AI may not impact higher education segment much: Eruditus’ Ashwin Damera

Damera's remarks coincide with the growing discourse on the influence of generative AI models in global edtech sector

Co-founder and CEO of higher education and upskilling unicorn Eruditus, Ashwin Damera, said higher education and upskilling segments may not experience significant impact from the recent disruption caused by popular generative artificial intelligence (AI) models like ChatGPT, suggesting that tutoring platforms will be affected instead .

“K-12 and especially some tutoring businesses have taken a beating globally, but I think test prep and higher education may not be impacted at all. Students (for test prep) would still want to go to classes and learn from those teachers,” Damera said.

“Higher education, I don’t think it will have a great impact on the revenue side. Somebody will still have to do specialised courses. You would still need that upskilling, you would still need that career progression. In fact, on the demand side, our AI courses are doing very well, they were doing well, but now they are doing very very well,” Damera added.

Damera spoke to Moneycontrol regarding Eruditus’ July-June 2022-23 financial results. The SoftBank-backed unicorn clocked $400 million (Rs 3,200 crore) in sales for the year ended June 2023 and narrowed its loss minus exceptional items to $40 million from over $66 million in the previous year. With this, Eruditus became one of the largest revenue-grossing higher edtech platforms globally.

Damera's remarks about the disruptive effects of AI coincide with the growing discourse on the influence of generative AI models such as ChatGPT in the global edtech sector. Prominent companies like Byju's, Coursera and Khan Academy are embracing AI models to enhance their services.

However, Chegg Inc, a tutoring platform based in the US expressed apprehension about the rising popularity of ChatGPT, citing a negative impact on its subscription numbers. As a result, Chegg's stock price has experienced a significant decline, dropping by nearly 50 percent since the company voiced its concerns. Throughout this year, Chegg's shares have consistently traded at a 64 percent lower value.

Damera said the application of generative AI models like ChatGPT for higher education segments like Eruditus will be more on the backend side and thus, the company may not see any big impact on its revenue front.

“Say if we are doing grading for some submissions. Then you automatically have grader type some feedback. Then your faculty or teaching assistant can edit it and make it appropriate and submit it. This will save a lot of faculty time and bandwidth and therefore costs,” Damera said.

“So we see a lot of application of it on the backend side. For example video creation also. With some of these models, video, post-production has become so much easier. I don’t think at least in the next 2-3 years, we would see any large impact on the front-end side,” Damera added.

Moneycontrol had reported how Indian edtech firms were using ChatGPT, for a host of applications including grading, assessment, customer support and auditing purposes among others. However, edtech companies have also warned about the disadvantages of such generative AI models.

Coursera’s CEO Jeff Maggioncalda - in an exclusive fireside chat with Moneycontrol during the Moneycontrol Startup Conclave in July - said edtech companies should ensure that their AI models are not giving away too many answers and are encouraging students to continue to think.

Maggioncalda shared the example of the AI used by edtech company Khan Academy in schools in New Jersey, USA. He said that it had to scale back the ability of the AI because the model was ‘too good’.