According to the All India Survey on Higher Education, India faces a shortage of one million teachers, with a decreasing student-to-teacher ratio.
Amit Doshi, CMO, Lenovo India, said, “The education sector in the country has struggled for a few years, with the scarcity of skilled teachers being its most serious impediment. We at Lenovo, understand this concern and we want to make primary education accessible to everyone in every part of India, through our smart portfolio of products and services. Launch of SmarterEd and our partnership with eVidyaloka is an important step to take us closer to the goal. At Lenovo, we’ve always believed that we aren’t just in the business of creating products, but have the opportunity of using smarter technology to make life a little easier for all by solving real problems.”
Amit Akali, founder and CCO, What’s Your Problem and Clyde Galbao, creative director added, “We were very clear we didn’t want to just speak about ‘Smarter Technology for all’ but actually use smarter technology to solve a problem. And there’s no bigger problem than the ‘lack of teachers’ for our nation. The insight was that even a student could be a teacher for something and each of us could be a teacher. Therefore, we created a platform to connect anybody who could teach needy students. Other than the platform, we have created a complete integrated campaign, starting with an emotional film which shows haunting images of kids across India, taking attendance and calling out for teachers, versus typically teachers taking attendance. Bauddhayan Mukherji, who directed the film, from Little Lamb films, made sure to work with real kids at real locations to increase the authenticity and emotional connect to the film.”
