Tomorrow, Today
How AI Will Transform Education Forever | Avinash Pandit x Shekhar Natarajan
17 Jun 2026
Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.
Chapter 1: How is AI revolutionizing education today?
Many of these IITs students vie for because it can literally transform your life. I literally got flashbacks of what happened during my JEE days in the first couple of weeks of IIM. Which company they wanted to go and what function in that company they wanted to go. So people used to come and say, I am from IIT Delhi. I want to go into Goldman Sachs, IBD, London desk.
And I was sitting there clueless as to what I wanted to do in my life. Which is good actually, by the way. Let's talk about the Nokia case. Nokia came and said to keep our market share stable. And the interesting thing was that the Indian leadership told us not to look at the product. When we went to the case for the first time, we could literally see that their product is not right.
That they are bleeding because there is no product market fit anymore. But you know, nine months after that, the whole mobile division was literally shut down of Nokia. I think one of the most important things for the top player is to ask the right questions. You'll get the answers. But if you don't ask the right questions, probably all the right answers will go to the wrong questions.
Welcome to yet another episode of Tomorrow Today. with Shekhar Natarajan. It's a real pleasure to have Avinash Pandit here in the sets today. He's trying to redefine education and outcome-based education in India. Avinash, welcome to the show. You're a pioneer in this space. I'm super excited to have the conversation because education is very close to my heart.
And we'll touch on a lot of topics. We'll keep it very conversational. We'll take it any direction. And we'll have fun. Sure, sure. Okay. And so there are no right answers. There are no wrong answers. You know, just be yourself. So let's go to the very formative stages of your life. You know, like early days. You know, where did you grow up?
Like if you go back yourself and transport when you were like a seven-year-old kid. And you're sitting at the breakfast table. Your mom, your dad, what's going on through the family? Who are they? How do they think? What were you thinking?
I think that's a long, long time back. How old do you think I am, by the way, Shikhar? I know your age.
So that was a trick question. So yes, I think like you're 41, 42.
Yeah. I mean, many people have told me that I look more like 25. But yeah, it was a long, long time back. So my dad comes from army background, right? So most of my childhood, we've traveled every three years to some different location, right? So home, I think what army makes you realize is that home is a feeling rather than a location.
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Chapter 2: What personal experiences shaped the guest's views on education?
I think the same hardships... millions of Indians even currently are facing.
So obviously, education is a very big role in like, you know, like in growing up, like, did your parents tell you like, you know, you got to be a doctor, you got to be an engineer, do you have to do this?
Like, what was it like in your house, like the role of education, having a relevant degree, because that's an aspiration of every like, you know, middle class family in India, like, if nothing happens to me, like my son basically becomes an engineer, his life will be made. So,
So education, I think was was very important, at least in my household, because I think both of my parents had come out of their situations, because they had studied, right. So I think I don't think there was like a mandate that we either had to become a doctor or engineer, I think it just happened.
That your sister is an engineer.
My sister is a doctor. And you're an engineer. It just happened.
We are twins too, by the way.
Yeah, I mean, see, growing up, I was pretty good with numbers since the beginning. Like, so, physics, maths, chemistry. I used to enjoy these. My sister was more... I mean, she'd seen my mother, she'd seen my father treat patients. So I think that became her passion. But it was not mandated per se.
But education, I think, was put... Education had very high importance because they themselves had come out of those situations.
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Chapter 3: How does the guest view the challenges of traditional education?
Satyam was also there at that point of time. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But yeah, I started my journey with Infosys after my engineering. And I was there for about three years or so. I actually topped the batch, the training batch in Infosys. I think Infosys, what it really gave me was a passion for coding. And NetNet ensuring that I never get scared of code after that. I had never coded before.
They trained me for six months. But probably it was the best groundwork for what came ahead. But yeah. I think the service companies then and even now, for that matter, are based on cost arbitrage. They price on a per person utilization basis. And I think pretty soon, probably by the second year in Infosys, I realized that I could do so much more as compared to what I was doing there.
