Edtech Insiders
Edtech Insiders
Preparing the Next Generation for the AI Revolution with Prashant Raizada of Lumi.Network
Prashant Raizada is a serial entrepreneur deeply committed to changing the status quo in education, future of work & sustainability. He was part of the founding team of Infosys BPM, playing a key role towards a $2B exit. Later, he built EnglishUp as Brazil's 3rd largest but most loved online English learning platform as a flagship corporate venture of Macmillan-Holtzbrinck group. Leveraging his tenure at McKinsey & Co, Prashant has advised multinational corporations globally on digital transformation. He has spent the last 14 years building businesses in Ed-tech across Asia, LATAM, Europe and the US and co-founded his latest initiative Lumi.Network along with his son Nikhil and with Prof Shen at Stanford University. It is an AI-augmented platform empowering 10-25-year-olds to shape their future by building AI, Entrepreneurship & Innovation skills to confront global challenges. Prashant is a practicing monk and uses meditation to enhance the quality of his leadership and life.
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Prashanth Raizada is a serial entrepreneur deeply committed to changing the status quo in education, future of work and sustainability. He was originally part of the founding team of Infosys BPM, playing a key role toward a $2 billion exit. Later, he built English up as Brazil's third largest but most loved online learning platform as a flagship corporate venture of Macmillan-Holtzbrinck group, leveraging his tenure at McKinsey and CO Prashant has advised multinational corporations globally on digital transformation. He has spent the last 14 years building businesses in ed tech across Asia, Latin America, Europe and the US. And he co founded his latest initiative, Lumi network, along with his son, Nikhil and with Professor Shen at Stanford University, it is an AI augmented platform empowering 10 to 25 year olds to shape their future by building AI entrepreneurship and innovation skills to confront global challenges. Prashant is also a practicing monk who uses meditation to enhance the quality of his leadership and life. Prashant Raizada, welcome to Ed Tech insiders.
Prashant Raizada:Well, thank you so much, Alex for having me here.
Alexander Sarlin:I'm excited to talk to you today. You have such an interesting background. You've built a English learning platform in Brazil. You are at McKinsey, and you are a practicing monk. You just have such an interesting, thorough set of characteristics about you. Before we get into the depths of Lumi, tell us a little bit about your background and what brought you into the education technology field.
Prashant Raizada:Look, I'm a product of the Indian education system, which is highly regarded, actually, globally now and probably better known, but there is one challenge with it that we put the blinkers on very early on in our life, probably not by the age of 1415, if you're good in academics at the time I was growing up, you had to be a medical doctor or an engineer. And my father was a very senior engineer or senior executive in your executive in an engineering company. And my mother was a medical doctor, so therefore you go my I had double blinkers on right. Thankfully, my parents were very relaxed about it, but I actually chose engineering and then an MBA. I was very lucky to go to the very best schools that India offers. But I found that I was wasting the seats in both of those institutions. On top of it, I found that, you know, people who didn't make it to those institutions had very little choice. And one of them was one of my sisters who chose an institution which totally failed her. Then I used to teach orphans at university to prepare for this engineering examination, but also to just basic maths in English. And I love that. So a combination of these things, Alex came together for me when I had my second child in 2009 suddenly I started thinking about the fact that, you know, I love being with young people, and I love teaching. And by that time, I was finishing my first decade in work, and I had had a very successful run at being part of building a very successful startup. I was not the founder. I was the Junior, most members of the team, but I grew very quickly. That company was a $2 billion exit for all of us. We didn't make that much money, but the experience was invaluable. And I had worked at McKinsey for a few years. There were two things happening for me. There was a very nice site to me, which was saying, use this experience for good. But there was also hubris. I'm so successful, I can do anything. A combination of these two things got me into education in 2010 and I've stuck with it so far. And. Yeah,
Alexander Sarlin:so how did the hubris bring you into ed tech? Was it the feeling that you can change the world, that you know anything you do will just automatically succeed?
