BodhaGuru Learning Private Limited, Ed-tech start-up in Hyderabad, has won Facebook’s Internet.org Innovation Challenge of $ 2,50,000 (INR 1.62 Crore) in the Student’s category. The goal of this challenge was to recognize organizations that are working to make the Internet more relevant for students, women, farmers and migrant workers in India with the help of innovative locally relevant apps, websites and online services that provide real value for the members of these important communities.
Team BodhaGuruhas designed more than 1000 2D/3D animated videos (including short stories, detailed animated videos), 60+ practice apps and 250+ interactive books for Class 1-8 Science, Maths – which are delivered online (through YouTube and various app stores like Google PlayStore, iTunes Store, Amazon store) as well as offline (inside an Android set-top box) inside schools. BodhaGuru has delivered more than 8.5 million online lessons over YouTube. From 2014, Team BodhaGuru is focusing on strengthening creativity, communication, collaboration and critical thinking skills of students.
Mr. Samir Jain Co-Founder and Director of BodhaGuru, explained: “We are now trying to solve two fundamental challenges that exits in our education system today: 1) Creativity is the act of turning new and imaginative ideas into reality (i.e. creating something). Are we nurturing creativity in schools? 2) Story is the easiest form of expressing and understanding anything.Are good quality immersive children books (with images, sound, music) available digitally in local Indian languages and at affordable cost?”
Ms. Anubha Jain Co-Founder and Director of BodhaGuru, explained the solution: “We have released two set of apps – Create Children Book and Read Children Book on all major app stores. The goal of these apps is to empower everyone (children, teachers, and parents) to easily create, share and read immersive children books with images, text, music and effects – using a smartphone, tablet or PC- over a low speed Internet link and using language of their choice.This enhances creativity, presentation and linguistic (reading as well as writing) skills of students, while having fun. This way large number of children books of all forms will be created and consumed by the children community in different languages.”
These apps have more than 65000+ downloads, 300000+ books have been downloaded and 800+ books (e.g. Folk Tales, Animal Tales, Fairy Tales) have been published in various languages after review in a short span of time. Team BodhaGuru is planning to release a school version of the app shortly having a structured course and many more features that can be easily deployed in school lab (PC lab or tab lab).
Mr. Samir Jain summed it up, “We are building a passionate community of creators (who create children books), readers (who read children books) and contributors (who contributes to existing books by translating, dubbing or sharing illustrations) – can be children, teachers, parents or youth.Our dream is to build largest free online library of immersive children books in various languages, co-created by the passionate community and powered by scalable cloud based app. We plan to utilize the price money for R&D, community outreach and marketing activities.”
Hope every parent, teacher and student will download these apps because “Reading is Fun, Creating is more Fun and Sharing is even more!”
About us:
BodhaGuru Learning Private Limited (BodhaGuru), is an Ed-tech start up co-founded by Mr. Samir Jain and Ms. Anubha Jain who are computer science engineers and passionate about usage of technology to improve the quality of education for school children. Team BodhaGuru is working with a dream to make school learning interesting, relevant, affordable and available to every child on this planet. BodhaGuru is a private limited company located in Gachibowli, Hyderabad, India. Latest details about BodhaGuru and its initiatives are available on http://www.bodhaguru.com.