I literally was working, let's say, three hours every day, was in the top quartile, like top 25% of the employees. And rest of the times I spent improving myself in table tennis, in snooker, swimming, you know, going to gym, learning Age of Empire, playing Counter-Strike. So I did so much. Yeah, Infosys for me was, I think there were two things.
One was it was like a second college for me because I could do so many things in Infosys. But it also laid, I think, the groundwork for, you know, what really came ahead. I utilized what I learned in Infosys all across my later years.
That's interesting that like, you know, because like you, I thought like the cost arbitrage actually like puts more pressure on you to be always more efficient than what you are. Looks like, you know, that didn't like bother you.
I think what the problem with all of these older companies is that as you rise, you write less code. And the domain might change. The code structures and stacks will change. So as you rise higher, if you are not in touch with what is happening in the world, you will soon lose touch on the timelines.
So when you know more than your manager from a coding perspective, so let's say it will take me 3-4 days for some work. I can 2x the time and tell my manager that it's going to take 7-8 days. He's going to probably 1.5x that and going to give it to his manager without asking me questions. So I think Infosys was a bit of that at least at that point of time. I think
Probably, I foresee Indian IT services to be majorly impacted because of AI. And I think one of the reasons is this as well.
So you think that they're not like really geared to actually take on the AI? I really don't think so. Is it a problem with reskilling or is it a problem with the fact that the arbitrage is a problem? You could code yourself today. Code is generating code. That's one problem. The second problem is basically even if the code is generating code, I still think that there's a lot of jobs to be done
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Chapter 4: What role does entrepreneurship play in the future of education?
See problem is that majority of these IT service companies have only few products per se. Like Infosys has a product called Finacle which has been there since 20 years. Which is like the back end of banking for probably 25% of the retail banking in the world. But such products are very few. Their major work is maintenance of legacy code. So there have been some improvements.
But majorly it is ensuring that all of this is running without any problems. All of this is pattern recognition. There is a big pattern recognition. AI can do a substantially better job in any of these. And like I gave an example, I think one person who is utilizing AI properly can probably do the work of 10-20 people at this point of time.
So their model on arbitrage, but the model is billing on a per user number of hours billed. I think that model itself is breaking down. then it is possible that when all of these AI companies go public, the cost increases. But I think the productivity gains are still so much that Indian IT companies are, unless they fundamentally change their model itself.
They have domain expertise, but domain expertise is what? Net-net even that is understanding, let's say 50 years of data and figuring out patterns in terms of what is working and what is not working. I think AI is going to be better than you know, 10 managers of any of these IT service companies.
Vishal actually wanted to invest in, Vishal Sikka, wanted to invest in OpenAI at the time like when OpenAI was conceived. Yeah. And he was shot. So, you know, Infosys would have been in a different place and time now had that happened. But like, you know.
I think there are so many cases. The case of Xerox that we keep hearing. The case of Kodak. The case of Nokia. You know, all of these. When smartphones came, feature phones left. I think it's just that either you improve in terms of what is happening, you adapt, or you die.
So then you decided to actually go to get your management degree. What was the urge for that?
Yeah, so as I said, in Infosys, I really felt that I could do so much more with my time. And MBA just made sense at that point of time, right? So I felt that I could... Actually learn how to do business. By the way, no one in my family has ever gone and done any businesses. But yeah, I thought it would be good to just go and learn how businesses operate. Gave this exam called CAT.
I got very good percentile. So I got 99.88 percentile in CAT. I got calls from all the IIMs. Went into IIM Calcutta. IIM Calcutta was a completely different ballgame altogether. I literally got flashbacks of what happened during my GE days in the first couple of weeks of IIM because it was filled with IITians.
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Chapter 5: How does AI impact job opportunities in India?
And I said, no, I really want to go there. Because I want to stay close to my brother. Because if something happens to him, I want to be there for him. So, after going there, it was supposed to be like, you know, I find out that it's like the top school for industrial engineering for the last 20 years. And I went there, basically, finished industrial engineering. So, I didn't get a job.
