DIDAC INDIA at BIEC (2023)Archived

October 18, 2023Personal

An education exhibition in Bengaluru, a badge that said Founder, and a look at what the offline education sector was actually building.

C Sarath Babu's writing on DIDAC INDIA 2023. Standing at the DIDAC INDIA letters at BIEC, Bengaluru

DIDAC INDIA has been running for over a decade, moving between Delhi, Bengaluru and elsewhere. It is where the education sector puts its hardware on a floor and lets you touch it.

We had just launched Gain and Shine at college. We were building for online learning, and we knew almost nothing about the physical side of the same industry. So we registered.

C Sarath Babu's writing on DIDAC INDIA 2023. His visitor badge reading C Sarath Babu, Founder, Gain and Shine — Founder, Gain and Shine. 13th edition, 17 to 19 October 2023.

Getting there

This time I planned it properly.

Madanapalli to Bengaluru, then to KR Market, which was as far as my knowledge of the city went. BIEC was somewhere past that and I had no idea where.

I knew exactly one person in Bengaluru, and I had met him five months earlier at Google I/O Extended, on the night I had no way home. So I called Hemant again.

C Sarath Babu's writing on DIDAC INDIA 2023. The IMTMA exhibition and conference complex arch at BIEC, Bengaluru — BIEC.

The floor

C Sarath Babu's writing on DIDAC INDIA 2023. Sarath and Pavan on the balcony above the exhibition floor — With Pavan, above the floor.

Companies from Japan, Korea, several African countries, all with something physical to show.

The Japanese stall had an instrument for teaching music, built so a learner could work through guitar technique with feedback. I tried a guitar for the first time in my life on that stand.

A Korean company was selling pens and paper, which sounds like nothing until you see it. You write on real paper with a real pen, and the writing appears on a screen as a document. Not a tablet pretending to be paper. Actual paper, and the digital copy comes along for free.

Then VR, which in 2023 was still new enough that everybody had a headset out. I put one on and walked through a classroom, watched an organism move around me. First time in my life, and it landed.

C Sarath Babu's writing on DIDAC INDIA 2023. Sarath, Pavan and Hemant with their friend at the exhibition — Four of us.

Why we actually went

There was one thing in particular I wanted to see.

Some of these companies were presenting on virtual screens, standing in front of a display and controlling it with their hands while they talked. No slides, no clicking. It looks like the future and it is very good at holding a room.

If we were going to record proper teaching material, that is the setup we wanted. Not a screen recording with a voice over it.

We priced it out and it was not feasible for where we were.

So we noted it as something to buy later and moved on. That is a useful outcome too. You can only decide something is out of reach after you have stood in front of it.

Home

We wrapped up that evening and took a government bus straight from Bengaluru to Madanapalli.

No railway platform this time. No 4 AM bus. I had checked the route before I left.

The whole point of going was that we only knew the online half of education. A day on that floor showed the other half, the one with hardware, distributors, and a physical market behind it. We came home knowing what the sector actually looks like when it is not a website.