Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Dipesh Jain: One of the main reasons why a lot of students drop out is because they
don't get right information at the right time.
So for example, I am a single, let's say I'm a single mother or a single father. I put my son, my
kids to sleep. I have like one hour window where I need to do my coursework.
If I don't get support during that one hour, it's very highly likely that I'm going to get demotivated.
So how do I build a tool or a system that can give me that support at the time that I need it?
[00:00:33] Jeff Dillon: Today I'm real excited to have another episode of EdTech Connect
podcast and some exciting news. We have broken into the Apple Podcast Top charts top 10 for
education.
So if you go to your podcast browse categories, we've been bouncing between number four and
number nine all week. So please give us a review.
Keep listening, pass it on to a friend. We'd love to have keep that position. It's really helped with
our listeners and downloads. Today's guest I'm excited to have. He is A Wealth of Knowledge in
edtech Dipesh Jain is the Vice President of revenue at Magic EdTech, a leading digital learning
solutions provider based in New York. With over a decade of experience spanning sales,
marketing and business development, Depeche has played a pivotal role in driving growth and
client success in the EdTech space. At Magic EdTech, he leads the sales and marketing
functions, helping global education providers transform their learning products through AI
accessibility and innovative digital platforms. Before joining Magic, Depeche held leadership
roles at Tally Solutions where he significantly increased regional sales contributions and
spearheaded successful product launches.
An MBA graduate from Narsee Manji Institute of Management Studies and a trained physical
therapist, Depeche brings a unique blend of business acumen and human centric thinking to his
work. He's also an active voice on Medium, where he shares insights on Ed Tech growth and
strategy and digital transformation.
So Depesh, it is great to have you on the show today. Thanks for being here.
[00:02:24] Dipesh Jain: Thank you for inviting me and great to be on the show. Jeff.
[00:02:28] Jeff Dillon: Well, you have had such a diverse career from physical therapy to Ed
Tech leadership. Tell us what inspired this journey.
[00:02:37] Dipesh Jain: So yes, I've had a variety of roles I've played. If I look back at it, I don't
think it was planned that way. I don't think any careers are planned. When you are a kid, when
you're growing up, you just do what comes to you. And just to give you some context, I did
physical therapy because at that time I had two options. I either engineering or physical therapy.
I didn't want to do engineering so I did physical therapy when I was in third or fourth year. I like, I
don't want to do this. I just went with the flow, I would say. But in the hindsight, I think all those
experiences, me being a physical therapist helped me a lot in my role in relationship
management, if you think about it. And I really like that non linear journey. So it's been a
happenstance, not very carefully planned, but I'm happy that it happened this way and I'm happy
to be in that tech role right now. So.
[00:03:24] Jeff Dillon: Yeah, yeah. Well, tell us about the mission of Magic edtech. What drew
you to that mission and what keeps you excited about the work you're doing?
[00:03:34] Dipesh Jain: I think the mission is digital learning for everyone.
With the advent of digital learning, our goal is to make sure that it touches everyone.
And that's the mission that I'm very proud of. Something that I consider education to be the
biggest gift the world has today. Everybody has the right to education.
So what we're doing here really, really resonates with me because education has changed my
life, has changed your life has changed everybody's life.
And I love what magic is doing to help change people's lives.
[00:04:02] Jeff Dillon: Love that message.
You work with some of the world's leading education providers.
How do you approach building the trust and the long term partnerships in such a competitive
space?
[00:04:16] Dipesh Jain: So you're right, we've been around for 30 plus years now, 35 years to be
precise. This year actually we celebrate our 35th anniversary and I think we had customers
who've been with us for 10 plus years, some almost 15, 20 years. And the only way customers
stay with you that long is if you treat them as partners and not, you know, customers. So we, we
work with our customers as partners. You know, we are the product and technology
development partner. We don't just take the order and execute on it, but we work with them to
see, okay, hey, this is what you want. We think that you could achieve it in a better way. So we
almost work like an extension of their team rather than a partner. So that's one.
I think we really understand their challenges, what do they face in the market. So there is an
empathy that comes with that. So I think that's another one.
And at the end of the day, the results speak for themselves. Customers will stay with us only if
we deliver results year on year. So I think they've seen that and they continue to see that.
