Technology doesn’t replace educators—it augments their potential: Apoorav Nischal

India's NEP 2020 emphasizes the importance of leveraging technology for personalized learning. How is PowerSchool using its solutions, including PowerBuddy and other AI tools, to support the development of effective learning experiences for students in India?

India’s National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 places strong emphasis on integrating technology to facilitate personalized and inclusive learning pathways for every student. In alignment with this progressive vision, PowerSchool is actively supporting Indian schools through its advanced digital solutions, including its AI-powered assistant, PowerBuddy.

With a presence in over 1,000 schools across India, PowerSchool is already playing a significant role in shaping the future of education by empowering institutions with tools that make teaching and learning more effective, personalized, and data-driven.

PowerSchool’s comprehensive technology ecosystem is redefining how students learn, how teachers teach, and how institutions manage academic outcomes. From enabling adaptive tutoring and smart content delivery to streamlining administrative decision-making, PowerSchool is leveraging artificial intelligence to make learning more contextual, accessible, and student-centric.

At the heart of this transformation is PowerBuddy—an AI assistant designed specifically for the K–12 ecosystem. Built using Microsoft’s Azure OpenAI Services, PowerBuddy serves teachers, students, parents, and administrators. It enhances learning accessibility, delivers personalized insights, boosts engagement, and supports key stakeholders across the educational landscape.

Beyond PowerBuddy, PowerSchool’s broader AI ecosystem is purposefully designed to “bring AI to data” through a secure and scalable platform. This integrated approach supports education at every level—from the system level to each individual learner. PowerBuddy’s impact goes beyond convenience and efficiency: by democratizing access to data, it empowers users to make informed decisions that drive improved student outcomes.

Developed with safety, equity, and educational integrity at its core, PowerBuddy functions as a personalized tutor, lesson planner, and data guide for various users across the education community. Its intelligent capabilities include contextual assistance, multimodal accessibility, real-time feedback, and data-driven recommendations—all of which contribute to a seamless, adaptive learning experience.

PowerSchool’s solutions embody the core principles of NEP 2020: equity, personalization, and digital inclusion. As India moves forward with its education reforms, PowerSchool stands as a key enabler—bridging gaps, improving outcomes, and preparing students for a future-ready world.

With ~650 R&D professionals in India supporting PowerSchool’s global product, what mechanisms are in place to ensure that solutions built for North America are empathetically re-engineered for India? Have you had to reverse-adapt India-specific features back into global offerings?

At PowerSchool, our India-based R&D team—based out of our Centre of Excellence in Bangalore comprises over 650 professionals—plays a critical role in not only supporting global product development but also ensuring that our solutions are thoughtfully localized to meet the distinct needs of Indian schools. While many of our core platforms were initially built for the North American education system, we have robust mechanisms in place to re-engineer, customize, and adapt these offerings for India’s diverse educational ecosystem.

A cornerstone of our localization strategy is our deep engagement with the Indian education community. We regularly participate in education conferences, regional events, and leadership roundtables, allowing us to interact directly with school leaders, administrators, and educators. These touchpoints help us stay grounded in the real-world challenges and aspirations of Indian schools.

Participating in events like FICCI ARISE, a pan-India gathering of principals and educators, enables us to stay attuned to emerging trends in the industry. These interactions further inform our regional strategies and deepen our understanding of the specific challenges faced by schools across different geographies.

Moreover, our Customer Success regularly surveys and meets with partner schools to hear directly about their priorities, challenges, and experiences, which helps us say aligned with their evolving needs. We use what we learn to shape our products to make sure they stay relevant, thoughtful, and well-suited to the needs of schools in India.

Further, we strategically acquired a Chennai-based ERP company, which has now been fully integrated into PowerSchool’s global platform. This has enabled us to combine our world-class Learning Management System (LMS) and AI capabilities with a locally-optimized ERP, creating a comprehensive, one-stop solution that addresses both the academic and administrative needs of Indian institutions.

With innovations like PowerBuddy—our AI-powered assistant—and a technology ecosystem spanning LMS, ERP, data analytics, behaviour support, and AI, we are not just addressing today’s challenges—we are empowering schools to shape the future of learning. Our solutions are built to be scalable, sustainable, and inclusive—bringing global innovation together with deep local insight.

Interestingly, some India-specific features—such as multilingual support, mobile-first access, and cost-effective deployment models—have proven so effective that we are now reverse-adapting them into our global offerings, further reinforcing India’s role as a vital innovation hub within our organization.In a country as vibrant and varied as India, we are proud to be delivering world-class EdTech that’s thoughtfully designed for Indian schools, while also influencing the future of global education.

You’ve committed to embedding fairness, trust, and transparency at every layer of AI design—especially concerning student data privacy and bias. Can you walk us through a real-world scenario where you had to dial back or redesign an AI feature to maintain ethical standards?

