or whatever the proportion is? These mundane tasks that are necessary, without which work cannot function. And that’s not even the most exciting one. How do you incorporate and bring balance? Absolutely. So in this, I also have a complaint against the judge. Nowadays when I go to hire college guides they have to do cool things. Yes this is what the problem is he will run away from routine. You will run away from boring work and you

29:26 won't get excitement for 24 hours in your entire life. Absolutely. So, I will probably be able to identify myself with your generation according to my age. Then this Jenji is coming and understand that whatever it is in the world, you have been taught here that small work is not considered as big work, ultimately when we have a larger vision, a larger purpose, whatever comes in the way of building it, whatever challenges come, be it small or big, the work may be small or big, all of that has to be taken. Anyone thinks that if I want to become a startup founder and that the job of a startup founder is to do new and cool things, today I will only sit and coding the whole day, will launch the product, not marketing, that means when I made my startup, then at one time my responsibility was to make tea, sweep and mop the company and I had to do all this. So this is a great message for the youth that you should do all kinds of work whether it is at home or

30:11 in your work. Thank you Siddharth for saying it because I continuously work with the youth and I continuously see this big complaint of yours in them. Those people have so called passion in their life, which may not be more than 10, 5, 15% in any work, even if they do the most passionate work. A lot of the work will be routine work. A lot of work will be done by these people. If you run away from them, you will be deprived of the passion because of which you went there. And passion is a very overrated thing. Good. Tell me more about it. They watch movies in today's date, watch Bollywood movies and think that they will find their passion. How do you find your passion ? Whenever you move forward in any direction, you will

30:57 find most of the things boring at first. Or else there will be a lot of excitement in the beginning and then it will become boring. Don't ask, when we watch these films, every person thinks that the film star is so cool. Recently when I had my interaction with something related to the film industry. Went to shoot a few promos etc. We started in the morning at 8:00 am. We were doing take retake retake retake retake till around 9:00 in the night and the total output was 1.5 minutes. You can imagine how boring it must be to have continuous work and I am sure this applies to almost every job. But then when you talk about your institute, how much energy do you put into

31:42 compliance with these regulations and what is your understanding of these regulations ? Should regulations be relaxed a bit? Should regulations increase further? What's your take? Regulations should definitely be reduced and they should be reduced across the board. The government should perhaps play the role of a strong protector if someone is trying to do anything wrong. But otherwise regulations are an injury, we come from higher education. Every day we get news about fake institutes. The institute is there today and disappeared tomorrow. They come to sell degrees. So the government should take action against them. But what has happened is that due to fear so many types of regulations have come up saying don't do this, don't do that. You have to do it like this. This is how to do it. Because of that, it becomes very difficult for you to do your work.

32:28 I will give you an example that even now it is mandated in universities that only MTech qualification is compulsory for teaching. Must have a masters degree. This is considered less common. You are saying that it is not needed. You think about this, if someone has come to the college. Can only MT MTech teach the first year subjects? Can a bachelor who really has the knowledge of that subject not teach it? Does MTech get that subject by default ? So these are all the questions. On the contrary, I have seen in life that the very good teachers in today's times are only bachelors. Many good people in computer science go directly to the industry and miss out on MTech in life. Now, if after 10 years, he comes back and wants to contribute to the academy or after 5 years, he wants to contribute to the academy, will he have to do MTech only? Can't he contribute without it

33:14 ? So we have created a lot of barriers and it is not just education across places. Siddharth, you have this experience of the last five-six years of this period. Tell me instances where you feel you made an impact. And if possible, please also tell me about one or two disappointments that this matter got delayed a bit or could not be completed as we had started it with great hope. So there are thousands of impact stories. That means the biggest benefit of being in education is that there are thousands of impact stories. I have taught many of these children myself. Those children whom I have not even taught. Even now if I meet him, he will touch my feet. I will say thank you, my life has been transformed because of you. Let me show you two-three examples which stand

34:00 out to me. So there was a girl in our first batch. She Got Her First Tech Job Through Newton Itself. At that time there will be a job worth Rs 6-77 lakh. Right now she is working with a very big tech company called S Rubrik and her package is 1.2 CR in just five years. So it shows two things. One if education is done right, there is a huge directional change in the child's life. And secondly if a student has passion and he continues it then he can reach great heights. In India it is typically believed that only IITians can get packages above Rs 1 crore. And this girl comes from a very tear to tear three kinds of college. And as of today it is available in India at a package of Rs 1.2 CR. So that's it. The other story means and there have been multiples. So there is a student called S Palash he is physically disabled. He Got a

34:48 Completely Remote Job from Newton. He learned the first line of coding from Newton and also got his first job from Newton. And he wanted a remote job. He got a remote job. And now, sitting at home, he is able to take care of his entire household. And there have been many multiple stories. Meaning there was this female who was a single mother. She got a job in one of the largest GCs in India which is 71 and she is able to take care of her family now. So the education I have done right is so impactful. Meaning there are hundreds of stories that are generated. I think disappointment is always there when you know people just lose track. Meaning sometime you are not able to pick up their motivation even if you want to. So there have been multiple such cases where the student is doing well. But somehow something personal in life

35:34 became personal. Including this, I have seen in some cases that a breakup has happened. After that, his studies went downhill. Right? When you are unable to pick them up from there then you question yourself as a teacher that I even talked to them personally, I did everything. But this child is not able to get back on track. So what to do now? So the maximum disappointment occurs there. True. I mean I can definitely relate as a teacher I can definitely relate with these things. You have talked repeatedly about technology and the entire setup appears to be based on technology. Tell me how you use technology at your institute, NTS, that

36:20 you feel is a little different from other places or other universities. So technology has always been a key pillar for us. So these have been our three pillars. So first of all we work on the curriculum. We make sure that it is industry relevant. It is very interesting. Teaching is being done in an example driven way. Teaching is being done in Project Building Way. So when our child is born, he starts making something or the other from the very first day. He starts learning coding. Secondly one thing also we realized that the problem in Indian education system, especially in computer science education, is that the faculty themselves don't know how to code. Most of the faculty can't write a good program themselves. So we brought all the faculty from the industry. Our faculty is from Google. He is an ICPC World Finalist. We are the ICPC World Finalists, which means that the absolute best coders of India have become the absolute best coders of that year.

