Smartail: Empowering Education System Using AI-Powered Tool Deepgrade

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Education is one of the most influenced industries by technology. The application of AI is not limited to healthcare, retail, or marketing only, AI in the education market is the new trend. AI is helping to enhance the learning experience and provide interactive solutions to the education system. AI in the education market is expected to grow at a  40% CAGR from 2021 to 2027.

Smartail has brought up the solutions to fill the learning gap among students and enhance teachers' effectiveness in the classroom. Deepgrade is a Smartail's AI-powered tool that improves teaching methodology.

Read the startup story of Smartail, its founders, business model, and more about Smartail and Deepgrade.

Smartail - Company Highlights

Smartail - About
Smartail - Industry
Smartail - Founders and Team
Smartail - The Idea and Startup Story
Smartail - Name, Tagline, and Logo
Smartail - The Product and Service
Smartail - Business Model and Revenue Model
Smartail - Customer Acquisition
Smartail - Challenges Faced
Smartail - Marketing
Smartail - Growth
Smartail - Advisors and Mentors
Smartail - Recognitions and Achievements
Smartail - Funding
Smartail - Competitors
Smartail - Tools Used in the Company
Smartail - Future Plans

Smartail - About

Smartail was founded in 2019 for bringing innovative and efficient solutions to address problems in the education sector with the power of Artificial Intelligence. Its flagship product is an AI-powered tool - Deepgrade.

Smartail - Industry

Smartail is in B2B SaaS EdTech (Education Sector). The total market size (APAC, Middle East, North America US, Canada) for AI In Education is expected to reach $20-25 Billion by 2030. Smartail is focused on AI in education using NLP, Deep Learning, and Computer Vision.

Smartail - Founders and Team

Swaminathan Ganesan and Aslam Sheriff Basha are the co-founders of Smartail. Aslam Sheriff Basha is the CGO and Swaminathan Ganesan is the CEO of Smartail. Kannan Ganesan is the Chief Technology Officer (CTO) at the startup.

Swami is a technologist and a product visionary, and Aslam a business expert and a magician in emotional intelligence complemented each other towards driving solutions for various customers in their previous stints as colleagues. As the entrepreneurial bug bit both, the next logical step was to build a product and take it out to the market.

Swaminathan Ganesan is an Experienced Technology Specialist and Product Leader with 19+ years of experience in building software applications for renowned organizations globally. Proven solution architect and Subject matter expert with business acumen to identify pain points/challenges/use cases and solve them using a design thinking approach. Swami’s previous role was with Terralogic Inc as VP of Digital Transformation, has to experience managing globally distributed teams across Sanjose, New York (Digital Media Customers), Ho Chi Minh City (VN) and Bangalore.

Aslam Sherieff is an Experienced Business Leader and Growth Strategist with 19+ years of experience in building software engineering teams to deliver cutting-edge products for renowned organizations as a part of an extension to engineering teams across Sanjose (US), Bangalore and Ho Chi Minh City (VN). People person where the strength lies in taking new requirements, scoping, Proposal, SOW, business closure, planning resources, hiring, onboarding, ramp up and delivering as per KPI metrics and Governance defined. Aslam’s previous role was with Terralogic Inc as VP of Software Services managing India, US, VN engineering deliver teams and Inside Sales, and growth planning.

Kannan Ganesan (CTO) is an Experienced Technical & Product Leader with 15+ years of experience in the software application development domain. Solution architect and Subject matter expert in software engineering practices, Industry trends, tools, techniques, and approaches. A leader with a passion for technology has served organizations such as JP Morgan Chase, HSN and Cognizant respectively in various roles. Kannan has close to a decade of experience working in the US for JP Morgan Chase and HSN based out of Tampa, Florida. His previous role as VP at JP Morgan Service India Private Limited drove the payments development division.

Smartail - The Idea and Startup Story

Founders of DeepGrade having been in the industry for nearly 20 years and hiring fresh talent out of colleges, they felt there was still a huge gap in terms of Industry expectation and talent availability. It pushed them to get to the root cause of this perennial problem and find a solution for this – Thus Smartail was created.