So we've been lucky in this education space. The customers are also very, very vision driven.
So that plays a role in all of this.
[00:05:20] Jeff Dillon: Well, how does your team help clients navigate this shift towards ethical
AI and accessible digital learning? What's your take on that?
[00:05:31] Dipesh Jain: So you touched on two topics. Both are very, very dear to me and
important. Accessibility. I'll talk about that first.
So one of the things with digital learning is it makes it accessible to a lot more people. So Magic
firmly believes in making learning accessible.
We work, sit with our clients and help them understand the power of accessibility right at the
beginning of product development.
So I think that really helps. Coming to the second part is ethical AI. I think it is a lot of it is written
about AI. How do you implement AI? But it's not as easy as it seems, especially in educational
institutes. You know, you are dealing with students and teachers and you want to make sure that
it's guardrailed. It is non biased. You know, it may not be a cutting edge, but it has to be like
safe, secure and reliable.
So a lot of times we work with our clients to help them get there, to help them implement AI,
which is guardrail, which is secure and at the same time helps improve the core mission of
learning. And it's not just another parlor trick. So I think we really, really work and make sure that
we help our customers guide through this. Yeah.
[00:06:41] Jeff Dillon: Do you have any specific use cases or success stories in that regard?
[00:06:46] Dipesh Jain: Absolutely. I think we have a couple of good ones. We're doing a lot of AI
implementation, but there are different use cases. One is student facing use case and then
second is internal to an institute. So we're working with one institute or higher ed institute, for
example. They have multiple campuses and they spend a lot of time just figuring out their leases
and their rent and things like that. So we've helped them build a system for their finance
department to figure it out at a click of a button. Like they don't need to go through making sure
that the legal complexities are taken care of. They get the information that they need. So this is
more for an internal use case for a university system.
Now there are student use cases, which we've seen a lot. But one of my favorite implementation
is we have a client who has a lot of video content, and video content is almost unidirectional.
There is a lecture, you listen to it and you go from there. But we've helped build a tool that helps
students interact with these videos and there are a lot of these tools available. But we have
customized this tool for this institute that helps them interact with the videos. In the middle of the
night, they have a question, they can ask the question to the tool and it will give them exact time
in the video where this question is answered so students can refer to that.
So I think these two are my favorite. There are many other implementations, but these two just
helps improve learning and makes processes efficient.
[00:08:06] Jeff Dillon: Yeah, that's a great one. Making video more and more interactive and on
demand when you need it. That's great. Can you tell us about MagicBox? What's unique about
this platform? How is it transforming digital content delivery?
[00:08:20] Dipesh Jain: So MagicBox is a content distribution ecosystem. Basically takes any kind
of content and delivers it across variety of ecosystem infrastructure. So if you have to deliver
content within school or universities, your platform has to match a lot of local compliances,
single sign ons, LTI integrations and things like that. We built all of this in MagicBox. So if you
are a content provider, you can take this platform, white label it, and then use that to distribute
your content across different devices to students and teachers.
So you don't need to build these tools yourself.
As the education ecosystem grows, we have more integrations, we have more compliance is to
take care of. We built all of this in the platform. You can take the platform, white label it and
distribute your content across millions of learners. So I think it's very unique in that regards, but it
solves the problem of building your own versus just white labeling something and sending your
content out.
[00:09:18] Jeff Dillon: Is it like an open source, your version of a CMS or a dxp? Is that kind of
what it is?
[00:09:23] Dipesh Jain: It's not an open source, it's the own, the IP of the platform. But it is similar
to that. Like as you mentioned, it's a combination of a CMS and LLMs where you can store
content and deliver content seamlessly in a white labeled manner.
[00:09:37] Jeff Dillon: Okay, can you tell me a little bit about what does your ideal, the ideal
school that comes to you, what are their problems that you often solve or what are you best at?
What's that common scenario that you're solving for?
[00:09:50] Dipesh Jain: So a lot of schools today are facing a few issues, right? Enrollment is an
issue, engagement is an issue.
Student retention is an issue. And if you think about it, there are various causes of student
retention issues or, or student engagement. Some of them are related to the overall ecosystem
of a student. Today a lot of students are, let's say adult learners. They're working multiple jobs,
they're learning on demand. You know, at that time it is very Important for the technology to
serve them well.