Prashant Raizada:It was that hubris? I actually the intention was genuine that you know, why is it that education systems don't offer that much freedom to young people to make their choices. That was one, and I was, I wouldn't say, a victim of that, but I wanted to explore a few more things before I got into what I did. And I also had misconceptions. Alex, so I was very good at sketching cars. I wanted to be a car designer. I was obsessed, and still am, to some extent, with cars, and I thought I should do engineering, because I can design cars. I was the worst engineering design guy in probably the whole university. So that dream got killed, because what I was doing was not going to help me design cars. But I lost confidence, so I never did that. So there was one thing. The other thing was I saw that particularly private education systems, other than the very elite in the US, they are failing students. They don't deliver results. So I thought that, now that I have all this experience, I think I should be solving that problem. I had no idea about education. I had no idea about the difficulties of the sector, and I jumped straight in. It was quite naive. Well,
Alexander Sarlin:it is a complicated sector, but I think your origin story, you know, teaching orphans and having your own kids and seeing what that really means for their education is one that we do see a little bit across the world. You have, I think, your experience in the Indian education system is obviously very relevant to what you're doing at Lumi, because Lumi is about preparing young people for the future of work and really giving them challenges and experiences that open their eyes, that sort of, as you say, take the blinkers off and allow them to actually see a lot of different options. So it adds up, even if maybe it was a little bit of a tough transition. Tell us a little bit about why you're focusing on this really interesting idea. It's 10 to 25 year olds and shaping their future by building entrepreneurship, innovation and AI skills to confront global challenges aligned with the UN's Sustainable Development Goals. Fascinating. Tell us how you got to that idea. Yeah.
Prashant Raizada:You know, it was an act of serendipity and also real challenge brought upon by covid. So I was involved in architecting and trying to build schools of the future with a very large education group in the world from 2018 until 2020 and we hit a number of problems along the way in trying to get that initiative off the ground. The biggest was, you can build a school of the future, but where are you going to get the teachers of the future? It's not a profession that attracts people. In fact, people are quitting that profession, and still were in droves. So we started building that an adjunct graduate school for teaching all of that took us so long that I got into two problems. One, I was putting all of my time into it. So, you know, your real boss is your wife who says, What exactly are you trying to do? And you're not really doing it very well. So so then I actually, I was lucky. I got an advisory role at a company called British land, which is a which used to be of basically a FTSE 100, a real estate company, really the most respected company in the UK, in that sector, and I started advising them part time on the topic of sustainability. It's another story. How I got given that topic, but I led the sustainability strategy for them, which was an eye opening affair for me, I had no idea, Alex, about what was happening in the world on climate. Okay? I was one of those usual executives, or people of my age who thought, it's fine, we'll be fine, until I started seeing reports. I had the, you know, consultants like McKinsey and other experts from the sector, talking to me about what's happening. And I immediately thought of my own kids, and I thought, the future for them looks rather strange if you don't do anything about it. That was one thing. Then within six months of doing this work, covid struck, and I actually had to shut down the entire venture that we were building. It was a very large initiative, but on the seventh of March 2020, we put the shutters down without launching anything. So at that point in time, I was sitting twiddling my thumb, and I got a call from a friend in Denmark who said, Hey, we know that you are twiddling your thumb, and so is your son. But we are launching an interesting experiment in Denmark where we are calling young people, you know, 10 to 12 years of age, to come and talk to us about what is their idea of solving covid Because no one seems to ask young people, right? And as a consequence. Of that. What happens is, two months later, my son comes up with a solution, which is, why don't we use drones to send tests and medicines to people who are suffering from covid And why don't I write a computer program to actually allow people to input their symptoms and put the two together in the UK, and maybe 80% of people who are catching covid don't have to go through any and that way doctors are not going to get covid, and that way the system won't collapse. Now this is something I didn't know. He wasn't told anything. He's barely 11, and he's come up with a sophisticated idea, which was, then, you know, showcased this whole video he created was showcased in California, Finland, Sweden, Italy, without my knowledge. And then these guys called me back and they said, Hey, can you be a panelist? Because your son's presenting, and you'll be surprised to see what he's got to say. And my reaction Alex was, wasn't that my son's Wow, he's so brilliant. Of course, he's done a great job. But as an ed tech entrepreneur, I thought, what is it that they've done that this guy has actually become so vocal and so expressive and so creative? Is clearly something they're doing. What they were doing is giving young people an agency without judging them, giving them a Montessori approach, or a design thinking led approach to express themselves freely without judgment, but not teaching them. So it brought out this innate creativity of these young people. And from that point onwards, my son and I became full time members of that team, and we started, I said, I'm going to build this platform. So this is Lumi, okay. Lumis thesis is very simple. We need to involve young people in solving the problems that are theirs, and that's real world problems. The most elegant framework is you and SDGs, but that's not the only thing. We also take care of, things like cyber security as an example. But what it does is it allows them to bring out their creativity to solve some of these problems which the world is actually struggling to solve without blaming anyone. The second, equally important thing is, why can't then, this process be a way for them to build the skills that they need for the future without compromising on traditional education? And how can we make this fun and engaging, right? And the thing is, you don't have to make it that much fun. Alex, the fact that you give agency to a young voice anywhere from 10 to 25 who's used to just being taught, makes it fun. The fact that you don't have an assessment sitting at the other end makes it fun, the fact that you know the ideas that come out are tangible, and that they're getting to present it to people you know, makes it fun, because you're trusting them. So this is just wonderful. Of course, we have challenges in trying to figure out how to scale it, but AI has come along. Now. We're using AI in smart, practical, zero BS, ways to try and scale this platform so that every young person in the world, technically, can have a go at solving the problems that are around them, but they are global, and through that, build the skills that can actually allow them to get a job or to build their own company anywhere in the world. I mean, honestly, I know I drink my own kool aid, but this, if it works, it could be transformative.
