India’s youth population—among the largest in the world—has the potential to become a workforce that serves not only domestic but also foreign employers. Unfortunately, this potential remains non-actualized, with many young people unable to secure jobs that are well-paid and showcase their talent. A major reason for this is that India’s education system does not adequately teach skills that employers value. 

ConveGenius is a Delhi-based startup that is trying to address this gap using a digital platform. Founded by Jairaj Bhattacharya and Shashank Pandey, this startup collates all the educational achievements of an individual over time, then provides agentic AI chatbots to further develop key learner skills. Its framework has been adopted across India by not only private players but also state governments.

Facilitating home learning using AI

When it was launched in 2014, ConveGenius focused on teaching digital skills by partnering with existing IT infrastructure in schools. However, this process was slow, and so the company switched its operations to WhatsApp, building chatbots to support student skill development. This decision proved successful during the COVID-19 pandemic, when millions of students were compelled to move learning to the home environment. 

After the Indian government relaxed pandemic lockdowns and students returned to school, their usage of WhatsApp for learning reduced. Thus, ConveGenius shifted away from this platform and built an app ecosystem, SwiftChat, that hosted various AI chatbots. 

SwiftChat is now the company’s flagship service. Much like the Google Play Store, it allows users to access its API to build their own bots to support education in a variety of ways. There are now bots here that offer tutoring, adaptive learning experiences, AI-powered reading assistance, AI-enabled books, and so on.

In addition to private users, state governments have also utilized SwiftChat to build their own bots. Notably, the Gujarat state government uses user engagement data from its SwiftChat bots to better understand the requirements of teachers and students in real classrooms. This data, in turn, can be used to inform future education policy.

Commercialization of the platform

Today, SwiftChat’s AI agents are present in ~40% of the country’s schools, reaching ~1.4 crore monthly active users. This chatbot ecosystem has been distributed across most of India except in remote areas in Ladakh, Manipur, Mizoram, and the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. Most of the distribution has been through government channels. 

In its initial stages, ConveGenius was funded by the Dell Foundation, but it has since involved other investors, having raised series A and series B funding in 2021 and 2023, respectively. All of its digital infrastructure was built and is hosted domestically, with no reliance on third-party developers. 

The company’s work has been validated by a number of independent studies. The most prominent of these was a longitudinal randomized controlled trial by Dr Michael Kremer, holder of the Nobel prize in economics. This 2025 study demonstrated that students using personalized adaptive learning software developed by ConveGenius had shown improved learning outcomes in Andhra Pradesh classrooms. 

Moreover, according to founder Jairaj Bhattacharya, ConveGenius’s data-driven classroom assessment tools have brought Himachal Pradesh from national rank 21 to rank 5 in terms of foundational literacy, numeracy, and overall academic achievement. 

Incorporating edtech in policymaking

In 2021–22, noting the impact of the SwiftChat ecosystem and the educational data it provided, the Prime Minister of India announced a public sector version, the Vidya Samiksha Kendra. This school monitoring system has since been pushed across India as per the New Economic Policy (2020). 

This reflects a growing notion that the classrooms of tomorrow must include educational technology. However, ConveGenius asserts that the best way to achieve this digitalization of learning will be to involve edtech providers in policy conversations. Currently, these companies act as partners, but do not have the resources or mandate to directly influence public policy. Considering their perspectives and concerns would not only hasten the adoption of frontier technologies in education but also help establish best practices and standards for the benefit of all stakeholders.