From Archimedes to Newton, from inventors to entrepreneurs, that fleeting flash of inspiration is what generates great ideas,makes humans progress, keeps the world moving forward. For Adam Korakhiwala, his ‘a-ha’ moment came in the form of a grim statistic in the 2014 Annual Status of Education (ASER) report.

ONLY 1 in 4 Std. 5 students can only read basic English sentences.

At the time, Adam was a student of Public Policy with a minor in Computer Science at Stanford University. “I read the report as a Public Policy student, but when I started thinking about how I could be a part of the solution to a problem like this, my background in Computer Science kicked in” shares Adam, founder of mGuru, a Mumbai-based edtech startup, aimed at the K-12 sector of students in urban, peri-urban and rural India.

I remember thinking how affordable smartphones were becoming and reaching so many households and people in India, and that very soon, all families would have the world’s collective knowledge in their pockets. That thought was the starting point for the idea that is now mGuru.”

A fundamental desire to bring great educational technology to any child, anywhere.

Armed with his degree, Adam returned to India with the idea to use mobile technology to help improve literacy and numeracy skills of children. “The first thing I did was to spend time in classrooms as a silent observer to study teacher interactions and student responses. I wanted to understand how different stakeholders in schools felt about education, so I extensively interviewed students, teachers and parents and NGO leaders to get as holistic a view as possible.”

After spending months at the Educo-run BMC Sai Baba Path School, Mumbai and classrooms in Akanksha and Teach for India schools, Adam’s seed of an idea began to germinate. He put together a team using ‘hustle and passion’ by posting on LinkedIn and techie job boards.  

mGuru: Helping put learning in the child’s hands

mGuru is a mobile learning app for K-5 students, focusing on English and Math. The apps provide an interactive learning journey for children, with the explicit aim of accelerating learning outcomes in an engaging way. The vision of mGuru is to package the best learning practices and research into a platform for the masses, so that any child can have the tools to gain basic literacy and numeracy skills. “We aim to significantly increase learning outcomes at scale, and we hope to build a platform that delivers that.” avers Adam.

While smartphone penetration is on the upswing across India, the mGuru team is cognisant of other infrastructural issues related to internet connectivity that much of the country still faces.

“The apps function largely without internet and are designed to work as well on low-end smartphones as they do on high-end devices.”

Once the initial prototype of the application was ready the team tested it with 100 3rd and 4th standard public school students, in Mumbai. “Our team would go in every week to see how children were reacting to the app, what they liked, what they ignored… and then every week we would go back and incorporate those learnings into the app” remembers Adam. After multiple rounds of tinkering, and a complete redesign to be more “pedagogically sound and engaging for kids” the mGuru app was officially released in August, 2016.

Learn while you play

mGuru’s English app is particularly successful with children as it gamifies the learning process. Within mGuru English, there is a reward system in the form of mangoes. By completing various activities, Manu the monkey collects mangoes which the child can then use as currency to purchase stories to read available on the app. All these stories are from StoryWeaver, an online digital repository of multilingual children’s stories from Pratham Books.

“I first read about StoryWeaver when the platform was launched.  At the time, we were looking for stories to include in the English app that were fun and engaging for children to read, along with being culturally relevant to them. StoryWeaver offers all this, and the biggest bonus is that since the stories are openly licensed and in open formats, we can use them for free, and in different ways on the app with subtitles and audio elements that we have built in-house.”

The stories have been immensely popular with the students, as TFI fellow Vishal DB noticed:

“The app keeps students across all reading levels, engaged. A combination of the app being child friendly, the interesting content and the novelty of the tabs ensure that the students are hooked.”

While the stories on the apps are in English, it also has a button, which the child can touch for the story to be translated to another language they are more fluent in. Currently, mGuru English teaches English via Bengali, Gujarati, Marathi, and Hindi. However, they plan to expand this to integrate more major Indian languages such as Tamil, Kannada, Malayalam, and Urdu. The stories offered are regularly updated so that children always have something new to read and enjoy.  