37:06 From companies like Microsoft. From companies like Goldman Sachs. We now also have people who have left ISRO to join us and are teaching maths with us as a faculty. So all these people who have been in the industry, who have seen things in the industry, they now come and teach children. In the background of all this, the role of technology remains both invisible and visible to us. Yes this is what I am interested about. So what is Technology One allowing us is that when we go to your campus, we see Robert flying. What happens? Kids do make it. Children make many kinds of things. I was looking there just yesterday. Ah, kids are making one, that is, in case of an epidemic or if there is a flood somewhere, they are making a UAV, which basically has to go there and deliver some food or if they have to do it themselves, they can do it themselves. So, the whole thing is quite challenging. But he is making a very interesting

37:51 project. Right now a few kids are making a set of underwater drones. So they are making babies. But we also use technology a lot for studies. So everything of ours happens on one portal. Where all the classes of the child including his class get recorded automatically. He will get those classes there. He can also connect with the teacher there. One to one can schedule sessions with their mentors. Now we have created many such advanced products using AI etc. in which a child can even give a mock interview. So he comes and he talks to the AI and he will also give his interview. Now let me tell you its benefits. What difference does this make? We have mock interviews which are taken by humans. Now those mock interviews are conducted once in two-three months. There are human challenges , everything is there. In that too, when the child is new, he lacks confidence. So he is afraid to give it because he feels there is a

38:36 judgment. So, we have studied many times that many kids are not coming for the mock interview just because they don’t have confidence in themselves and are scared. Ever since this AI interview has come, while it is still not as good as a human interview. But the kids have started giving one or two interviews every day. Because of this, their learning level is accelerating. So using technology and complementing it with passionate people, passionate teachers who can genuinely change the lives of children, who can care, will be a game changer. And that is what we follow in Philosophy Newton. Great. Uh I think technology is obviously at the center of all the conversations we've had. But what I have seen from being in education for the last 20-20 or 30 years is that

39:23 a particular vision is required to run these things. A perspective is needed. Tell me, when you had this vision in your mind, how did you sell it? How did you find your partners for this ? Because these things are not easily believed, especially when a youngster is bringing it up. What were the initial challenges and how did you do it? Absolutely. So first of all when we started, when we started Newton School, it was me and my co-founder who started it. My cofounder Nishant, we met in college itself. So I tell my students and everyone that the best place to find a co-founder is your college itself. When we started Newton School. Before that we used to run a company in which

40:09 we had received a small funding. When we were pivoting, that is, changing the company to Newton. At that time, only ₹ 15 lakh was left in our account. And our team was also fine. There was a team of 10-20 people. He had everything from the payroll to everything else. There were other people around us who had raised ₹150 crores each. So, I was feeling scared for a moment. But Nishant and I thought a lot about what if we solved this problem. There are going to be many challenges ahead of us. But what if we solve this problem, can we bring a direct impact to the country through it ? What? And we had made an estimate at that time that if we are eventually successful with our work, then we would probably be able to add billions of dollars to the GDP. If we produce thousands of coders in that quantity every year, then it is a huge achievement for us, that you can say that there is a fire in the head movement that we

40:54 wanted to do this. Now we had to do it somehow possible. Seeing this vision, our investors backed us. Then from then on we also kept at it. Thousands of children have studied here. A kids from Google to Micsoft to almost every company I was coming to in Noida as well. I live in Bor. I will go there and see. I know that one of my students studies and works here. So we saw that and all our students are from tier two and tier three colleges. So I think a sincere effort means that if the right people come into the field of education, which is a big challenge by the way. Meaning, very few good people become faculty. If they get such an ecosystem, there will be a lot of transformation in the children. Very very big transformation. You must have seen thousands of such cases which I am able to relate to because of you which may not give anything in life

41:41 and I am able to understand how obviously this thing gives happiness and a kind of satisfaction as well. However, the message that there is still a lot left is also there, that there is a lot of work left to do. It means a lot, whenever we sit in our team, we say the same thing. So that's what we 'll talk about to know where do you want to take this vision forward? What have you thought? Would you do more? What are your expectations? So our vision is very simple. We need to create such a model of education in India which is first copyable. Other people should also copy it. This is our wish. Well you want people to copy it. Because we can teach only so many children. In India, 10 lakh people go for engineering alone every year. How many will we read? I will teach 5000 people , I will teach 10,000 people. How can we go beyond that

42:27 ? So first of all the model should be comfortable. Secondly, such a sustainable model should be established so that the children who emerge from here are not only very good in tech skills but are ambitious, problem solvers, they want to start their own startups and should also be treated as star employees in the company they join and if this happens then you will see that the overall growth of the economy of the country, the overall society will have a very strong development, so this is our hope, this is our effort and that is it with this, we would like to close this wonderful conversation because not only our viewers would have got some great insights from it, but I myself am

43:13 learning many things from this conversation at this age. So Siddharth ji, thank you very much for coming to this edition of Casual Talk. Thank you for sharing your journey and I am sure our viewers will gain a lot of insight from it. Thank you. Thank you, sir.