So a lot of time when we work with universities, they have online learning, but students are not
engaging with the online learning because the platforms and the tools that they use are not
designed with this modern student in mind.
The modern student is learning on the go, they're learning at night. Your tools and ecosystem
need to adapt to that. So that's one of the problem. We help them modernize or transform their
tools and learning platforms to cater to the modern student.
And I think that's one of the things that improves engagement and improves motivation for
retention.
There are many other. But this I would say is one of the bigger ones.
[00:10:57] Jeff Dillon: Gotcha. So can you work with an institution's existing tech stack and have
magicbox or work on top of that or with their current systems?
[00:11:07] Dipesh Jain: Yes. So we can work with the current tech stack and we provide services.
MagicBox is a separate platform, but what we do is we work, we understand all the technology
platforms and the content that they have and we can work with that to either, for example, the
content is static PDFs, which is not engaging. We can convert them into interactive courses or
refresh those courses. The platform is, let's say legacy platform and it needs modern ui. So we
could work on that. It needs a mobile component. We can work on that. So yes. So that's the
services that we provide to engineers.
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[00:12:09] Jeff Dillon: Accessibility and DEI are a big part of Magic's DNA. How do you ensure
inclusivity is built into your product development?
[00:12:21] Dipesh Jain: It's a very good question. It's something very close to my heart. So the
way to get inclusivity is just the team that we have is also a diverse team of people. So when we
get in with our client, we understand the product from a very diverse lens.
What we do is we consider accessibility as the cornerstone of. So if you're building any
experiences, it has to meet the needs of all students, irrespective of their abilities.
So we have a team that is focused on accessibility which is certified in accessibility standards.
We work with our customers to help them understand the roadmap. A lot of the accessibility
driven transformation, unfortunately today happens because of DOJ guidelines and mandates.
But we work with our customers to make sure that they don't have to face that so they build
products that are accessible first rather than having to retrofit them to make them accessible.
[00:13:14] Jeff Dillon: How do you balance the innovation with scalability, especially when you're
working with clients in different regions and with different educational systems.
[00:13:26] Dipesh Jain: So one thing that we've learned is that education works very differently in
different markets. So, you know, once size fits all, doesn't like what works in America, doesn't
works in uk, doesn't work in Poland or India. So we need to be very, we need to be mindful of
that. So that's number one when it comes to innovation.
We've seen that higher end and education has been slow to innovate. And there's a reason for
that. You know, you want to make sure that you take students along with you with innovation
because you're serving a large population of students coming from different strata.
So our goal is how do we make sure that innovation feels more natural rather than a substantial
shift in their pattern? Because when you do that, the learning gets disrupted. So innovation in
education has to be incremental rather than a substantial shift. Because in that case you won't
take all the learners along with you. You will take learners who have the resources and means,
but what about others who do not? So it's substantial and it's sequential and it is slow and
gradual innovation with scalability.
[00:14:30] Jeff Dillon: So how are you building AI into your product? Or if, if at all? And how do
you see AI helping education the most right now?
[00:14:39] Dipesh Jain: It's a very good question, Jeff. And if you go to any conferences these
days, it's like AI, AI everywhere there's so much noise, it is difficult to differentiate.
The way we have taken the approach is we have to first very deeply understand this journey of a
student and a teacher or an administrator. What is their day to day, what are their life goals?
And then trace it backward. What are the friction points for them to achieve those goals? Right.
And then how do we build AI that helps them overcome those friction points. So I'll give you one
example.
One of the main reasons why a lot of students drop out is because they don't get right
information at the right time.
So for example, I am a single, let's say I'm a single mother or a single father. I put my son, my
kids to sleep. I have like one hour window where I need to do my coursework.
If I don't get support during that one hour, it's very highly likely that I'm going to get demotivated.
So how do I build a tool or a system that can give me that support at the time that I need it. And
that's for me is a win that you can achieve with AI rather than trying to build tools that are cool to
show but not very substantial to implement. So I would say that as a look at the journey, look at
the friction points and take it backwards and build for that. I think that's how we approach any AI
implementation.