Alexander Sarlin:Yeah, well, you know, you're really hitting on this very core idea in education, which is intrinsic motivation, right? I mean, the problems are not only real, they're problems. Like you said, it's their problems. You know, young people are going to inherit the climate issue. They're going to inherit cybersecurity and social media issues. They're going to inherit so many of those sustainable development calls, you know, are really about the future. So if you're trying to solve something that is going to have a meaningful effect on not only your life, but the life of your whole generation. There's a lot of motivation there. So it makes sense that, you know, I know you do have gamification, and you have some engagement mechanisms in Lumi, but building off of that core foundation of intrinsic motivation is a very smart way to get people to care. And as you saying, you know, agency, autonomy, here are some of the elements of project based learning in your approach as well they project based learning always has a public artifact at the end. So there's this additional motivation to do something because you know you're going to share it, not because you're going to be assessed with a multiple choice quiz, but because you're going to show the world how you think and what you've done. And that also is very motivating. So it makes. Makes a lot of sense to me. So tell us a little bit more about the AI piece of this. You're saying that scaling is a difficulty, but AI makes it much more possible. Explain that a little
Prashant Raizada:bit. See the challenge when you're running a design thinking process, which in Lumi is facilitated by university students, and you want to do make it rigorous, because ultimately, I remember, I'm also trying to solve the problem of efficacy in education, we can't do something superficially. It may not be perfect, but the intention has to be one of rigor. So when you apply that rigorously with young people, it takes effort and time. Now that means that the human element is so strong that you can't actually scale it. Try going with my product to a VC we have been successful in raising money, but it's a hard slot saying, Oh no, no, no, this is not scalable. We know it's not ideally scalable, but we are not trying to scale it first. We're trying to see if the process works. And we now know that the process works. We know the product works. Now it's about, how can we make it more accessible? So the rise of chat bots, which can be trained on your data, your materials, or can be hybrid or can be external, is a real boon for us, because now we can use these tools, and we don't have to build them, because they are, in my mind, going to be commoditized. That's not our skill. Our skill is to use these to be an effective companion of these participants, you know, in a smaller group, which then allows us to focus the human element on the most critical parts of the journey where only a human can actually engage. An example of that is when a young person, whatever age, is going through the design thinking process, they struggle with identifying a persona. Now I personally, as an experienced entrepreneur, recognize that failing within myself. I didn't think about who am I solving the problem for? I was solving it for everyone, and which is why I failed in some of my initiatives. So that's the point at which a human is required. But when you are actually saying, Hey, if you're thinking about climate change, break it down into sub problems, think more clearly about what are you actually trying to solve? Why don't you do a bit more research on if you're talking about plastic pollution. And then who do you want to address plastic pollution for? Oh, okay, you want to reduce plastic pollution by motivating the, you know, hotels. Now you've got the general manager of hotel as your persona. So this part, this whole part, can be done by AI companion. So we've got tools like that that we are using to improve knowledge, acquisition, productivity and creativity. This is where AI becomes very useful, but what we are really doing is engineering the mind, a young mind, to use AI for good. I'm a parent whose children are the first generation adopters of social media. I know what happens from first hand experience when you give a sophisticated technology tool to teenagers, when you yourself don't know what to do with it. We cannot repeat that with AI. That's what we are doing. So people are AI aware, people are AI savvy, and some people are going to be just outright stars. I'll give you an example. Our foundational AI course has been written by a guy called Zach Hamilton, who sits here at the moment, right? I'm temporarily in Dubai. I've been living here for the last few months. He's in Dubai. He turned 16 three weeks ago. He takes over the floor. He takes over, you know, any forum that he's part of when he starts talking about AI for young people, but AI in general. So that's the power of Lumi. A young person is talking to other young people about AI. So that's what we are doing, and that's not the only thing, but hopefully that gives you a good flavor. Yes,
Alexander Sarlin:you know, the empowering aspect of what you're doing with Lumi is really fascinating to me because you mentioned trust before that. You know, there's this feeling of trusting young people, but sort of also pointing them a little bit in the right direction, giving them this powerful technology. But you know, not just with no rules or guidance or constraints or direction. We should even say direction is probably the most important thing, right using AI to combat climate change or to identify a meaningful project that's going to change the world for the better is an incredibly exciting, I'm sure, experience for all the you call them, luminaries, you know, that are in the Lumi network. It's the exact opposite, as you say, of sort of just handing them the technology and saying, Hey, you have a chat bot do whatever you want, like, see if you can figure out how to get chat GBT to, you know, curse at you, you know, like, it's such a different approach. And I think it's a really. Really fascinating approach for this moment, because we do have these technologies advancing so quickly, and I don't think anybody fully knows how much trust to give to these students. How do you build that trust within the Lumi network? Is it, you know, are there fears that students will go off the rails or bully each other, or any of the things that sometimes happen in school environments?
