How Rocket Learning transformed early childhood education analytics with HAQM Q in QuickSight

This is a guest post co-authored by Prarthit Mehta, CTO of CloudThat’s Cloud Consulting Services, and Rahul Mohanty, Chief of Staff to the CTO and Chief Solution Architect at Rocket Learning.

Non-profit organizations need analytics solutions to measure impact and drive decision-making effectively. Rocket Learning, an India-based non-profit transforming early childhood education, faced significant challenges with their previous analytics platform that hindered their ability to scale and provide insights to stakeholders.

In this post, we share how CloudThat helped Rocket Learning transition from their legacy business intelligence (BI) tool to HAQM QuickSight, enabling them to securely embed interactive dashboards and adding new generative BI functionality with HAQM Q in QuickSight to support their mission of reaching over 50 million underserved children by 2030.

About CloudThat and Rocket Learning

CloudThat, an Advanced AWS Consulting Partner with over a decade of experience in cloud consulting and training, specializes in helping organizations use AWS services for digital transformation. With deep expertise in analytics and BI solutions, CloudThat has successfully implemented QuickSight for numerous enterprises and non-profits across the globe.

Founded with a mission to transform early childhood education in India, Rocket Learning works with children between the ages of 3–6 years across the country. They partner with India’s Ministry of Women and Child Development and Ministry of Education, as well as 10 state governments, covering 140 districts and 15% of public preschool educators. Their education technology platform connects parents, teachers, and students to personalized learning experiences using mobile technology, providing interactive lessons designed to strengthen foundational literacy and numeracy skills.

Rocket Learning has already impacted 3 million children, parents, and 200,000 Anganwadi workers (early childhood caregivers). Their efforts have achieved impressive results, including a 30% increase in scores, with 70% of students in their program being school-ready by age 6, and a 12-fold social return on investment. Their goal is to reach 50 million underserved children by 2030, achieving full brain and body development by age 6.

The challenge

Before implementing QuickSight, Rocket Learning relied on their previous BI solution for data visualization and analytics. However, they encountered several technical challenges that limited their ability to monitor and communicate their impact effectively.

The team struggled with embedding dashboards into their web application, and the previous BI tools dashboards occasionally displayed incorrect values, compromising data integrity and decision-making. Additionally, the licensing cost, particularly for embedding and scaling dashboards across multiple users, was prohibitively high. This pricing model created a significant barrier in providing analytics access to all stakeholders, including government officials and internal team members.

With data stored in HAQM Redshift, Rocket Learning needed a solution that would integrate seamlessly with their existing AWS infrastructure while providing secure, scalable, and cost-effective analytics capabilities.

Solution overview

After evaluating several alternatives, CloudThat recommended QuickSight as the optimal solution for Rocket Learning’s needs. The implementation took a total of 8 weeks and followed a structured timeline.

During the first 6 weeks, we focused on understanding Rocket Learning’s domain and data sources while simultaneously working on data source connectivity, creating datasets, and building dashboards. The final 2 weeks were dedicated to data validation, testing, and comprehensive documentation to provide a smooth transition.

The solution architecture centered around QuickSight pulling data directly from HAQM Redshift, which serves as Rocket Learning’s centralized data warehouse. This integration eliminated the need for data movement, enabling real-time visualization and analysis. Both SPICE and direct query have been used in QuickSight to enhance performance and enable real-time visualization and analysis, providing an optimal balance between speed and up-to-date data access.

The following users access the application for reporting and data analysis purposes:

• 8 senior Ministry of Women and Child Development (MWCD) officials access the dashboard weekly or monthly for strategic insights and decision-making
• 40 Rocket Learning employees use the dashboard daily for operational monitoring and data analysis

The following diagram illustrates the solution architecture.

For secure access, we implemented an authentication system using AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) role-based access control. For embedded dashboards and HAQM Q in QuickSight topics, we created a secure flow with anonymous access:

1. Users log in to the Rocket Learning web application.
2. The application requests an embed URL from HAQM API Gateway.
3. API Gateway invokes AWS Lambda, which validates permissions and generates a secure signed URL.
4. The web application renders the embedded QuickSight content, allowing users to interact without direct login.

This approach made sure that both internal stakeholders and government officials could access insights securely without requiring individual QuickSight licenses.

The following screenshot shows an example of the Rocket Learning web application.

Key features and benefits

The implementation of QuickSight delivered several transformative capabilities for Rocket Learning.

The QuickSight pay-per-session pricing model significantly reduced costs compared to their previous BI solution’s per-user licensing approach, resulting in over 65% cost savings. This made it financially viable to provide analytics access to a broader audience, including 70 government officials who receive daily reports, 8 senior officials from the Ministry of Women and Child Development who access the dashboard weekly or monthly, and 40 internal employees who use it daily.

