I could spend hours discussing early-stage startup operations and community-based marketing, but deal flow is my blind spot. But when investment banking firm UBS picked up financial robot-advisor Wealthfront for $1.4 billion in an all-cash deal this week, I noticed. "At those prices, the company's exit price is a win in that it represents a 2x or greater multiple on its final private valuations," wrote Alex Wilhelm in The Exchange. "But its exit value is also parsable from a number of alternative perspectives: AUM, customers and revenue," he added. Examining each of those factors in turn, Alex found that the deal is more than just a "next-gen push" intended "to reach rich young Americans," as some headlines suggested.

AI-based teaching assistant startup ByteLearn has raised $9.5 Mn in its seed round and came out of its stealth mode. The platform is now open for early access, as per the startup's website. In February 2021, edtech startup Vedantu had acquired the doubt-solving platform InstaSolv to boost its test prep and K-12 tutoring verticals. Two of InstaSolv founders Aditya Singhal and Nishant Sinha took an exit and went on to build a new venture -- ByteLearn. The startup plans to use the funds for product development, global expansion and enhancing technological capabilities.

Today, when we look around, the technological advances in recent years have been immense. We can see driverless cars, hands-free devices that can turn on the lights, and robots working in factories, which prove that intelligent machines are possible. In the last four years in the Indian startup ecosystem, the terms that were used (overused rather) more than funding, valuation, and exit were artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML). We also saw investors readily putting in their money in startups that remotely used or claimed to use these emerging technologies. From deeptech, ecommerce, fintech, and conversational chatbots to mobility, foodtech, and healthcare, AI and ML have transformed most industry sectors today.

They say "change is the only constant", and with every passing second, the world is experiencing huge technological advances taking humanity to newer heights. A new age is getting accomplished, every second is a taste of something new, something better than before. Enhanced outreach of technology has resulted in industries and end users taking a leap of faith into the world of new concepts. Several industries have polished their approach in designing an outcome for the new generation to mould something new and relevant, according to the trends of the future. Machine learning (ML) is one such domain that has around 10x jobs at present as compared to the situation, five years ago.

The landscape of formal education in India is based on a relatively archaic model. Over the last 150 years, not much has evolved. The students still attend brick-and-mortar establishments for schools in order to educate themselves. The system is largely exam-driven, theoretical and impractical. The emphasis is on scoring rather than learning and subsequent application of the knowledge.

Brandman University is taking a new approach to adult education, focusing on student competencies and work experience rather than transcripts when deciding which students to admit and when they graduate. Brandman already is working with companies, including Walmart and Discover, to offer employee-education programs. The Irvine, California-based nonprofit university accepts subject matter expertise and experience as course credit, making it easier for working adults to earn college degrees and advance their careers. At most conventional colleges, students must fulfill prerequisite courses to earn admission and a set of required courses to earn a degree. Under the Brandman approach, if an applicant has, say, a 20-year career in finance but no formal coursework in finance, "she can now test out of many course requirements, simply by proving her mastery through standard assessments, writing samples, even work projects," says the university's chief financial officer.