Prashant Raizada:Well, we have to pay a lot of attention to that too, so we are not naive that, you know, technologies can easily be used for the wrong purposes. I think the first thing is, by focusing their minds on the problem, we get them thinking about using the tool effectively. The second thing is, we are very careful in what we choose as tools. So we're using tools that have strong guardrails around them, and this is why we are not trying to build our own chat bots and things like that, because we'll get it wrong at the expense of our audience. But we are working with experts. So for example, one of the partners is a company coming out of Stanford University taught, where the founders are students of my co founder, Chris, who's a professor at Stanford, as amongst one of his role, one of the things he does. So we pay attention to that, and we we don't go out and, you know, expose them to any and every tool the team actually first works with it. So let's say, you know, one of the tools we use is figma. But figma is a trustworthy tool when it comes to prototyping and designing, but other tools that we use, product designers from the design thinking or engineering fields use extensively so they know how it works, right? And we focus also on tools where you can easily reference the data or the sources, because we are trying to teach young people that if you don't know where this information is coming from, there's a good chance it's wrong, and deep fakes or wrong information is one of your greatest challenges going forward. Yeah, so that's how we're doing it. We're also working with real experts in AI so some of them have actually come on my own podcast, but they know the pitfalls, and they're guiding us all. We are working with them. So, you know, the attempt is to be as robust as possible, whilst knowing you can't, right, right?
Alexander Sarlin:Yeah, no, it makes sense. And, you know, I hope that question isn't meant to be a, you know, a rain on the parade I am. Listeners to this podcast will know I'm exceedingly bullish on AI. I think it is one of the most exciting and empowering technologies I've seen in my lifetime. So I don't mean to focus on the negative or the sort of issues that might come up in schooling. It's just in so many conversations over the last few years. You know, it always comes up because people are trying to navigate this complicated world. And it sounds like some of the things that you've identified to really make it work are really use the tools yourself. They call it dog fooding, right? Use design thinking methods to really focus the students on the problem at hand, so that they sort of don't have the free time to start messing with each other or messing with the tools. They actually are focused on something that is huge. And then, you know, being thoughtful, being not naive, as you mentioned about some of the things that these tools can do, including misinformation and hallucinations and all sorts of things. So really getting AI expertise inside your team to make sure that the tools are being used properly, which makes a huge amount of sense. And it feels like you're really at the forefront of this kind of thinking. I mean, when you talk to people in the traditional education system about AI, they have sort of come over, these are early humps, right? The first reaction was, oh, it's going to be a cheating tool, and then it's, oh, it has all these bias problems, or it has these privacy issues, like people are sort of one by one, sort of hitting some of the potential roadblocks. And I think it's keeping them from seeing this very utopian vision of what education could be, where students are empowered, they're focused on real problems, they're working collaboratively. It's global. So I love that you're pushing the conversation to a new place. You mentioned something that I think is really interesting here. One of the things that people struggle with a lot with project based learning is trying to match the projects that students are doing, that they care about and are really passionate about, to the sort of quote, unquote standards, the rigor and the skill sets that schools have identified as the ones that students will need once they leave school. And it sounds like you've been thinking a lot about this, how do you try to ensure that the students are working on projects they care about, but gaining skills that will help them, even if they go into a different field? See,
Prashant Raizada:we have done a lot of research on what are the essential skills for the future, like by looking at by and large, three things. One is institutions of reputation who are talking about this. So the OECD, the World Economic Forum, and McKinsey are the three sources that I can code. There were others. But these are the three big ones. They've talked a lot about the future of work and skills, very, very well. The second is, we've leaned on what we are hearing from the school leaders themselves or university leaders, and we have a tendency to criticize the education systems. But actually, when you look at the and I've been party to that too. But when you actually talk to leaders within education, they really know what needs to be done. The challenge is changing the system is very tough, so you have to support it in different ways. So that's what we're trying to do. We're not trying to say, hey, everything's broken, so therefore here comes the solution. But we're not we are also broken because we are a startup. You know, half of our stuff is broken at any point in time. But the third thing is the experience of people like me gathered over the last 25 years. And Chris, you know where we know what we miss in people when we hire them. So I was giving a talk at a leading school here in Dubai to sixth form students. And one of the many things I said, but the most important thing was, you may go, you get great grades, and you think is important, you may also go to some of the best university, which I also think is important. But if that's all you have to show I'm not going to hire you, and you're going to actually run into more and more people like me, basically entrepreneurs. We don't care about it. We only care about one thing, your attitude and your aptitude, you know, and your attitude unfortunately plummets the the bigger the name you you know, of the University you've gone to, right and your aptitude is not fitting what I need, which is productivity. From day one, I don't have time to train you. You know, if you're not skillful, then I'll use AI. That's an exaggeration, but not very far from the truth in the coming years, when they will actually enter the workforce. So that's really important,
