India's digital education initiatives share one idea: quality learning material should reach any student with an internet connection, not only students in well-funded institutions. The National Mission on Education through ICT (NMEICT) is the umbrella under which most of them were built, and SWAYAM is its best-known platform.
Worked example: A postgraduate student in a small town needs a course her college does not offer. On SWAYAM she can enrol in a free online course, study video lectures and reading material, take assignments, and sit a proctored examination for a certificate that her university may accept for credit. The platform is free to learn on; the certificate examination is the part that carries a fee. That free-learning plus paid-certification shape is the pattern across these initiatives.