Appu Kuttan has a ‘gameplan’ to bridge the digital divide in India

NEW YORK: “I always come to New York to watch my kids, Aggasi and Monica Seles play the US Open. This is Agassi’s last year so I have to be there,” declares 65-year-old Kerala-born Appu Kuttan.

Coming from some businessman such talk might sound plain nutty. But there is every reason for Kuttan to feel a dash paternal. When Aggasi and Seles were 12, Kuttan gave them full scholarships to train at the Nick Bollettieri Tennis Academy in Florida which he owned.  

Kuttan later sold his flourishing tennis academy to IMG reportedly for millions to start the Washington-based non-profit organisation called CyberLearning in 1994. Now Agassi and Seles sometimes help Kuttan in his quest to impart computer training to poor inner-city children in the US. This week Certiport, a US pioneer in validating fundamental computer skills, gave Kuttan who has authored From Digital Divide to Digital Opportunity their annual prize for spreading computer literacy around the world. In making the final cut, Certiport said it sifted through government agencies, education boards in China, Japan, Greece, Costa Rica and tech firms in Silicon Valley.

“We selected Dr Appu Kuttan unanimously for this prestigious award because of his outstanding leadership and contributions towards…advancing digital literacy in  many countries over many years,” said David Saedi, President and CEO of Certiport.

Kuttan’s 12-year-old organisation has spread computer learning to over a million disadvantaged people in India, Egypt, Jordan, Mauritius and the inner-cities of the United States. Kuttan’s NGO has adopted a sound business model for staying afloat and imparting hundreds of dollars worth of computer courses for free to children and adults.

“CyberLearning may be a non-profit but we still provide damn good computer training. We just trained 200 engineers in Lockheed Martin. Now private firms can afford to pay so we make them pay for the computer courses and plough the money into the other work we do,” explained Kuttan, an engineer from Kerala who migrated to the US in 1964 when he came here to get a doctorate.

Kuttan said a 30-minute private meeting in March this year with Indian President Abdul Kalam in Muritius had helped him develop a “gameplan” to bridge the digital divide in India.  “I discussed my plan with President Kalam and he thought it could work. In early 2007, we are going to launch a program to train one million Indian teachers living in poorer areas especially the smaller Indian cities, towns and villages,” said Kuttan.

The Indian teachers selected for the CyberLearning program will be trained through instructor-led on-site and online courses. CyberLearning already has 3,000 IT coaches online which it makes available to disadvantaged students.

“Reliance has agreed to provide us with Internet access through its 240 Web World centres in India — the teachers can come to the nearest Web World centre. We will provide the CyberEd courses to the teachers and assist them by providing 24-hour online mentors and course materials for the year-long project,” said Kuttan. “The market price of the courses in the US is $400. We are going to provide a million scholarships to teachers. This means we are basically rolling out a $400-million-dollar project,” he added.

After taking the courses, successful teachers will have the option of getting IC-3 and Microsoft certification for $30. “We are focused on getting one million teachers trained who can take the computer skills back to the students,” said Kuttan who was a “sounding board” for tech-savvy former Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi.  “I had joked with Rajiv that one day I would come back and train a million Indians.”