Alexander Sarlin:the mapping of these future skills as identified by, you know, OECD and others, is a something that we've sort of dreamed about a little bit in American education where, you know, it takes a very long time for curriculum and standards to change. There's a lot of local control. There's a lot of issues that sort of keep some of these really big, especially global, ideas, from being incorporated into the education system. As you say, the system is hard to change, even if people really want to drive it in the right direction. Let me ask something about the gamification and the challenges, and then let's connect what you're doing with Lumi to traditional education. I'd love to hear you talk about this. But one of the things that's really interesting about Lumi we mentioned, it's sort of based on these challenges. There's elements of sort of gamification and sort of engagement mechanisms that are used to help students really stay connected and motivated. Tell us about how you do that.
Prashant Raizada:You know, gamification is such an abuse term in ed tech, it's almost like something that everybody says, like, actually, AI has become the same, but, you know, you have to gamify it and do this. Do that truth be told. Our real gamification is the essence of how we run this, which is empowerment, right? And engagement. And, you know, zero assessment. I think there is another very interesting gamified element to Lumi, which is collaboration. So that's where you are. It becomes like a sport, or it becomes like a game, right? Where you are actually, as a collective, you're going and addressing a problem, then breaking into smaller teams, etc, etc, etc. That's one thing. But what is now becoming interesting in the gamification, although it's very early in Lumi, is you can actually see your skill development in real time, right? So that becomes a motivating factor. So it's not like some artificial point system where you say, Oh, wow, look, I've racked up 100 points, but the fact that, oh, I am actually growing as on the entrepreneurial, you know, metric, oh, I'm actually growing as a storyteller. I'm growing as someone who can actually do collaborative problem solving, because these are the dimensions that we're measuring. So that's happening. That's the element of gamification, but it's very real. We are also thinking about now bringing in the network effect over time. We haven't succeeded in doing that yet, because when you work with under 18, which is a lot of our work, more than 50% if not more, but data protection, then safeguarding, all of these issues have prevented us so far from creating really vibrant global communities. But that's why we have also extended ourselves into the university segment, where the restrictions are a little lower, and, you know, we can work more freely. But that's why Lumi is called Lumi dot network. So the idea there is that if you participate in a few quests and you solve different problems, you've come out with your own innovations, etc. You. Are bound to be very skillful on some dimensions of what Lumi is measuring. So therefore you should become a ninja. Now that's a we've not used that term, but let's say you are an expert in that area, and so you should be the person who should be mentoring others as part of this network. And say, Guys, when you are designing something in figma, you know, don't spend your time doing sign up, sign in, kind of stuff. Here's a template, use it. Or here's how to use AI effectively and when it comes to figma. Or here's how you use, you know, create another tool. Or here's how I tell you was very good at telling stories, because that's so important when you're building a company or startup. So that's one concept, right? How does that work? Today, you participate in quests, and let's say you end up going to university, which is what happened in Rumi for many students, they are coming back as facilitators. So now you have been a participant, and you build lots of skills, but you've come back, and now you are earning money by being a facilitator yourself. So is that gamification, not quite but is that creating, you know, virtuous loops for people to stay motivated, which is what my essence of gamification is, absolutely yes. And I think there is a, you know, I'm a big fan of a company called Stack Overflow. Is not very well known in some parts of the world, but they do this really well. They have this concept of a ninja, right? People are really good at something that's something that we are learning from. And then the other thing is maybe a, you know, like a karate belt system, bringing in something like that, where you might be good at design, but you are a black belt in design, that is something that's seriously good. And our vision is that that kind of gamification or accreditation of your skills is what will become very valuable for society, right? So these are things we are bringing this is not like I'm launching a new looming currency and then, you know, therefore it can be monetized into vouchers. I don't have anything like that red gear.