[00:15:57] Jeff Dillon: Yeah, I love that example. It's a great one.
Can you share a story or example where your team helped a client overcome a major digital
transformation hurdle?
[00:16:10] Dipesh Jain: Yeah, in fact we're doing it right now.
So a lot of universities are, right now they have title to deadline in April 1, which is the DOJ title
to deadline and which is for accessibility.
So a lot of universities have, or even institutes or publishers have content that is not accessible
or platforms are not accessible and they need to make them accessible in a quick period of time.
That's a major portion of work.
So what we are doing is we are helping them achieve those goals by using a mix of automation
and manual work where we are looking at their products and platform and quickly auditing them
and then remediating those. It's I think a big lift for a lot of them because they've never thought
about accessibility in the first place. So now if you look at all the PDF that they've created and to
make them accessible, to make them available. So that's, I think one example.
Another example is developing these AI tools that we spoke about. Like you know, a lot of times
you work with the internal teams and they are slow moving. So how do we make sure that we
work along with them to build these kind of tools that can be implemented at scale?
So I think those are the two examples that come to my mind.
[00:17:23] Jeff Dillon: I love those examples.
With your leadership across sales and marketing, how do you align these functions to support
your revenue growth?
[00:17:35] Dipesh Jain: I have very clear principle when it comes to any go to market team. I think
the customer is the primary thing. So you have to understand, each team has to understand the
customer deeply. If you understand customers, their role, their motivation, their friction points
and then you align with that.
The internal alignment between these groups become very, very easy. If you don't understand
your customer Persona really well. And when I say really well, I don't mean that just their surface
level characteristics, but things like what do they go to bed at night with an issue, what is that
issue? What do they talk to their partner about? What are the frustrations that they have in their
day to day? If I think if the marketing and sales teams align with that, it becomes very easy to
then align within internally because we are then solving for that common pain point.
That's the approach that I've always taken. Just understand a customer deeply, spend as much
time as possible, interview as many people as possible, but get that deep understanding of a
customer. Customer feel better.
[00:18:30] Jeff Dillon: Yeah. Just within the US Market, can you talking about understanding the
customer, can you talk about the differences between the different types of universities and then
within the universities, the types of Personas or job titles you, you work with, for example, Ivy
Leagues versus the R1s and the R2s and the private not for profits all the way down to
community colleges.
Is there more that you work with or you see different challenges with in different areas in the
U.S. yeah.
[00:19:01] Dipesh Jain: So there are different ways you can bifurcate the university system. Right.
The one that I typically like to look at is what kind of audience is this serving? Is this serving a
traditional student out of high school getting into, Is it serving an adult population which is, you
know, this is not their they have done job, they're coming back to study.
That's one big difference. Because the user journey for both of them is going to be very, very
different. And then taking that lens and then seeing what makes sense for. Because if you're
working with a traditional student, chances are they are digitally savvy. If you're working with
adult population, even if they are digitally savvy, they have other challenges. A lot of times they
are the first generation. So I think that is one of the key parameters that we look at.
The other one is whether it's a private university versus a publicly funded and in that what kind of
audience that it serve, does it serve more of wealthy students versus students with not a lot of
resources? So that also the way they use technology and content is very different. So I think
these are the different lenses. We take the audience we serve. All these institutes are. On the
content side are provost and beans and academic officers. And on the technology side, it will be
a CIO or a CTO to help them build black.
[00:20:14] Jeff Dillon: That makes sense.
How has your previous experience at Tally Solutions and other companies shaped your
leadership style today?
[00:20:24] Dipesh Jain: I credit a lot of my current role to my experience as a physical therapist.
Actually, as a physical therapist, you're building relations with your patients. These are patients
who are in pain. They don't want to do exercise. But you work with them to make them
understand why exercise is important for them. So you build a lot of rapport and patience and
relationship. So I think a lot of what I do comes from there. At Tally, I was in channel sales, so I
was working with partners. So, you know, my goals were dependent on how they performed.
So I was not responsible for what they were doing, but what they did affected my growth.
So I learned a different style of working with people. And I think both of those have been very
helpful for my current growth.
[00:21:07] Jeff Dillon: Right. We talked a little bit about AI.