I didn't get a job. I didn't get a job for a year. So, you know, what was my actual first job? After graduating from the top school for industrial engineering. I must have been a bad student, by the way. That could have been the other thing. Is... To go wire computers... In the office of information technology. Oh, interesting. Okay. And then I was working in a multimedia lab. Okay.
In the same lab. And so it was part of the library system. So when I had that... So I could have salt. Because all my friends were going to Capital One. At that time, the job of a business analyst was very good. You got a business analyst in Capital One. People prepare to crack that case. How much card does the bank get? What is its net income? It becomes prescriptive.
So I used to see all these guys prepare for the same damn questions also. And everyone would crack. And I said, what are you guys doing? I studied industrial engineering. But you're working in a bank like a business analyst. At least think of something. So anyway, everyone chose their life of choice. And I didn't sulk about any of those things.
And I said, like, you know, I was in multimedia lab. And my lab manager said, why don't you build a movie resume and give it to someone? Because like, you know, you're helping kids make movies. And like, you know, Flash used to run at that time. Yeah. So, Adobe Flash, Adobe Illustrator, make it in Illustrator, put this in Flash, edit it in Premiere, make a movie.
So, I said, who will listen to me? Neither do I have an accent, nor will anyone look at my face. So I said, I'll create a multimedia. It's almost like, you know, you have subliminal things coming behind the scenes. It's animated. And then I had like the music from Matrix Revolutions. Navarra's. It comes in credits at the end. I put that in for 6 minutes.
I made a movie and I put it on a CD, which is the size of a business card. And I never used it. But then I got a job as a corporate specialist in a rubber band company. It was in industrial engineering and process engineering. I took that. My luck was bad. Okay. So six months I stayed there.
And then I was, I figured like, you know, I was working for a manic depressant who fires one day and like rears the next day. I said, man, I don't want to deal with two people. One is my brother and the other is him. So I left that. So I was sitting, I was literally sleeping on the couch. I recollected that I had access to LexisNexis from the library. And then I looked up like Coca-Cola.
I did not know Coke Consolidated and bottling company was called Coca-Cola. And basically Coke was KO. The way it is actually like, you know, straight out in the stock market. So I put Coke in it, C-O-K-E. So it became Coke Consolidated Bottling Company. So I found the exec. I sent that movie resume. He saw the movie resume. I got a job. So that was my journey. Got it.
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Chapter 6: What skills will be essential for future job seekers?
our working life is one, how much efforts that you put in, but also the relationships that you build along the way.
Yeah.
Right? Because a lot of these opportunities just show up because you have built the right relationships while working. Yeah. So you, for example, the first time your manager told you to do something, he would have told you to do something because you really work towards the prior goals and you build a relationship with him.
Yeah.
So I think the accidental is also... The probability can be improved substantially if you... Have the right relationships. Have the right relationships in the workplace. And the right context also.
And like right people to guide you in the right way. So which is the problem with the current education system? It's all like tailored like, you know, to... I don't know, like, you know, when you go to like education system, like everyone is uniquely different, like just as your fingerprint. But the way you actually deliver education is all the same.
Yeah.
So there's no special care for a person who needs special attention. And what makes them unique. There's no personalization. I always found it very interesting, that whole education system. It's all screwed up. But anyway, who might fix it? But anyway, from there you finished IIM, Calcutta. And then you did what?
So in IIM, for the first few weeks... were very, very bad. As I said, I... Depression is over. Because there were people from IIT who... I think this is one of the things that you get... by being a part of premier institutions that you get exposure, right? So many of these kids who came into IIM already had done a lot of things which mattered. So people have done CFA, have studied finance.
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Chapter 7: What is the significance of building networks in today's job market?
So in consulting, at least in top strategy consulting firms, What happens is that big companies' CEOs come and they have mandate either to increase the top line, which is revenue, or they give mandate to increase the bottom line, which is the profit. One of the two will fit somewhere. Nokia came saying that keep our market share stable. Not like increase it or improve profit.
