Hyderabad-based edtech Edwisely (Hakate Technologies Private
Limited) has gone live with SASTRA.AI, an AI-driven learning initiative built
for SASTRA Deemed University, marking one of the more visible bets yet that
Indian higher education is ready to replace not just augment its legacy learning
management systems (LMS) with what the company calls "intelligent learning
infrastructure" (ILI).
SASTRA.AI was one of six new institutional
schemes unveiled at SASTRA's Ruby & Silver Jubilee Valedictory Celebrations
on August 17, 2026, in Thanjavur a lineup that also included a cybersecurity
and communications tie-up with Tata Communications, a faculty research fund
(SASTRA STRIDE), an internationalisation initiative (SASTRA MAITRI), and a
digital learning access programme (DRISHTI). Vice President C. P. Radhakrishnan
delivered the valedictory address and launched all six schemes, with Tamil Nadu
and Kerala Governor R. V. Arlekar and Tamil Nadu Higher Education Minister P.
Viswanathan attending as guests of honour.
That SASTRA.AI was positioned alongside a
Tata Communications partnership as one of the university's six flagship
priorities rather than announced as a standalone initiative is itself a signal
of how seriously the institution is treating the shift, at a time when most
AI-in-education headlines are still about chatbots bolted onto existing
systems.
"SASTRA.AI is intelligently designed
to empower faculty and students with deeper, actionable insights fostering a
culture of continuous improvement in teaching and learning," said Harsha
Kankanala, Founder, Edwisely.
The category bet
Edwisely's pitch is a deliberate departure
from how most institutions have approached AI so far. Instead of adding an AI
chatbot or tool on top of the university's existing systems, Edwisely built a
new foundation underneath teaching, assessment, mentoring and student outcomes
one designed to connect and make sense of academic data that usually sits
scattered across separate systems.
In practice for SASTRA, that means faculty
get AI support across lesson planning, assessment design and progress tracking,
with earlier visibility into students who may need additional help while the
university gets a unified view of academic data that a traditional LMS, built
primarily for content delivery and administration, was not designed to provide.
Not a cold start
The SASTRA deployment follows more than a
year of faculty development work between the two organisations, focused on
applying AI to lesson planning and assessment suggesting the anniversary launch
formalises an existing relationship rather than announcing a new one.
Edwisely says the underlying technology is
proprietary, built specifically for higher education rather than adapted from
general-purpose AI tools a claim backed by an Indian patent granted to Hakate
Technologies on August 17, 2026, the same day SASTRA.AI was launched.
Where this fits
Indian universities have spent roughly two
decades digitising administration, records and content delivery through LMS
platforms. SASTRA.AI is a bet that the next wave of edtech spending shifts from
managing education digitally to making the learning process itself measurably
more effective.
Whether that bet pays off at scale will
likely depend on institutions with large in-house tech teams some of whom may
consider building similar systems themselves rather than buying one. For now,
SASTRA.AI gives Edwisely a marquee, high-visibility reference point to make its
case to the rest of the sector.
About Edwisely Edwisely (Hakate
Technologies Private Limited) is a Hyderabad-based higher-education technology
company building Intelligent Learning Infrastructure (ILI) for AI-enabled
campuses. Founded in 2017 by IIT Madras and TU Delft alumni, Edwisely works
with more than 60 institutions and has more than 2.1 lakh students and 8,000+
faculty on its platform.