One of their key findings was that this pain area is something that must be addressed from the grassroots, right from school. They also believe that Artificial intelligence can make a significant impact in driving this solution, also the key is not only to address the pain of the students but their gurus, for a simple reason you empower and enable one teacher you impact thousands of students. Thus, the first product of Smartail “Deepgrade” came into existence.

Smartail - Name, Tagline, and Logo

Smartail full form stands at Smart AI labs. Hence shorter representation is Smartail and their tagline is enabling and empowering the teaching community with AI.

Smartail - The Product and Service

Smartail’s artificial intelligence-based flagship platform Deepgrade empowers institutions with state-of-the-art answer paper correction. Deepgrade is an AI-powered answer paper correction platform for educational Institutions. Using Deep Learning, Machine learning, NLP, and Computer vision, not only correct your MCQs but all your descriptive text answers, diagrammatic answers, Maps, Chemical formulas & more. With Deepgrade correction you get to see never seen deep reports that enable you to make intelligent decisions.

Smartail - Business Model and Revenue Model

It's a SaaS B2B and they have a Subscription-based revenue model. The subscription price per student per month is provided to educational institutions. Their pricing range is 25 to 35 INR per student per month.

Smartail - Customer Acquisition

Initial customers/users are someone who believed in your purpose and objective that they intended to achieve. As said before DeepGrade is a solution that addressed the pain points of the most important people - teachers and students. DeepGrade as a product and benefits spoke for itself, this helped them grow bigger.

Their most important userbase are academicians who believe in lifelong learning and continuous upliftment. DeepGrade gives both teachers and management greater visibility into students’ performance and their understanding quotients. Positive effects of this Data-driven decision in every classroom are greatly welcomed by many educators and help in improving the holistic development of their institution.

Smartail - Challenges Faced

Every startup has its own challenges which decide its growth tenure. Likewise, Smartail’s DeepGrade is a whole new invention in its own way. It is not a single-day transformation. It has its own limitations in everyday usage.

When it comes to its customers/users, using DeepGrade is an acceptance of the journey towards growth than buying a product. They grow together!!

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Smartail - Marketing

Their flagship product is not just a service or process, it is a seed for this century’s greatest technology transformation in the education industry. Making people understand the purpose and objectives of DeepGrade helped them gain more support from every educationist in this industry.

They have conducted seminars, workshops and conventions with thousands of scholars from various subject areas. This took the Smartail product into the hands of their customers today.

Smartail - Growth

They have two office locations and the users are all the stakeholders of the education industry spread across the earth. Smartail plans to spread the pitch across nations and make DeepGrade adaptable to every educationist interested in data-driven decisions to improve the quality of their future generations.

Smartail - Advisors and Mentors

Key people who Advise and Guide Smartail are:

• Prof. C Panduranga Bhatta - Honorary Advisor (Former Professor, IIM Calcutta, Honorary advisor)
• Dr P Ravi - Strategic Advisor – Academics (Former Regional Director, National Institute of Open Schooling, Chennai)
• Mr Priyadarshi Nayak - Strategic Advisor & Transformationalist (Founder & Chairman of CED FOUNDATION TRUST)

Smartail - Recognitions and Achievements

The startup has got recognition as mentioned below:

• Selected for #RevvUpcohort2 startup acceleration program by the Telangana AI Mission (T-AIM) & NASSCOM AI mission.
• Smartail is listed in the top 10 recommended AI startups in 2021.
• INDIAAi Recognized as reinventing the education sector with AI Startup – Startupindia.

Smartail - Funding

Smartail is bootstrapped and funding is through friends and family investors. They are currently in discussion with lead investors like F&F. They are looking for funding for product scaling and revenue generation.

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Smartail - Competitors

Top Competitors of Smartail are:

• Gradescope
• Copy Leaks
• Swift Grade (not direct 1-1)

Smartail - Tools Used in the Company

Tools they use in the startup are:

• OKR
• Agile/Sprint
• Cloud SaaS
• CRM

Smartail - Future Plans

They have future plan to build and validate NLP for regional languages.

FAQs

When was Smartail founded?

Smartail was founded in 2019.

Who are the founders of Smartail?

Swaminathan Ganesan and Aslam Sheriff Basha are the co-founders of Smartail.

What is Deepgrade?

DeepGrade is an AI-powered learning and grading platform by Smartail. It helps in identifying learning gaps among students and improving learning efficiency.