“The stories from StoryWeaver have already been read 45,000 times who have done over 185,000 activities!” Adam shares enthusiastically.

mGuru at the PTA

mGuru has partnered with NGOs such as Teach for India, Akanksha, and Yuva Unstoppable and  is currently used by 17,000 students all over India, and contains 185,000 activities. Impact is measured by looking at various statistics such as the time spent on the app, how often students return to the app, the number of stories read, and improvements in the scores of students.

“During our research phase, we learned that almost all the students in the schools we visited went for some form of ‘tutions’ after school, which showed that parents were invested in improving their child’s learning. If parents were willing to pay anywhere between Rs.300-600 for tuition, then we felt they might be willing to pay an affordable Rs. 30 per month for our app. We reach out to parents to tell them about and help download the app at school PTAs. So far we have had a very positive response from them.” shares Adam. A sentiment echoed by this parent at Sai Baba Path Public School, Mumbai.

“सर पिछले दो दिन से मेरे दोनो बच्चे ऐप को छोड ही नही रहे है । बाकी गेम खेलना तो उन्होनें बन्द ही कर दिया है बडी बात ये है के वे हमारे बिना ही सब इस्तेमाल करना सीख गये है. हम से ज्यादा मोबाइल के बारे मे उन्हें पता है।”

mGuru is also experimenting with other novel ways getting their app into the hands of more children. Starting next month, they are tying up with a chain of bakeries in Kolkata, where each bakery will also be an mGuru distribution centre. “Every time someone shops at the bakery,they'll get an offer of three weeks free access to mGuru English app. We’ll have someone there to help them download the app and do a demo if needed. If this pilot works, we will look at ways to replicate this in other geographies.” Adam reports.

Setting their sights high

The team is excited about future plans which include adding a math component  to the app, adding more languages  and more diverse content  in the form of videos and diverse activities.

“Everyone on the team has a fundamental passion and desire to bring great educational technology to any child, anywhere.” shares Adam.  

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A quiet, young boy begins to visit his school library every day after classes are over. At first, he goes to  just look at the colourful illustrations in the books brought to the school by smiling didis and bhaiyyas.  When asked why he stays back, he replies, “This is the world I want to stay in. This makes me happy.”  He slowly begins interacting with his fellow students who came to the library abd begins to make friends. The books have opened up his world; at school and beyond. The didis and bhaiyyas who stocked the library are from the NGO, Mantra4Change.

The idea for Mantra4Change took shape in the minds of Khushboo Awasthi and her partner Santosh More in 2010. “Deep inside us was the strong belief that if there is anything that can change the future, it is education. When children don’t have access to quality education their life choices shrink. It was these beliefs that triggered the concept for Mantra4Change.” Khushboo elaborated. At the time, Santosh was a Teach For India (TFI) fellow while Khushboo was pursuing a Masters programme.  But they both knew that they wanted to start something of their own in the development sector.

It was 2013 when Khushboo and Santosh founded Mantra4Change and started working on their education project in part-time capacity. In 2014, Santosh joined Mantra4Change full-time and in 2015, Khushboo did the same. They began formally recruiting members through the TFI career portal and Azim Premji University campus recruitment process. In a span of a few years, Mantra4Change has grown from a 2 member team to a small organisation of 12 passionate individuals.

Mantra4Change’s  key initiative is ‘STEP’: School Transformation and Empowerment Project. Through STEP and a two-year partnership to ensure its efficacy, Mantra4Change has till date had a positive impact on over 9000 students and 350 teachers in 13 schools. Most of the schools they work with cater to underserved children in the not-so-popular narrow alleys of urban and peri-urban Bengaluru.

A trickle down effect

To effectively implement STEP, the organisation first contacts the head of the school and then works down from there, connecting with each part of the school team on a personal level to understand their needs and challenges.  In one of the schools, teachers in the primary school mentioned the need for better books for children to read. Mantra4Change reached out to  Pratham Books and helped acquire Library in a Classroom kits. This kind of rapport building, ensures that within 4-6 months 70% of staff are onboard with the programme.

Empowering children

Khushboo and her team believe that students must be empowered and encouraged to step out of their comfort zone. She shared a story of how 12 students from Mantra4Change partner schools attended an  International Geography Youth Summit.

