In the 2009 PISA test, India ranked 72nd out of the 73 participating countries. Every year ASER report highlights the poor state of education in India. Although India has been able to get almost every child into school, that has not necessarily translated into learning. Improving learning outcomes by overcoming rote learning is the need of the hour. Technology can be the fulcrum that we can leverage to solve the current problems of varying learning levels in the classroom and getting them to learn.

Today I talk to Pranav Kothari, Vice President of Educational Initiatives. In this episode, we talk about Pranav's personal journey from Harvard Business School into the education sector, the organisation's work in developing high-quality assessments; and the role of personalised learning in shaping education reform. The company developed Mindspark, a technology-based, personalized, adaptive learning tool that draws on a database of questions and answers to anticipate common mistakes.

If you look at the statistics, the extent of disparity in credit in our country is seemingly unbelievable.

The rural population comprising 60% of the total population makes up for only 2.3% of the total credit. Credit plays an important role in everyones life and helps us to progress to next big thing. Banks generally doesn’t give loans to poor households and government schemes are not helping to bridge this credit gap.

Of course, there are various factors - both qualitative and quantitative that are responsible for this.

So this is where micro finance institutions come into picture, they provide micro loans to poor and provide access to credit for poor households.

How micro finance institutions do this?

Strong community engagement

Personal agency

Focused discussion groups to help people improve their businesses

I talked to Sushil Thaker, the Vice President of Avanti Finance on my podcast (link in the comments) to better understand how #microfinance institutions function on a deeper level, how they sustain themselves and much more.

If you want to understand macro, there’s no way you can do so without understanding micro.

Do check it out for some really valuable insights that might help you in your pursuit of entrepreneurship.

Also check out,

https://www.investopedia.com/terms/m/microfinance.asp

Microcredit was a hugely hyped solution to global poverty. What happened?: https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2019/1/15/18182167/microcredit-microfinance-poverty-grameen-bank-yunus

Challenges faced by Microfinance Institutions ; https://www.nelito.com/blog/challenges-faced-microfinance-institutions.html

Advantages and Disadvantages of Microfinance Companies : https://enterslice.com/learning/advantages-disadvantages-microfinance-companies/

What is microfinance and how it changed the world: https://www.lifegate.com/microfinance

If you have any feedback or comments, write in to [email protected], we would love to hear from you.

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We all agree to the fact that there is something wrong with the education system. Even I feel the same but I really do not what exactly is wrong with it. I was exploring this question from some time. In the process of exploring this question, I got to know about KB Jinan. KB Jinan has been exploring biological roots of learning from past 30 years and has been vocal about how modern education damages child’s brain and originality. He also has been researching about how to rediscover reimagine education paradigm from teaching to learning. I enjoyed talking to him and I hope you guys too.

Also check out,

www.jinankb.in

https://existentialknowledgefoundation.org/people.html

KB Jinan's Reflections: http://www.swaraj.org/shikshantar/lsreflections_jinan.htm

De- Academizing Knowledge and De- Institutionalising Learning : Webinar with KB Jinan: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mK38ZjQVaA4

Modern Toys kill the imagination by Jinan KB | Simple Parenting: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vCKKv-54n7s

Re imagining learning, knowing, Being: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2aek6X_2K2g

If you have any feedback or comments, write in to [email protected], we would love to hear from you.

Follow Reinvent Podcast on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/reinventpodcast/?hl=en

Follow Reinvent Podcast on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Reinvent-Podcast-103243901421217/

Subscribe & listen to The Reinvent Podcast on Spotify, Google Podcasts and in all other major podcasting apps.