What role do you think emerging technologies like AI and analytics play in the future of digital
learning from your perspective?
[00:21:20] Dipesh Jain: There are different rules, but I think the two main things that come to my
mind, there are two ways AI is going to change or is changing learning completely.
One I touched upon a little earlier, it makes learning bi directional.
So today what happens is one of the drawbacks of digital learning. It's very unidirectional. You
consume, you consume, you consume. But when you have to talk, you don't have anybody to go
to. Right. And that's the limitation of physical education. When you are in classroom, you can
talk to your teacher. But today with AI, any piece of learning can become bi directional. If you're
reading a PDF, ask a question, get the answer. If you're watching a video, ask a question, get an
answer. I think that's a big, big shift and people don't realize how important that is. That's one.
The second is today you can personalize learning at scale, which was not possible earlier in a
classroom of 30 students or 80 students, 100 students, each learner is different from other
learner.
But back in the days, it was so difficult to differentiate that learning. Today, with these tools, you
can actually differentiate personalized learning for each learner so that they achieve the best
outcome for them.
I think these are the two main thing apart from everything else. I think core principles, the bi
directional and personalizing learning at scale is changing education forever.
[00:22:34] Jeff Dillon: Yeah, it's pretty insightful. You have a global footprint. Magic EdTech is
international.
I've had a few other companies that have been global, but not too many. How do you tailor
strategies for international markets but stay true to your brand?
[00:22:51] Dipesh Jain: Yeah, it definitely requires a lot of. So because we are global, we have
people who are with different backgrounds, people born in different countries, different
geographies. We kind of empathize with learning in all these markets. So I think the key is again
coming back to the thing in understanding what is the Persona of that market, who are the key
audience, what are some of the strengths and weaknesses in that market, and then tailoring our
strategy for that.
So for Example if you go to an emerging economy the digital infrastructure might not be that
great. For example, India. Right. A lot of learning happens on phones because you know, phone
Internet is cheap, people are on the go. So how do you take the learning technology and content
and adapt it to phones? Because very important in that market versus if you go in some areas
Internet is not existent. So how do you give a group good offline experience becomes important
in some markets it's very regulated, government regulated policies. So how do you tailor your
experiences for that?
So I think understanding the users in that market and then the systems and then taking it from
there and being very mindful about this, like not taking what works in the US and just adapting it
doesn't work. You have to localize it for each geography.
[00:24:05] Jeff Dillon: Yeah, makes sense. Well, looking ahead, what excites you most about the
future of learning and magic Edtech's role in shaping it?
[00:24:15] Dipesh Jain: I think the thing that really excites me is how it excites me. It also gives
me a little bit of fear, I'll tell you. So the thing that excites me is how anybody can learn anything
using AI. So if you today decide I want to change my career and become somebody else, you
can work with AI and create a complete roadmap for you, implement those skills and go about it.
I think I find it very, very powerful. I have a six year old, Jeff, his favorite movie is Zootopia and I
don't know if you've seen Zootopia. There's a there in Zootopia anybody can be anything. I think
today in our world anybody can be anything. Yeah, I think that's how I look at it. What scares me
about that a little bit is the gap of equity. Like you know, will people who are wealthier have
access to better AI tools versus somebody who's not and will that lead create another gap like
we see digital divide and that worries me a lot that how do you make sure that people that it
reaches to all the levels of society and I hope that we work towards that because otherwise it's
going to create another gap that we see anyways with digital.
[00:25:23] Jeff Dillon: So yeah, I thought the same thing about the equity gap. You know when it
first came out I thought, you know, any student now should be able to create at least C level
work. And now it's even higher I think. And so they, they should be able to. Maybe it'll help with
their degrees. But access to the tools is a whole nother story. Right. So. Well Depesh, this has
really been great to talk to you. I'm going to put links to your your company's website and your
LinkedIn in the show notes. Thank you for being on the show. It was really insightful.
[00:25:54] Dipesh Jain: Thank you, Jeff. Thank you for your questions and it was great talking to
you. Thank you for having me.
[00:25:58] Jeff Dillon: All right. Bye.
[00:25:58] Dipesh Jain: Bye.
[00:26:00] Jeff Dillon: As we wrap up this episode, remember EdTech Connect is your trusted
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