“We had to convince the teachers that the children were indeed ready to take the stage. At the conference, to the surprise and delight of the children, two of their groups got standing ovations from the audience.  When they came back, you could see the confidence in them. They came up to the team and their teachers, and said, ‘thank you so much, ma’am, for giving us this opportunity. We would never have experienced this.’ We saw an an opportunity and took it to our students and they grabbed onto it. It’s their hard work at the end of the day.” remembers Khushboo.

Joyful reading material in their mother tongue

Under STEP, Mantra4Change is also implementing a library programme in which they set up libraries to make books more accessible to children. Mantra4Change has teamed up with Pratham Books to provide the children colourfully illustrated, multilingual stories. Describing the books and the library programme, one student told us, “The illustrations are very nice, the story is funny!” adding that she had begun reading at home more after the library had been set up.

In addition to the libraries, content from StoryWeaver is downloaded onto computers in the library for children to read and enjoy. There is an added excitement when the children get to read the e-books on the computers. Mrs. Morris, a librarian who conducts weekly storytelling sessions at the Citizen’s School, Bengaluru said, "The e-books work like a reward. The kids love operating the computer because they do not get a lot of opportunities to do so otherwise. I use the e-books for  partner reading and it is working great. Children read, then discuss what they read. This helps develop their comprehension and communication abilities.”  

“The whole atmosphere in the library when the children come is magical! Even those who can’t read fluently yet like to come and touch the books, see the pictures  and make up  their own stories  using their imagination. It’s beautiful to see.” Khushboo added.

Mantra4Change’s passionate team is determined to make a difference in the lives and learning of the children in the schools they work with  “Our team is here because they really want to make a change and affect education at the school level.” Mantra4Change hopes to  double the number of schools they work with  as well as the team’s size by May 2017. We’re sure they’ll get there, one step at a time!

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About Pratham Books

Pratham Books is a not-for-profit children's book publisher that was set up in 2004 to publish good quality, affordable books in many Indian languages. Our mission is to see ‘a book in every child’s hand’ and we have spread the joy of reading to millions of children in India. In 13 years, we have published over 3000 books and distributed over 14 million copies of our storybooks and 16 million story cards. Last year, Pratham Books' increased its footprint by going digital. As an industry leader, we were one of the first publishers in the country to open license our content. All this content is now available on StoryWeaver, our digital platform that hosts stories in 60 languages. The stories can be read, translated, versioned or downloaded for free.

At Pratham Books, we are shaping a new, innovative approach to multilingual publishing because we believe that every child needs good books to read in a language of their choice.

Job Description

We are looking for an Outreach Executive who will be part of the Outreach Team and will work closely with the Managers to support all outreach related activities. The core objective of the team is to forge strategic partnerships that facilitate the use of StoryWeaver’s digital resources with organizations that have programs which promote reading and learning among children. The team is responsible for strategizing and executing plans to increase the user base of StoryWeaver and also providing the necessary training and support to the partner network. The Outreach Executive will support the team by creating a database of potential partners, design communication to reach out to them, manage coordination/registrations of workshops during the year, maintain records and documentation of activities conducted.

Key Responsibilities

• Develop annual outreach plan in conjunction with Outreach Managers, with a detailed activity plan to reach the desired goals

• Build a database of potential partners

• Liaison with internal and external stakeholders for outreach projects.

• Maintain and nurture relationships with partner organisations and foundations

• Reporting and documentation

Qualifications

Graduate Degree

• 2+ years of work experience in Sales, Marketing, Outreach or a related area

• Experience in Education and/or Development sector is an added benefit

• Good interpersonal and verbal/written communication skills

• Ability to work effectively with a wide range of stakeholders    

• Ability to gather data, analyze information, and prepare reports and documents.

• Skill in organizing resources and establishing priorities.

Location: This role is based out of Bangalore and is full-time.

Salary: Compensation will be commensurate with experience. Interested candidates are requested to send in their resume to [email protected] with the heading Outreach Executive in the subject line.

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