The seamless embedding capabilities allowed Rocket Learning to integrate interactive dashboards directly into their web application, as shown in the following screenshot. This integration provides stakeholders with real-time access to key performance indicators related to their early childhood development initiatives without requiring them to switch platforms or learn new tools.

One of the most impactful features has been HAQM Q in QuickSight, which enables natural language processing capabilities. Stakeholders, educators, and policymakers can now ask business-related questions in simple language and receive instant insights without navigating complex reports. For example, a government official can ask, “What is the student engagement rate in Maharashtra?” and get an immediate answer.

The dashboards effectively monitor engagement levels, student progress, and intervention success rates across different regions, providing valuable insights for program optimization.

The following screenshots show additional examples of the dashboards and query capabilities.

The following are additional sample queries related to this dashboard:

• What is the total count of states with State Level Master Trainers (SLMTs)?
• What is the total count of participants trained as State Level Master Trainers (SLMTs)?
• What is the total count of districts covered in the training for Anganwadi Workers (AWWs)?
• Could you provide a pie chart of User Gender?

As an AWS native service, QuickSight integrates seamlessly with Rocket Learning’s existing AWS infrastructure, particularly HAQM Redshift. This integration enables real-time data visualization without data movement, and the QuickSight serverless architecture provides scalability and security without infrastructure management overhead.

Impact and results

The implementation of QuickSight has had a profound impact on Rocket Learning’s operations and their ability to drive positive change in early childhood education across India.

Currently, Rocket Learning has trained approximately 180,000 government workers and covers multiple districts. The program aims to reach a total of 1.35 million government workers across all 36 States and Union Territories of India. This represents about 13% completion of the total workforce training target while already establishing a presence in numerous districts. The analytics solution plays a crucial role in tracking this progress and identifying areas for improvement.

The solution has received high praise from key stakeholders. Dr. Rita Patnaik, Joint Director of National Institute of Public Cooperation and Child Development, personally tested the dashboard and commended the usage of the dashboard and HAQM Q in QuickSight for providing quick answers to various queries about the data. This endorsement highlights the solution’s user-friendliness and effectiveness in delivering insights to non-technical users.

The embedded analytics help track the progress of the entire Poshan Bhi Padhai Bhi (Nutrition and Education) program throughout the country, giving both internal Rocket Learning stakeholders and external government officials visibility into program performance. This transparency fosters accountability and enables data-driven decision-making at all levels.

The success of this implementation was so significant that it was featured in Swami Sivasubramanian’s keynote at AWS re:Invent 2024, showcasing the transformative power of AWS solutions in driving social impact at scale.

Future plans

Building on the success of their initial implementation, Rocket Learning has expressed strong interest in migrating their remaining dashboards to QuickSight. They also plan to implement QuickSight row-level security to further customize data visibility based on school, region, and user roles, enhancing data governance while maintaining accessibility.

As Rocket Learning continues to expand its reach across India, QuickSight will scale with them, providing the analytics capabilities needed to monitor progress, identify opportunities for improvement, and ultimately help more children receive quality early childhood education.

Conclusion

The partnership between CloudThat and Rocket Learning demonstrates how QuickSight can empower non-profit organizations to use data for social impact. As an AWS Premier Consulting Partner with extensive experience in analytics implementations, CloudThat’s expertise was instrumental in designing and implementing a solution that aligned with Rocket Learning’s needs. By providing cost-effective, scalable, and user-friendly analytics capabilities, QuickSight has enabled Rocket Learning to track their progress, communicate their impact to stakeholders, and make data-driven decisions to improve early childhood education across India.

The combination of embedded dashboards, natural language query capabilities, and seamless integration with existing AWS services has transformed how Rocket Learning’s approaches analytics. As they continue their mission to reach 50 million underserved children by 2030, QuickSight will remain a critical tool in their arsenal, helping them measure, communicate, and maximize their impact.

Through this implementation, we have seen how the right analytics solution can do more than just visualize data—it can help transform the lives of millions of children by enabling more effective early childhood education programs. This is the true power of technology when applied with purpose and vision.

Learn more about HAQM QuickSight.

About the Authors

Prarthit Mehta, CTO of CloudThat’s Cloud Consulting Services, leads digital transformation with over a decade of experience across industries. An engineering graduate from Nirma University, Ahmedabad, he began his journey as a Cloud Intern at CloudThat in 2015 and steadily progressed to CTO in October 2023. He now oversees technology strategy, cloud development, security compliance, and IT operations. Holding multiple AWS certifications, he is also an AWS Partner Ambassador, bringing advanced insights to the cloud consulting space. Beyond his role, he mentors aspiring technologists, enhancing innovation and growth in the tech community.

Rahul Mohanty is the Chief of Staff to the CTO and Chief Solution Architect at Rocket Learning, where he drives technology strategy across multiple departments. As a technology leader and social impact innovator, he combines technical expertise with a commitment to driving positive change in society.