Good morning [%first_name |Dear Reader%],

We’ve devoted a lot of column space to the flashy kind of edtech. The types of products and services that often dress up really weary things like studying, revising, cramming for exams. So in this edition, I thought I’d peek behind the greenscreen, at the kind of edtech that is infrastructure.

Last week, a foreign edtech giant decided to set up shop in India. It’s not a flashy new app, or an AI-powered, metaverse-striding learning platform. It’s Moodle, a 24-year-old learning management software (LMS) company with its origins in the US. Moodle predates the newer waves of edtech, it’s from a time when tech in ed was strictly a supportive function. Tools like Moodle were digital props for lessons, tests, and documents that teachers wanted to upload to a central digital nervous system for students to access. 

Not that digital props weren’t in demand. An open-source software, Moodle supports 43 million courses across 230 plus countries. In India, it already claims to have a strong footprint–60% of higher education institutes use it. 

Moodle India’s launch comes a couple of months after the company acquired Hyderabad-based edtech eAbyas Info Solutions.