Recently Anna University in Coimbatore set a new benchmark by implementing new-age examination management suite to manage its examination processes. The novel software suite, "IntelliExams", developed by Bangalore headquartered Mindlogicx, a player in the knowledge management and delivery domain, handles the complete life cycle of the University's high-stake examinations today. Believes Dr. R Radhakrishnan, Vice-Chancellor of Anna University, "This would herald a new digital trend that showcases the power of IT in education space, virtually in a transparent, efficient and fool-proof manner."

Indeed there is a silent revolution under way. Mindlogicx, a technology development company targeting higher education segment situated at a lush green and sprawling campus in Bangalore is creating ripples across the segment. When Suresh Elangovan founded Mindlogicx in 2002, he probably had never thought of his business will be path-breaking innovation in the knowledge space. Elangovan, Founder and CEO of Mindlogicx, who was an successful IT consultant before, who happens to be an diehard admirer of Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam, plunged into entrepreneurship, inspired by Kalam's thoughts with a vision of delivering technology to a common man and to build a company in knowledge domain. Elangovan, who is also an adorer of Infosys founder N R Narayana Murthy, is now geared up to take his company to the next level.

Multiple Business Domains
Today, the new generation software product development and services company is providing solutions and services in domains such as virtual education framework, integrated examination management and digital valuation system, online knowledge management and skills assessment, enterprise content management under the broader framework of knowledge process outsourcing (KPO). All these solutions and services in the knowledge domain are powered by VEDAS (Virtual Education Delivery and Assessment System), the patent pending Business Intelligence technology platform. "We also handle large turn key projects in the above areas of operations for universities, corporate and business enterprises globally," says Elangovan.

Consider IntelliExams for instance. "This addresses the pain points of any university by ensuring an efficient and fool proof conduct of their examinations," claims Elangovan. Interestingly, the software suite handles the complete life cycle of universities’ examinations, starting from online registration of candidates, online scheduling of examinations, fee management, internal mark uploading, online hall ticket generation, distributed authoring of question papers, secured question paper delivery, multiple digital evaluation, tracking of students’ performance analysis to publishing of results and printing of mark sheets and certificates. "The work flow system integrated in the system provides instant access to the university authorities for managing the process in a scientific manner," explicates Elangovan.

Grippingly, implementation of this scalable and customizable software can prevent many examination malpractices like leakage of question papers, issues pertaining to fake mark sheets and degree certificates. Imagine, question papers pushed to the examination centers in encrypted format, which will be decrypted by an authorized person in the center and printed and distributed just few hours before exams! Also, using its web based authoring tool by which the question papers can be set by subject experts located in different parts of the world, thus giving the client the convenience of having best set of question papers in a shortest possible time.

IntelliCAS, a Certificate authentication system can be boon for educational institutions. Certificates issued to the candidates by a university will be authenticated through a Global Access Code (GAC). A prospective employer can ascertain the credentials of the certificates from any part of the world using this GAC. "These authentication codes can be confirmed via standard browser or mobile browser," says Elangovan.

Business model is quiet simple. Other than license fee for the product, the company offers this product both online and offline variants under Managed Application service (MAS) by managing the whole life cycle of the process, leaving only the academic administration to the client. Already Mindlogicx has three customers for this software suite.

Not only universities, even corporates face challenges while delivering the requisite training or education to their employees. Mindlogicx's Mindspace software suite, a virtual university solution is capable handling the entire life cycle of the virtual learning process right from admission to awarding degree. Intriguingly, says Elangovan, "The system includes online registration, counseling, payment of fees, content delivery, generation of hall tickets, online and offline examination management systems, online generation of e-transcripts and many more facilities." This whole intelligent system has in built options for performance analysis, forecasting using learning path and Dashboard techniques.

Not SIM cards, Educards!
According to an estimate, only 30 percent of the school children who pass out are able to get into professional colleges due to lack of training resources available to prepare themselves for the competitive examinations. About 25 percent of the students who pass out of the colleges, are employable or industry-ready. "Knowledge Network"(K.net) is such an initiative by Mindlogicx to address this issue.

Through its K.Net, Mindlogicx aims to convert the human population into human potential and make them become knowledgeable in the areas of their expertise. It's a fact that even today there is a dearth of high quality talents. There are very few finishing schools that offer various reskilling and upskilling programmes for the fresh students just out of the college to make them "Job ready". Mindlogicx saw an opportunity here to start an online finishing school, offering self-assessment services to the students. The solution is powered by VEDAS platform and the delivery is enabled through Educards, which are like prepaid SIM/recharge vouchers. These "Educards contain 16 digit Knowledge access code, that directly links the user to the designated programme for which Educard has been bought. The cards are sold through efficient distribution channel and region specific strategic partners in each state,"informs Elangovan.

The online finishing school is offered through a specially designed portal, www.gradfirst.com and also has an integrated job portal www.jobready4u.com exclusively developed for the students of online finishing schools to provide placement assistance.

Golden Triangle Approach
Obviously, the question arises in mind is how Mindlogicx can single handedly manage all these? However the delivery model in the case of K.Net is driven by an approach, which Mindlogicx calls as "Golden Triangle" in which Mindlogicx stays at the bottom of the triangle as Technology Partner, while the Knowledge Partner represents one side of the triangle and the Business partner represents the other side of the triangle. The Knowledge partner is responsible for the knowledge that will be processed by VEDAS technology platform and the Business partner is responsible for taking the knowledge to the end users across the country through patent pending Educards.

As technology partner Mindlogicx handles the services that include hardware, software, network connectivity, bandwidth management, backup, recovery, disaster management and IT Security under the broader framework of Managed Application Service (MAS). The Knowledge Partners of Mindlogicx' K.Net are the institutions, corporate and other organizations that provide the knowledge content for various programs offered through K.Net. The Business Partners include Strategic partners and Retail Partners, who sell the products across the country with their own network of distribution channel.

"We apply constant effort to innovate. Quest for innovation is the rationale for our success," believes Elangovan. Going forward, the company is looking for an inorganic growth in the next two to three years and would like to position itself as a market leader in knowledge management domain. "We are committed to work on this vision with the technology as the enabler and will continue to play a key role to propel the national economy through a knowledge based eco system," signs off Elangovan.