Alexander Sarlin:It strikes me that some of the mechanisms you're talking about are really about the recognition of progress and the sort of status or recognition of progress, which is a big part of why games work, and sort of gamification that I think is often overlooked, right? People do the facade of gamification, like making currencies and and levels, but really the core of it is actually recognizing your progress. And as you say, it's best if the progress is on something actually real and relevant. You're getting better at the skills that you're going to need in your in your future college or workforce life. That's extremely powerful. So it makes sense to me, and I think you know, you have quests, these sort of cohort based quests and challenges in some of the language of games. But it feels like the real core of what I'm hearing is about recognizing progress in a very granular and meaningful way. I
Prashant Raizada:think there's one more thing, which is picking up on your point, which one of our investors actually said is the most important thing about Lumi, and that is, this is peer based learning. Okay? This is not like the facilitator is not really a teacher. He's not guy, or she's not guiding them, sorry. He's not, you know, mentoring them as a like do this, do that, they are just facilitating. So the most important thing that participants, or luminaries, as we call them, have said to us is, I shut my door and now this is my world. And I think that's exactly what happens in gaming. Yep, you know, my headphones are on. I'm in my room on my gaming chair, and this is my world. So Lumi basically becomes their world, but not explicitly by saying it, that it's like they're trusted. They enjoy being with other people over there. They're not being judged. They're just having fun. And honestly speaking, if you go sub 18 or sub 16, they're not thinking about building skills. They're just there in the Now, solving a problem, enjoying themselves. And that has to be the case.
Alexander Sarlin:That's a great point. I love that metaphor of, you know, people close the door and they're they're in their gaming world. I think we all recognize that from people. We've worked with our kids ourselves, I feel like it's about empowerment. I mean, we're going back to the original It's trust and empowerment games. One of the things that games do really well is they organize a system, but then within the system, you have a lot of control, and you really feel like you're relying on yourself to make it your way through an existing system that's neutral, that's not, you know, judging you, it's not scolding you ever, right? And it feels like some of those elements are in what you're saying you in Lumi, you're addressing a challenge you care about. You're using AI to support you and find research and figure out how to solve it. You're using design thinking mechanisms, or design thinking to move through. Problem identification and solving in a meaningful way. You're in a system, but you're in control. You're
Prashant Raizada:totally in control. Actually totally in control. We don't even tell you, hey, you've got to get to A, B, C and D. But it's self motivated. Here's the beauty of that, Alex, this is not driven. You know, I find that people who are not additionally high achievers in education are doing equally well. This is what makes me feel so happy about it, because this is where you break away from, you know, giving these young people a sense of high self worth through high grades or a feeling of worthlessness. This is like I can solve real world problems 100%
Alexander Sarlin:it's something that we really lack a lot of, you know, a lot in traditional education, that feeling of handing the reins to a student and saying you can do this, you will wrestle with it. You'll hit roadblocks, and you'll get over them because you care, and you're going to keep working towards it. It's really very powerful way to educate people. And I'm sure your luminaries, you know, your students, feel extremely empowered the fact that they come back after they you know, get into universities to facilitate other classes. And I'm sure it feels very different than their traditional school lives. I'm so curious, because this is so different than traditional education in most countries, but it feels so much like where traditional education should be going that I'd love to hear how you sort of think about this is, do you feel like some of the elements of what you're doing with Lumi network? You know that part of your role here is to sort of showcase how education should be and that might be picked up in by nations, by schools, by any group that is seeking to really improve education?
Prashant Raizada:Yeah, what we are trying to do is saying to traditional education, you're good at doing what you do, but we also know that you struggle to do a lot more because there is a desire, but there's no time, or there's no resource, or there's no funding. So we want to be that solution that plugs into education systems at school and university, but longitudinally, as an over time. You know it works, not just as a one off intervention, but as a something that works with over time. To do what you can't do, what you can't do is give them a real taste of entrepreneurship. You can't do is get them to focus on real world problems for a sustained period of time. What you can't do is to give them a sustained exposure to a variety of AI tools which are not directly linked to subject mastery. So therefore we will do that. And what we are saying is that, and this is literally my conversations with ministers in at least three countries literally right now, which is we are going to scale Lumi in a way, or develop it in a way that it plugs in to your school and university systems and actually gives literally upskills Your entire next generation equitably. That's not saying that traditional education is bad or we are better, just bringing the two together. Right now, our challenge is make it so streamlined that it can fit into the education systems. It's easier in university, harder in schools. Make it useful, and that, you know, so that young people engage with it. But the third point is, make it cost effective, so you can actually do it. So now this is a this is actually quite a big challenge, but we are having a go at it. So
Alexander Sarlin:what I'm hearing is Lumi is being designed in a way that it brings some of the complimentary pieces of education, real world education like this, AI driven future that we all sort of know is coming, and the skills revolution that people have talked about for decades, and this idea of focusing on real world problems, and it's complementary, but it's being designed to sort of click in and complement The existing education systems in various countries or ecosystems, so that, especially ministries of education, I sometimes feel like we are, this is something we're really lacking in the US is, I wish we had a ministry of education, but ministries of education, which sometimes really are very cognizant of that kind of OECD skills mapping that's coming, they can, rather than having to sort of change the system internally from the ground up, they can connect the type of work you're doing with Lumi with what they're doing in traditional education to complement it and really make a fuller, more holistic type of education.
