ODILO Makes Learning Accessible on a Global Scale Using AWS

ODILO helps various types of organizations, from public and private schools to governments, design virtually unlimited learning ecosystems. The company digitizes educational materials on an international scale and has over 170 million users in 54 countries. The ODILO solution creates personalized learning itineraries based on the curricular needs, knowledge levels, and educational aspirations of its users.

When the startup was founded in 2011, it aimed to digitize an existing library of educational content. ODILO used AWS to support its growth by promoting visibility and testing different markets within the industry. By 2023, the company’s content library had grown to more than four million resources coming from 7,300 content providers, editorials, video creators, and technology providers. All this content is available in one place, and users can select resources depending on their learning needs. The company works with governments, schools, and global companies to update curricula and provide and personalize educational content that meets the needs of individual users.

To present content on such a large scale, ODILO needed to be agile and maintain a customer-centric mentality. It chose to build on AWS because of a shared customer obsession. The company also knew that, by using AWS services, it could scale quickly to meet its operational goals and users’ needs. ODILO’s solution employs over 40 AWS services. “Some of the AWS services we’ve been using since 2011 are vital for our success,” says Alberto Abel, vice president of marketing at ODILO. “Working alongside AWS, we can implement new features on our product road map with confidence.”

ODILO is also an AWS Partner that offers AWS Cloud courses alongside its digital educational library. “As an AWS Partner, we can expand into new countries and regions, testing AWS services and new markets,” says Abel.

ODILO’s solution for content digitization supports virtually any type of digital format that its users need to create a learning experience from scratch. The company compares its offering to popular streaming services for movies and music—learners can browse, search, and view content according to the category and format they want. One example of the success of ODILO’s solutions is its launch in Brazil, where 3.6 million students from public schools in the states of Sao Paolo and Parana have access to 40,900 reading clubs created by teachers using ODILO. By February 2024, students had spent more than 13.1 million hours learning. ODILO has also provided quality education for 5,000 teachers in Panama, teacher training competencies for 9,300 schools in Chile, and educational tools for 11 million students in the Philippines.

In response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, ODILO achieved 6,000 active users and 120,000 learning hours among refugees based in other countries in 2 months. In that particular case, agility was especially important, because ODILO was working with shelters to distribute content quickly and affordably. “We are very agile when publishing updates and can implement our solution on average within 2–3 weeks using AWS,” says Abel.

ODILO provides these educational services at scale and customizes them using Amazon Personalize, a service that developers use to quickly build and deploy curated recommendations and intelligent user segmentation at scale using machine learning. The solution uses machine learning to select educational content or resources for each profile. The algorithm is trained to present more relevant offerings as users consume these resources. “This personalized technology can really help learners, and we are proud to use AWS to achieve it,” says Abel.

The company also focuses on achieving environmental sustainability. By digitalizing its educational content, ODILO reduces paper consumption, saving 12,000 hectares of forest each year. ODILO has also created training plans to educate its users on how they can make environmentally friendly decisions. In this context, it has delivered 13,000 hours of learning about sustainability to schools, universities, and businesses. ODILO is committed to a zero-emission plan and has been awarded 75 certifications for sustainability. It is also SDG certified for several goals, including quality education (SDG4), reduced inequalities (SDG10), and responsible consumption and production (SDG12).

ODILO is committed to not only providing its solution and teaching users about sustainability but also being available and accessible. The company gathers sustainability insights from its data and maintains a continuous dialogue with all its stakeholders, including users and partners. “We’re happy to be an open book to help our stakeholders gain information and updates on sustainability,” says Abel.

ODILO is continuing to expand both the reach of its solution and the depth of its resources. One future goal is to establish content hubs in regions of Africa to be closer to African users, better understand their cultures, and cover all the languages spoken there.

“We are working alongside AWS on an international scale to find the synergies that will help ODILO grow,” says Abel.