This blog is written by Vinay Poulose, Manager, Monitoring and Evaluation, The Apprentice Project
At The Apprentice Project (TAP), our mission is to empower underserved children in India by helping them develop essential 21st-century skills. We accomplish this through our AI and ML-driven WhatsApp chatbot, TAP Buddy, which delivers personalized learning experiences directly to students. Since our inception in 2016, we have expanded our reach to 13 states and union territories, impacting more than 34,000 students across 240 schools in 2023-24 alone. Our dedicated and growing team of over 70 works tirelessly to ensure that quality education reaches the children who need it most, in partnership with organizations like Sunbird Trust and Pardada Pardadi Educational Society as well as government schools in states like Punjab and Maharashtra.
TAP Buddy offers students a choice of courses in areas such as coding, science, financial literacy, visual arts, and performing arts, providing them with a foundation of skills needed to thrive in today’s world. The chatbot not only delivers content but also collects data throughout the learning process. This data is critical to continuously improving student engagement and evaluating the success of our program.
However, unlike traditional education models, TAP operates with minimal direct contact with students and thus, relies more on the chatbot driven interactions for feedback. As a technology-driven initiative, our ability to analyze and interpret vast amounts of data is essential to ensuring that students are benefiting from the program. Given the scale at which we operate, this data presents both an opportunity and a challenge. With tens of thousands of students engaging with TAP Buddy across the country, the volume of data generated is immense. Analyzing this data and distilling actionable insights becomes crucial for refining the program and delivering an impactful learning experience.
Before adopting Dalgo as our data management solution, we struggled with manual processes that made it difficult to keep up with real-time data. Our data was collected through a CRM tool built on Frappe, with interactions tracked via Glific. All this information was consolidated in Google Sheets, where metrics were manually calculated, and visualizations were largely created in-house. While we occasionally used Looker Studio, accessing up-to-date data was always a challenge, and the entire process was time-consuming and prone to errors.
Dalgo offered us a way to transform how we handle data. We needed to eliminate manual data cleanups, enable real-time data access with minimal human intervention, and consolidate all our data visualizations into a single, easy-to-access dashboard. Dalgo has more than delivered on these requirements. It now consolidates and transforms all our incoming data, feeding it into Looker Studio, where comprehensive reports are created. The automation that Dalgo provides ensures our data is always up-to-date, saving the team significant time and effort that can be redirected towards improving student outcomes.
Looking ahead, we plan to build upon our data capabilities by incorporating additional key performance indicators (KPIs) into our dashboard. This will offer even deeper insights into how our program is performing across different regions and student demographics. Moreover, we aim to make data analysis more accessible to our non-technical teams, enabling them to transform and analyze data without needing SQL expertise. Analyzing qualitative feedback from students will also be a major focus, as it will provide invaluable insights for improving the learning experience TAP Buddy offers.
With Dalgo powering our data operations and TAP Buddy driving personalized learning, TAP is well-equipped to continue scaling its impact across India. As we grow, data will remain at the heart of our strategy, helping us refine our approach and ensure we are effectively empowering the next generation of leaders. By leveraging technology and insights, we’re not only reaching more students but also ensuring that each interaction contributes to meaningful, long-term change.
