As India reimagines education for a creative economy and an AI-first future, classrooms are rapidly evolving into spaces where digital fluency, creativity, and problem-solving matter as much as traditional learning. At the centre of this shift is Canva, the visual communications platform that is increasingly finding its way into schools, teacher training programmes, and government-backed education initiatives across the country.

From partnerships with NCERT and state governments to integrations with major school systems, Canva is positioning itself as a key player in India’s education landscape. In a conversation, Sagari Chatterjee, India education lead at Canva, discusses the platform’s growing footprint, the role of AI in classrooms, and what future-ready learning looks like.

Canva is a commercial entity. When you provide services to state governments or bodies like NCERT, what is the long-term business model? Is the goal to convert these students into paid Canva Pro users once they enter the workforce?

Canva’s mission is to ‘empower the world to design’. For the K-12 sector, our model is built on social impact: Canva Education is, and will always be, 100 per cent free for students, teachers, and schools. Our strategy is guided by Canva’s global two-step plan.

The first step involves building one of the world’s most valuable companies. Second, use that value to do the most good we can. In India, this translates to bridging the digital divide and empowering every educator and learner. By partnering with national bodies like NCERT and Niti Aayog’s Atal Innovation Mission, we ensure that a student in a remote village has access to the same world-class creative tools as a student in a global metro. Our long-term ‘business’ in education is the investment in human capital — fostering 21st-century digital literacy.

How does Canva’s AI tools function in rural schools where high-speed Internet and high-end hardware are often non-existent?

We’ve built Canva with accessibility and inclusivity in mind from day one, especially for markets where high-speed Internet and premium hardware aren’t always available. Canva is designed to be mobile-first and low-bandwidth conscious, meaning it works well on basic smartphones and entry-level tablets commonly used across rural India.

More recently, we launched Canva Offline, which allows students and teachers to continue creating even without a constant Internet connection. Their work automatically syncs once they’re back online, helping ensure creativity and learning aren’t limited by connectivity constraints.

With 5.4 million monthly active users globally in the education sector, what percentage of that growth is coming specifically from India’s public school system versus private institutions?

India is one of our fastest-growing global markets, and this year we are expanding in a significant way. While private schools were early adopters, the most massive momentum is now coming from the public school system. Most NGOs supporting rural education already use Canva to curate their resources; our goal now is to put that same power directly into the hands of every government teacher. Through state-level MoUs, we are helping departments curate their own e-content libraries, ensuring localised, high-quality digital resources are available to all.

Teacher training is a massive bottleneck. What is the fatigue rate of teachers who are already burdened with administrative work and now have to learn design software?

We strongly believe technology in the classroom should reduce workload — not add to it. Teachers today are already balancing enormous administrative and academic responsibilities, so Canva is designed to feel intuitive, collaborative, and genuinely time-saving from the very first use.

With thousands of curriculum-aligned templates and AI-powered tools, educators can create lesson plans, presentations, school magazines, annual reports, worksheets, and infographics in minutes rather than hours. The goal isn’t to turn teachers into designers — it’s to give them simple creative tools that help bring lessons to life more easily.

Beyond the product itself, we invest heavily in teacher enablement through regular professional development sessions, hands-on workshops, and our Teacher Certification Course developed in partnership with NCERT. We’ve also introduced Learn Grid, a pedagogical framework that helps educators seamlessly integrate creativity and design thinking into existing subjects, while automating repetitive tasks and preserving the human connection, empathy, and creativity that only teachers can bring to the classroom.

How does Canva’s AI handle cultural bias? If a student in Lucknow types “a traditional festival”, does the AI provide globally generic results or locally relevant Indian imagery?

Localisation is one of Canva’s biggest priorities, especially in a market as diverse as India. If a student in Lucknow searches for “a traditional festival”, our goal is for the AI to surface imagery and creative references that feel culturally relevant and locally meaningful, not just generic global results.

Canva is available in more than 100 languages, but for us localisation goes far beyond translation. It’s about reflecting how people across India actually create, communicate, and learn. That means building regional language experiences, culturally grounded templates, and tools that feel intuitive across India’s rich linguistic and cultural landscape.

This approach closely aligns with the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 and its emphasis on mother-tongue learning. Through Canva’s built-in Translation App, which supports nearly all major Indian languages — teachers can instantly adapt classroom materials into regional languages, helping make learning more accessible, relatable, and inclusive for students across both urban and rural communities.

Beyond making posters, how is Canva being used for deep-subject learning, like data visualisation in mathematics or scientific diagrams?

Canva today goes far beyond posters — we see it as a new visual language for learning. Just as writing helps students articulate ideas, Canva helps them think visually, communicate complex concepts, and engage more deeply with what they’re learning. A student can use Canva to visualise the human circulatory system in biology, map climate patterns in geography, or turn raw numbers into interactive data stories through Canva Sheets and charts.

This shift is especially powerful in the classroom because it moves students from passive consumption to active creation — a core pillar of India’s National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 and its focus on experiential, activity-based learning. Instead of memorising concepts, students are able to explain, present, and collaborate through visual storytelling and design.

We’re also seeing a broader cultural shift where creativity itself is becoming a future-ready skill. Across India, students who begin using Canva in schools are increasingly building real-world communication, design, and digital literacy skills that extend far beyond the classroom. What was once considered “design software” is now becoming an everyday tool for learning, expression, and career readiness.

Is Canva planning to work with schools in Bengal?

West Bengal has long been one of India’s great centres of creativity, culture, and intellectual thought, and we see that same spirit reflected in classrooms across the state today. We already work with a number of leading private institutions across the CBSE, ICSE, IB, and Cambridge boards, but our ambition goes far beyond that.

We’re actively exploring opportunities to deepen our presence across Bengal, including conversations around how Canva can support broader access to creative and digital learning in schools. Our goal is to empower the next generation of students and educators with tools that make creativity, communication, and visual learning accessible to everyone, regardless of geography or background.