And this is like early 2010s. So Samsung was... really taking away the market share in the top segment. So, there were feature phones earlier. The market was shifting to smartphones. Samsung was taking away the top end of the market. And below, there were all the Chinese manufactured Indian brands. This is Spice, Lava, Micromax. And Nokia was getting squeezed from both the sides.
That pressure is coming from above and from below. And the interesting thing was that the Indian leadership... told us not to look at the product. I mean, when we went to the case for the first time, we could literally see that their product is not right, that they are bleeding because there is no product market fit anymore. The good product that was there five years ago, in that date,
was not worth at all at the price point at which they were selling. And they came to us saying, fix the retail strategy. Retail strategy. And no matter how much I think BCG pushed back, they said, don't look at the product. So we ended up, by the way, giving them a retail strategy, which helped them increase the market share for let's say two, three months.
But, you know, nine months after that, then the whole mobile division was literally shut down of Nokia. I think in TopCom, and you worked as the top layer in many of the companies. I think one of the most important things for the top layer is to ask the right questions. You will get the answers. But if you don't ask the right questions, then... It does not matter how hard the team works.
It does not matter how hard people are working. If the efforts are not in the right direction, it will not matter. I think from a consulting standpoint, we gave them probably all the right answers, but to the wrong questions.
So from there, you basically ended up like consulting for more companies and then like you, what is your career trajectory from there?
Yeah, so I think, so BCG had consulted this company called Hero Honda. And Hero wanted to separate from Honda and expand internationally. And BCG had done that case study with Hero. So they wanted someone to stick back and help them build their international business. So I was the person who stayed back. So I ended up helping Hero Motor Corp enter into 37 countries internationally.
In Southeast Asia, we were present in a large part in African continent. We were present in Latin American continent. And a small portion in Middle East as well. So that was what I did after Hero. Sorry, that was what I did after BCG. And then Hero NetNet, I took care of almost everything apart from P&L. So product, pricing, distribution, marketing strategy.
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Chapter 8: How can students prepare for the evolving landscape of work?
So we made a strategy during BCG time also. When we actually went and launched there, the requirements were so different. And of course, we had gone and tested it out. But road conditions are different. The loading factors are different. How strong should the bike chassis be based on the loading factors is very different.
How strong should the engine be so that it can run in those conditions is very different. It's a multi-retail framework rather than exclusive retail like in India. So the retail strategies are very different. I understood all this while executing. So going on the ground, you know, putting your ear and actually listening to what the market is saying.
So I think Hero gave me a very good foundation in that. And then I think Hero is when iNetNet thought that I've now had
experience across the top companies in india i've done consulting i know cross-sectoral i have cross-sectoral understanding and then why not you know eventually get into startups so after hero then i went to this company called oyo and in oyo i was heading there us and canadian so i launched their us in canadian market
And then I was eventually heading the revenue of 14 countries in Southeast Asia, Middle East, and then Japan. Right? So I think OYO was also a very, very good experience. At that time, OYO raised a lot of funds from SoftBank. And the talent density was so good, so immense. I think many of the OYO alumni have done exceptionally well. Very good mix of
strategic brain and hustle culture, which is to get actually go get the things done and reframe the problem statements if required. This was also the time during COVID, by the way, when I was in Ohio, and travel was one of the worst hit segments, right? So the company shifted from, you know, being a growth oriented company to a company which wants to break even and become profitable.
So we had to trim down the workforce by a large extent. Probably that was one of the phases in my life which was very difficult for me to handle as well. I mean, coming from an army background, we are made to think in a way that we take everyone along us. So for the first time, I had to literally fire 35-40% of my team.
And a lot of people have left good jobs, they are giving their time, they are working with me, for me. I really felt responsible for the majority of them. So, I mean, I tried to... help as many people as I could, but it was probably one of the most difficult phases of my working career. And post OYO, then I went into education, education sector.
In education, I think I've seen the market up close. In India, I think probably the most important problem statement is giving the right access to opportunities. As we were discussing also, I think majority of these premier institutions are built on the premise that they will set you in life. And that will happen. And it does happen. Because the access to opportunities is so limited in India.
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