Our commitment to fairness, trust, and transparency in AI design is not just a guiding principle. It’s a daily practice. A recent example that illustrates this is our work on PowerBuddy, our AI-powered assistant. During development, we identified potential risks around bias and inappropriate content generation. To address this, we implemented a robust content filtering model specifically designed by our Data Science team. This model actively screens and filters outputs to ensure they are appropriate and align with educational standards and community values.

Developed using Microsoft’s Azure OpenAI Services, PowerBuddy is designed to be safe, secure, and deeply integrated across PowerSchool’s suite of solutions. We’ve made deliberate architectural choices to protect student data privacy.

We also use extensive prompt engineering and guardrails to prevent bias from entering the system. In one instance, we dialed back a feature that attempted to auto-summarize student performance narratives. While technically impressive, we found that it could unintentionally reinforce biased language patterns. Rather than risk misrepresentation, we redesigned the feature to require educator review and input before any summaries are finalize

Given PowerSchool's global experience in education technology, what lessons can be applied from your existing partnerships and implementations in other countries to drive scalable impact in India's K-12 segment, and how do you plan to leverage your expertise to address the unique challenges and opportunities in the Indian education landscape?

With a presence in over 90 countries and partnerships with 18k+ educational institutions globally, PowerSchool has gained deep insights into diverse education systems. This experience has been instrumental in helping us support countries like India, where we are committed to enabling schools to deliver meaningful educational outcomes through thoughtfully customized solutions.

One of the most valuable lessons we’ve learned through our global work is that impact comes not from a one-size-fits-all model, but from deeply understanding the specific needs of each market and tailoring our approach accordingly. In India, this means aligning our offerings with the unique needs of schools—whether it’s integrating reducing personalised learning, teacher workload, supporting mobile-first access, or ensuring compatibility with NEP 2020’s progressive goals for inclusive and personalized education.

We bring proven frameworks from other markets—such as AI-driven engagement tools, predictive analytics for early intervention, and streamlined administrative workflows—and customize them to the Indian context. These approaches, which have improved educator effectiveness and student outcomes in regions like North America and the Middle East, are now helping Indian schools enhance both academic delivery and operational efficiency.

Our ability to drive these outcomes at scale is strengthened by our India-based R&D team of 650+ professionals, our strategic acquisition of a Chennai-based ERP company, and a strong presence in over 1,000 Indian schools. This allows us to seamlessly blend global innovation with local expertise, delivering a unified platform that combines AI, LMS, ERP, analytics, and behaviour tools into one powerful, integrated solution for both academic and administrative needs.

In a country as vibrant and future-focused as India, we are proud to be more than just a technology provider—we are a partner in transformation. By leveraging our global experience and applying it through deep market understanding and purposeful customization, we are helping Indian schools accelerate their journey toward future-ready learning.

PowerSchool emphasizes hybrid training—blending hands-on workshops with digital enablement via your Bangalore Centre of Excellence. Could you share an example where this model significantly altered adoption behaviour in a school or region, and what led you to double down on that model for future roll outs?

At PowerSchool, we’ve come to understand that driving true impact in education goes far beyond simply delivering software—it’s about empowering educators to confidently and meaningfully use technology in their everyday teaching and decision-making. This realization has shaped our approach in India, where adoption is anchored in enablement, not just implementation.

Over the years, we’ve seen that technology adoption is most successful when educators feel supported, trained, and involved in the process. That’s why we’ve invested in a robust hybrid training model, led by our dedicated Implementation team and supported by our Centre of Excellence in Bangalore. This model blends in-person workshops with ongoing digital learning sessions, offering schools a high-touch, hands-on experience that evolves with their comfort and proficiency.

A great example of this approach transforming adoption behaviour was with a group of schools in South India, where initial usage of our LMS and ERP platform was limited. Rather than treat the issue as a technical barrier, we re-engaged the educators through a structured training cadence—combining on-site enablement with targeted virtual follow-ups tailored to their roles and routines. Over a few months, we saw a significant uptick in usage, especially among teachers who began using the platform not just for compliance, but to enhance student engagement, reduce administrative burden, and make informed instructional decisions based on real-time data.

What’s unique about our approach is that it’s not a one-time session, but a multi-touch training framework that includes:

• Foundational onboarding through onsite sessions
• Role-specific digital modules and tutorials
• Follow-up workshops addressing real classroom scenarios
• Regular check-ins from our Customer Success team to track progress, troubleshoot challenges, and ensure long-term value

We also recognize that successful adoption must extend beyond the educator. Our model incorporates leadership involvement, community engagement, and increasingly, AI-driven tools like PowerBuddy, which assist teachers and school leaders in real time. Our belief is clear: technology doesn’t replace educators—it augments their potential.

As a result, this hybrid model is now the standard across most of our 1,000+ partner schools in India. It’s also a model we’re continuing to invest in, because it’s proven to be scalable, impactful, and aligned with the way educators naturally learn and grow—through guidance, collaboration, and consistent support.

In India’s dynamic educational landscape, we’re proud to be enabling a future where training is not a checkbox, but a catalyst for deeper digital transformation in schools.