Prashant Raizada:But ironically, we're not working or talking to the ministries of education in any of these three countries, and this is an important point, the ministries of education start to mimic the education system, which is they are calcified, interesting, okay, so I think you're better off not having a ministry of education in the US. Perhaps we are having discussions with the Minister for AI, okay, the. Minister for Economy and tourism, the Minister for science and technology. These are the people because they are wired differently, or they feel like they are working with a very different set of people who are progressive the ministries of education in one of the countries where I spoke brilliant meeting, 30 minutes. And the 31st minute, she said, nothing's possible, right? What do you mean? Nothing is possible? You know the problem? Yes, I do. You know that we can solve it? Yes, I think you can. Of course, you know you shouldn't be so sure that I'll solve it. I think that would be a mistake. But to say that you can do nothing, yeah, you know, drives me nuts. What do you mean? What are you going to lose? You
Alexander Sarlin:mentioned earlier how sometimes we in ed tech world are guilty a little bit of sort of poo pooing, or, you know, or pointing fingers at the traditional education system as being calcified, as being slow moving, as being sort of very fixed. And yes, we talk about that a lot, sadly, on this show as well. But it's interesting to hear this idea of, you know, bringing in the other ministries, as you say, is it reminds me of something we talk about a lot in the US, about this sort of public private partnerships, right? Talking to people who have very deep vested interests in a skilled population, we see Google right now putting out and video too, putting out huge numbers of AI courses or courses about it and cybersecurity, and they're just putting them out for free for everyone, because they realize that this is where the future is going to go and they need people to help them make that future, and universities and schools aren't always doing it. So I keep falling into the trap of sort of picking fights with the traditional education system, but it's interesting to hear that ministries are not are not on board. I remember reading about the Singapore Ministry of Education and how they are. They try to be really progressive in terms of thinking about the skills of the future. But maybe they're an outlier,
Prashant Raizada:maybe. And I don't know enough to be able to make any kind of smart or dumb comment about them, so, but there are countries right who are thinking about it, and you can bet on the fact that Singapore actually can do it, because what's the advantage they have? What is the advantage UAE or even Saudi Arabia. These countries have an advantage. They are very hungry, populated by really capable people in the ministries. I've seen it firsthand. But at the same time, they also have a contained ecosystem. It's not so complex and so large like India or even the United States or even the UK. So that's why you see Scandinavia leading on holistic education, and now Singapore leading on stem right. But I think there is an opportunity, and this is why I call Lumi a leapfrog solution, that something comes along which is like a mobile phone, which is easy to use and important, but it solves a problem. So Lumi should be that leapfrog solution that can be plugged into systems, and everybody can start that cycle or reboot their education journey and say, okay, all right, great. We couldn't do a lot of the stuff. We couldn't build great schools or universities, or they're not at the same standard as some of the best ones in the world. But our young generation has actually now started building those skills and solving the problems that are relevant to around us, so we are actually going to be in a virtuous loop. Great, that's what we need. Otherwise, guess where we are going?
Alexander Sarlin:Yeah, I really agree, and I love that leapfrog solution idea in this context, because it feels like you're combining some of the best elements. I mean, AI itself is a leapfrog solution. It's already known for helping students who are further behind catch up than students who are on grade level. They're already studies showing that. So it's it's a leapfrog solution in and of itself. And then you're taking other elements like real world problems and challenges, cohort based, peer based, learning, design thinking. All of these are also, I think, really important elements of leapfrogging and sort of moving an education landscape to a much more modern and cutting edge place. It's really exciting work. I wish we had more time, but we're coming up at the end of our time. I always end with two questions. One is, what is the most exciting trend that you see right now from your particular perspective at blooming network in the ed tech world, that our listeners should keep an eye on, what is coming that they might not know about. Of course, you know, AI we were all paying attention to, but what is coming that they may not know yet?
