Bharti Airtel has won the cloud and content delivery network (CDN) license for Digital India Corporation’s (DIC) DIKSHA (Digital Infrastructure for Knowledge Sharing) platform, the Centre’s national platform for open educational digital content.

DIC is under the Ministry of Education (MoE), Government of India.

“With this authorisation, Airtel becomes a trusted partner for the end-to-end management of DIKSHA’s online platform across its mobile application and website,” the telecom operator said in a statement on Tuesday.

Airtel Cloud will now power the DIKSHA app and website, enabling students nationwide to access educational content for free in their preferred Indian languages. Students, especially those in remote areas, can simply enlist on the platform.

Airtel Cloud will also lead DIKSHA’s migration to Oracle Cloud and provide managed services and CDN solutions.

Offering 9,300 courses in 35 Indian languages, DIKSHA has seen 50 billion learning sessions and over 6 billion minutes of student usage, making it one of the largest free education platforms in the world, said Praveen Agarwal, Head of Government Business, Airtel Business.

He added, “We are delighted to partner with the Ministry of Education to strengthen this critical educational infrastructure and increase accessibility to millions of children across the country through our state-of-the-art cloud and CDN services.”

Airtel Cloud, part of Airtel Business, the B2B division of Airtel, is India’s leading and most trusted ICT service provider with a diverse portfolio for Enterprises, Governments, Carriers and SMEs. Airtel Cloud provides enterprises with a one-stop destination for hybrid cloud strategies utilising the private, public, and edge cloud.

Launched by the Ministry of Education in 2017, DIKSHA aims to provide free quality e-content to all teachers and students nationwide through e-textbooks and audiobooks. The platform offers more than 570 billion minutes of learning time, and its courses have more than 7,200 courses, with an enrolment rate and course completion rate of 82%.