Interview: Manish Mohta, Managing Director of Learning Spiral

An interview with Manish Mohta, Managing Director of Learning Spiral, a leading online examination solution provider

Welcome to our insightful interview with Mr. Manish Mohta, the luminary Managing Director of Learning Spiral, spearheads a pioneering force in online examination solutions and digital marketing.

Under his stewardship, Learning Spiral has emerged as a paramount provider, delivering impeccable online assessment tools and exam solutions to universities worldwide. With a commitment to quality and innovation, Mr. Mohta has steered the company to the forefront of digital education, revolutionizing the landscape with cutting-edge technologies.

As the Founder & Director of Learning Spiral, could you share what inspired the establishment of Learning Spiral, and what is the mission behind the company?

Manish Mohta: At Learning Spiral we are on a mission to add 4000 Crore learning hours to our country. Today maintaining the academic calendar and the content of the syllabus is the number one challenge for our Higher Education Institutes especially with NEP’s mandate for continuous and more assessments.

We have been working with more than 50+ Universities and 10+ Boards spread across India to crash their examination to result in turn around time by 50% or more.

Please remember this is the time when everyone is busy conducting the examination and no teaching is possible in our colleges or schools.

Already we have freed more than 2 months in the academic calendar for more than a million students at College level. This extraordinary impact is helping us grow by 40% year on year !

Please share the company’s journey and how it has become a leading provider of online examination solutions and digital evaluation services?

Manish Mohta: In the last decade starting from one university Banaras Hindu University to more than 50+ Universities spread across India has been an extraordinary journey. This growth in a difficult and hard-to-scale sector like public sector examination services is a testimony to our experienced team and extraordinary service levels.

We today have public sector universities who have been our clients for close to a decade…this consistency in our ability to deliver our services has helped us retain and grow at the same time !

How does Learning Spiral differentiate itself from other online examination solution providers and digital marketing agencies in the industry?

Manish Mohta: We Deliver Results ! — That is our slogan. In a very demanding domain like examination services it is important to be nimble, trustworthy and reliable. We are able to deliver on all of these fronts.

Also the ability to provide good technical interventions and solutions for all forms of examinations whatever their mode of conduction [from physical to digital] at a value price point is something which has helped us gain a large footprint in this space.

Can you walk us through the range of online examination solutions offered by Learning Spiral and how they cater to the needs of universities and educational institutions?

Manish Mohta: Learning Spiral helps implement NEP’s vision of continuous assessments without impacting the academic calendar. This is possible with the help of our AI equipped question bank which helps deliver assessments for quizzes, internal assessments and also end semester examinations.

This Bank is tagged with course and learning outcomes and permits conduction of the examinations both online [proctored and non-proctored] and offline [pen and paper examinations].

When examinations are delivered offline [pen and paper tests] the solutions help in creation of print ready question papers, secured delivery of question papers to the examination centres and also on-screen evaluation of the answer booklets after the students give their examination.

On-screen evaluation helps implement uniformity and fairness in evaluation due to the anonymity and multiple blind evaluations which can be done using digital on-screen evaluation solutions. Also the big data generated can be used for deep analytics and future predictions.

Also for those higher education institutes who are wanting to start their journey in the use of AI assisted teaching our solutions in Teacher enablement can be a big differentiator

Subjective Evaluation is a vast and dynamic field. What strategies does Learning Spiral employ to deliver quality digital evaluation / on-screen marking solutions and services to its clients?

Manish Mohta: UCanEvaluate our digital evaluation / on-screen marking / on-screen evaluation solution is designed to ensure

• Anonymity of the students identity during evaluation of answer booklets
• Blind evaluation of model scripts by each teacher appointed as an evaluator for a subject
• Statistical sampling and double evaluation of scripts with unusually high or low scores
• Monitoring of evaluator / teacher performance during evaluation
• Digital tools to eliminate errors such as totalling / missed pages / missed questions
• AI enabled generation of model answers / questions and rubrics

Collaboration and partnerships can be instrumental in the growth of a company. Can you discuss any key partnerships or collaborations that Learning Spiral has formed to enhance its offerings to reach new markets?

Manish Mohta: Our partnership with AWS has been instrumental in our success. Before this we used to get scared when taking up assignments with large student volumes. Ability to scale was a major challenge technically especially given the kind of peaking load we see in the examination domain in a large country like India.

For example conducting proctored examinations for more than 100K students a day, 200 Papers, 600K questions and more than 2K proctors is no mean feat…but AWS’s help and infrastructure makes it a breeze.

We also work very closely with our customers and we are proud to say that University clients like BHU [Banaras Hindu University], MAKAUT [West Bengal University of Technology] have also inspired us and guided us in making our product better and more suited to address the challenges at hand.

I do not think without the help of such collaborations like AWS, BHU and MAKAUT we would be where we are today. 

What are the future plans and aspirations of Learning Spiral in terms of expanding its services or entering new markets?

Manish Mohta: We are exploring opportunities to expand in South East Asia and the Middle East and are likely to make active forays in both these geographies this year.

What are your success tips for young and aspiring entrepreneurs

Manish Mohta: I think the one thing I would want to share with budding young entrepreneurs is that they need to think big. These days the overheads of running your business at scale is quite significant and thus it is imperative that one goes for ideas which can become really big. Aiming for a small business is no more meaningful. This is unfortunate but true so please keep this in mind.

In the dynamic realm of online education and digital marketing, Mr. Manish Mohta stands as a beacon of leadership and innovation. Through his visionary guidance, Learning Spiral has cemented its position as a trailblazer, setting new standards in online examination solutions and digital marketing services.

As the driving force behind the company’s success, Mr. Mohta’s unwavering dedication to excellence continues to shape the future of digital learning and academic assessment on a global scale.

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