Edtech Zeeko partners with Indian company for ‘Magical Leaders’ programme

23 Mar 2023

Left to right: Wendy D'Souza, Brendan Ward, Roderic O'Gorman TD, Ross Curran, and Swati Malhotra, with (seated) Joe Kenny and Dipesh Sakariya. Image: Enterprise Ireland

Zeeko CEO Joe Kenny says the partnership will offer an interactive learning experience to enable students across India ‘to reach their full potential’.

The NovaUCD-based Irish company Zeeko has partnered with Next Education, a SaaS education solutions provider based in India.

Founded in 2013, Zeeko provides online internet safety and entrepreneurship skills training to primary and secondary school pupils across Ireland.

The edtech collaboration, which was facilitated by Enterprise Ireland, will offer a Magical Leaders peer-led entrepreneurship programme to schools in India.

Educators who participate in the programme will gain access to Next Education’s SaaS platform to deliver engaging and interactive digital learning experiences to their students.

“We are very excited to be working with Next Education,” said Zeeko CEO and co-founder Joe Kenny.

“The programme has been developed by educational specialists and teachers, and is aligned to the new education policy in India,” explained Kenny.

“Our innovative digital learning experience helps in teaching and nurturing 21st-century skills in an engaging and interactive way, to enable students to reach their full potential.”

Announcing the partnership on a recent trip to India, Minister for Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth, Roderic O’Gorman, TD, talked about the important relationship between Ireland and India.

“India has always been an important partner for Ireland, whether it be in terms of promoting quality education, cultural integrity or fostering entrepreneurial ventures,” said O’Gorman.

“The partnership between Ireland’s Zeeko and India’s Next Education is very important for us and marks another significant way that edtech has contributed to the cultural exchange between the two countries.”

VP of sales for Next Education, Dipesh Sakaria looks forward to working with Zeeko, saying that the collaboration will “open up immense opportunities for educators to deliver new age skills to their students in a fun and interactive way”.

The Indian government has increasingly promoted digital education in recent years. Many educators speak of the benefits of online learning tools for increasing engagement, improving digital literacy and democratising educational access.

In a recent article, the CEO of the online and blended learning institution Unicaf, Dr Nicos Nicolau, discussed the move to online learning, precipitated by Covid-19, as creating greater opportunities for collaboration and accessibility in education.

Senior VP of education and edtech at Enterprise Ireland, Wendy D’Souza, described the Zeeko-Next Education offering as “a powerful step in the edtech space” that will instil “values of leadership and digital responsibility among educators and students in India”.

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Rebecca Graham is production editor at Silicon Republic

editorial@siliconrepublic.com