SwiftPAL from ConveGenius.AI in India has today been named in the Top 25 shortlist for the second annual Global EdTech Prize in the Majors category. Founded in 2025 by T4 Education, with the support of Owl Ventures and Digital Promise, the Global EdTech Prize recognises those trailblazing solutions that are driving change and grappling with the most crucial challenges in today’s classrooms.
SwiftPAL earns a place in the Global EdTech Prize 2026 top 25 shortlist, spotlighting its mission to close learning gaps at scale across India
Judged by educators themselves, the prize provides a vital platform to help companies and organisations scale their products, tools, or services and their impact worldwide. It celebrates EdTechs that are making a real difference to the next generation and champions innovative tech solutions that actually work for the people who matter most – educators, their students, and their communities.
The prize is awarded in three categories: Majors, Start-ups, and Non-profits, with winners announced live at the World Schools Summit in London on January 17, 2027.
Vikas Pota, Founder of T4 Education and the Global EdTech Prize, said, “I want to congratulate SwiftPAL from ConveGenius.AI in India on being named in the Top 25 shortlists for this, the second Global EdTech Prize.
Technology in the classroom holds the enormous potential to close learning gaps and fully equip today’s young people for the rapidly emerging workplace of tomorrow. But we can only harness technology effectively when it is made to work for educators to tackle the challenges they face every day.
Judged by educators themselves, the Global EdTech Prize exists to bridge the gap between technology and teachers and give a global platform to the solutions that are making a real impact in classrooms so that impact can be scaled worldwide.”
Shashank Pandey, Co-Founder, ConveGenius.AI said, Over the last decade, we have learned that learning outcomes at scale improve when policy, budgets, programmes, technology, and people work in harmony. Technology and AI can be powerful accelerators when aligned with national priorities and implemented well.
Independent third-party research shows that students using ConveGenius’ PAL platform learn 2.3 times faster, helping bridge years of accumulated learning gaps.
Being named a global finalist for the Global EdTech Prize 2026 is a tremendous honour. It validates a decade of conviction, execution, and partnership with state governments to create a level playing field for every child.
About SwiftPAL by ConveGenius
SwiftPAL is ConveGenius’s personalised adaptive learning platform, built for learners of Bharat to support them with their journey towards their grade-level outcomes. SwiftPAL starts the journey with each learner at their present-day level, moving with them at their pace.
We are all aware that ASER 2024 found that only 23.4% of Std III children in government schools can read a Std II-level text, even though 98% of children that age are enrolled in school. Globally, the World Bank and UNESCO describe this as “learning poverty”, estimating that 70% of 10-year-olds in low- and middle-income countries cannot read and understand a simple text. This is the specific gap SwiftPAL has been built to close: the gap between being enrolled in school and actually learning at grade level.
SwiftPAL works by first diagnosing what a learner actually knows, rather than what their textbook assumes they should know by now, using adaptive assessments that identify missed concepts and gaps from previous grades. Based on this diagnosis, it builds an individual learning path unique to each learner instead of assigning the same grade-level content to everyone. A learner who is lacking in understanding and application of a particular concept is given ample guided practice followed by opportunities to demonstrate their gained mastery. Students work through videos, practice questions, hints and retries on the devices inside school ICT labs, dedicating two class periods a week to catching up with their grade-level concepts via SwiftPal. This is how SwiftPAL supports learners demonstrating measurable learning gains and catching up with their grade-level concepts.
An independent randomised controlled trial by the University of Chicago’s Development Innovation Lab, led by Nobel laureate Dr Michael Kremer, tracked SwiftPAL across 120 schools in all 26 districts of Andhra Pradesh over 17 months. The study validated that students using SwiftPAL learned 2.3 times faster than expected, clocking in close to two additional years of learning.
In Uttar Pradesh, under India’s first outcomes-based financing model in public education, students using SwiftPAL outperformed peers by 16 to 54 percentage points across subjects, evaluated independently across 280 schools, covering 72,000 students.
In Rajasthan, the programme has scaled from a 60-school pilot to more than 3,700 schools on government mandate.
SwiftPAL now reaches over 4 million students across 15,000+ schools, in 22 Indian states and 145 districts, at a cost of USD 10–35 per student per year. The programme has been recognised with the CIPS Innovation Award 2025, named a Government of India GeM Top Seller in the Startup Category, and awarded Best Personalised and Adaptive Learning Solution at the 16th World Education Summit.
About T4 Education
We believe every child, everywhere, deserves a good education. We are building the world’s largest community of teachers and schools to achieve this. Together. Our digital media platform provides opportunities for educators to network, collaborate, share good practices, and support each other’s efforts to improve learning and school culture. We work to amplify teachers’ voices because the world we want to see will only be built by listening to those at the heart of education.
What’s Next?
The Global EdTech Prize is awarded annually in three categories: Majors, Start-ups, and Non-Profits, recognising outstanding EdTech products, tools, or services based on rigorous criteria.
The top 10 finalists for each of the three categories will be announced in September, with finalists invited to the World Schools Summit, where they will showcase their work before an expert panel comprising leading figures in the technology and education sectors, including investors and policymakers from around the world.
The expert panel will narrow down the final 3 per category who will present their products and tools before educators at the World Schools Summit. Educators will vote by secret ballot to determine the winner of each category, and they will be announced live on stage at the culmination of the summit.
