Profit with purpose: driving systemic change in education across India

Howard Soh, chief investment officer of investment firm LemmaTree, and RCM Reddy, managing director and chief executive officer of EdTech provider Schoolnet India, discuss their groundbreaking partnership, which is bringing technological innovation to schools in the world's most populous country.

Environmental Finance: How does the education landscape in India look currently, and what key challenges need to be addressed?

RCM Reddy: The reality is that the quality of education for the vast majority of Indian students is sub-optimal for numerous reasons. Many schools lack basic facilities with two thirds missing a functional computer lab. At the same time, there is a shortage of quality teachers, particularly in underserved regions where socio-economic disparities also contribute to unequal access and outcomes.

The result is that almost 60% of pupils fail to complete the full 12 years of education. We wanted to change that and bring cost-effective technology into the classroom, especially in more rural, deprived areas. That led us to collaborate with LemmaTree.

EF: Why have you engaged with LemmaTree?

RCMR: We were looking for a partner that would offer more than just financial investment so LemmaTree's guidance on tech-led growth and social enterprises was very valuable. Secondly, data-driven impact measurement is key to our mission, and LemmaTree has a huge focus on impact-led investments. Finally, global partnerships are a core part of our vision for future, scalable, sustainable growth. That ensured the partnership ticked all the right boxes.

Howard Soh: We have always focused on digital trust and inclusion, especially for underserved segments, however, these investments only matter if they translate into real-world improvements for people. Education really is one of the most powerful ways to make those tangible improvements. Partnering with Schoolnet was a natural fit. We see the school environment as the perfect opportunity to bring our capabilities to bear.

EF: What does the partnership entail on the ground?

HS: We are engaged both financially and from a technology perspective, as well as collaborating on the ground regularly. We fly down often to meet the management team and offer our thoughts while acting as a sounding board for Schoolnet's strategy. It is a joint enterprise where we help Schoolnet move forward with greater clarity and enhanced technological leverage.

RCMR: Although there is clearly investment involved, the relationship is far from transactional; it is a strategic, consultative partnership where LemmaTree can help us acquire and integrate new technology assets, accelerating the shift to AI-driven, personalised learning solutions. Our teams work closely on teacher training, content development, and change management, ensuring sustainable transformation at the school level.

EF: What tangible outcomes as a result of this project can you share?

RCMR: Over 75% of students and teachers reached by Schoolnet are first-time users of digital learning tools, helping to bridge the digital divide between a child in Delhi and a child in the far interiors of India. For example, Jharkhand is a poor, tribal region of the country with limited digital infrastructure. We have helped the local education department create a digital repository of curriculum-aligned interactive content in six languages along with teaching-learning apps, called J-Guruji, which is made available to all students and teachers across the state.

Schoolnet's learning platform enables tracking of attendance and engagement as well as learning gaps so that appropriate remedial action can be taken, be it identifying students at the risk of dropping out and preventing it, or providing content recommendations to improve learning levels, particularly among students of the lowest achievement quartile.

At the other end of the spectrum, we have high-performing pupils who are identified and invited to a hackathon in Delhi through a national-level competition to display their competencies in applying technology to solve global problems and potentially win a trip to a global institute in Switzerland. That kind of opportunity wasn't available to most of our students in the past.

At the core of everything we do lies our focus on monitoring and measuring learning impact. We have institutionalised this process by adopting a triangulation of device and app usage data, qualitative and quantitative assessments, using a mixed-methods approach, to scientifically capture student attendance and engagement, improvements in teaching efficiency, and grade-specific learning gains among students. Randomised control trials show significant gains after one academic year of deployment of our full stack solution.

Overall, we have served close to 100,000 schools and 25 million students and teachers, and that is just the beginning.

EF: What is the next stage in your partnership?

RCMR: We look at the future in terms of both depth and breadth: depth is about deepening our solution, its capabilities, embedding AI and other advances. That's why we have partnered with the Indian Institute of Technology Madras, Chennai to enhance our solutions. Breadth is about widening the scope of our efforts to other geographies, such as Sri Lanka, Nigeria, and Kenya, and adapting our solutions to local needs.

At the same time, we are working with government and international bodies to shape responsible technology policies in education and extending our reach to the large segment of affordable private schools, ensuring equitable access to quality education.

This strategy is also underscored by our focus on data-led impact measurement of teaching and learning outcomes.

At every stage, LemmaTree has been a significant help – from investment to product design to upscaling. It is an ecosystem with many moving parts, which LemmaTree keeps running smoothly.