Business models for providing education to the poor

Abstract

This thesis presents four business cases for delivering education services to the poor. All four business cases meet three fundamental criteria, namely, they are (i) focused on primary or secondary education for the poor, (ii) commercially viable and (iii) highly scalable. These four business cases were developed as part of my efforts to set up The Spark Group - an idea incubator that is focused on improving the quality of education at a grassroots level. The first business case is Spark Accreditation - India's first universally available school accreditation service. The second business case is Spark Guru - a comprehensive teaching service for Class 8, 9 and 10 Mathematics that promises to bring back teaching where it belongs - inside the classroom. The third business case is Spark TAT - India's first national teacher assessment test. And the fourth and most ambitious business case is Spark School-in-a-box - an idea to form ten-thousand, Rs. 100 ($2) schools.