Prashant Raizada:You know, it was a very tough question, I think, what's coming that they do not know yet is a change in the education system driven by AI, which either makes schooling very interesting, because nothing prevents you from actually going and getting a job because you're an expert at you know, prompt engineering and. The age of 15, like this guy, Zach or right? So therefore it actually gives you real freedom. Imagine the economic freedom that you get and the kind of self confidence that you get because you're valuable. So I think what's coming is the world's gonna start becoming less ages. I hope at both ends, I'm at the other end,
Alexander Sarlin:right? Yeah. Love that less ages and more freedom.
Prashant Raizada:I think that's happening. And the second thing is that, therefore, less focus on Hey, I've gone through the travelator called school. Now I want to get on to another travelator called University, not required. Think carefully in the West, you don't want to get into a massive debt unless you are clear you want to get into it right? You have alternative choices, apprenticeships in the UK, for example, or just internships, or just become skillful at something. And you can keep earning whilst you keep figuring things out. I think that is a trend that I see accelerating the weakest link in that trend is actually the parents, because it's people like us who say you're getting too cool for school and where are you going to go to university? How is this helping you? You have to go to Stanford made somehow somebody has to be a real outlier at this age today, to be allowed by their parents not to go to universities, certainly in most parts of the world, it's a great point. So that's what's coming. I see it as a positive thing, but for schools and universities, obviously it's a little bit more unsettling, right?
Alexander Sarlin:I love that combination of sort of the pathways, the traditional pathways, may fray as some of these alternative options become richer, more interesting and more sort of supercharged by AI, young people will be able to do things we sort of could never imagine them being able to do before. And then it's going to be on the parents. I love that idea. It's going to be on the parents to really recognize that maybe the traditional path might not always be the right move for success in life as the world changes in this particular way. Because, you know, gosh, that we've seen a lot of changes over the last few decades, and universities still maintain that. I always call it sort of the monopoly on mobility, right? There's still one of the only ways to sort of enter the middle, or, you know, successful class. But it's starting to fray, and I'm glad it is. I'm so glad it is, because it's ridiculous the current system. Lastly, I want to ask you about a resource. I mean, you've obviously thought about this from so many different perspectives. You have design thinking, you have gamification, you have the UN goals. What is just one resource that you would recommend to our listeners to sort of just get a little bit deeper into any of the topics. Where would you send them? What was something that really woke you up to this combination of factors I
Prashant Raizada:struggle with that, you know, I don't have a source. I think answer that question in two different ways. What I'm finding is that this is where social media is really powerful. So for example, I'm finding that because I'm interested in linked on LinkedIn in certain topics, and I've connected with or started following certain people, I'm getting a constant stream of wisdom. Now I can, you know, what I have to become is a little bit more discerning in what I absorb, but it's really good, and I'm choosing those people's right. So therefore there's a little bit of agency in that. So rather than pointing you to one source, I would say, use these platforms and follow and engage with people, because that's really very interesting. And the second source is therefore, instead of just absorbing it, it's a plug in as well. I want people to go to my podcast, which is called in youth we trust, Alex, because what we are doing is we are choosing people who are making a real difference, directly or indirectly on AI, education and sustainability for the next generation.
Alexander Sarlin:Say the name of it again? I think I talked right over it. What is it called?
Prashant Raizada:It's called in youth we trust. It's on all the usual platforms, but there again, like you are doing, right? You're I'm getting this wisdom out of these people from all over the world, but they're really deep into these topics, and they're very diverse people, right? So that actually gives you, and I'll give you just one example, there's a lot of scaremongering around climate and sustainability, but my greatest takeaway from having interviewed a large number of Chief Sustainability Officer is pure optimism, because they're so deep into the problem and they're still optimistic. Well, clearly we are doing something right. They are doing something right, and therefore we feel reassured that, you know, ultimately, we will prevail.
Alexander Sarlin:It strikes me as well. You know, one thing you mentioned countries like, you know, UAE and Singapore. They're also young countries. I think that's one of the reasons. They're not calcified. They're ready to try new things. And as our young people, right? They don't feel like they've been jaded. They see these problems, and they say, you know. What I'm not going to give up on this. I think we this is something we could solve that's really exciting. Thank you so much. This has been a fascinating conversation. Prashant Raizada is the CEO with his 15 year old son, co founder of Lumi network. It is doing some fascinating work, really, all over the world with youth empowerment, with AI and design thinking. Thank you so much for being here with us on Edtech Insiders.
Prashant Raizada:Thank you so much for having me.
Alexander Sarlin:Thanks for listening to this episode of Edtech Insiders. If you liked the podcast, remember to rate it and share it with others in the EdTech community. For those who want even more Edtech Insider, subscribe to the free Edtech Insiders newsletter on substack.
