NSRCEL, the start-up hub at IIM Bangalore, through its Social Program, aims to support early-stage non-profits and for-profit ventures with a focus on harnessing digital technology to tackle pressing social problems. Learning Matters is one such venture.
Learning Matters is an award-winning ed-tech organization headquartered in Bangalore. They focus on one of the largest problems faced by the Indian education sector – falling quality of learning outcomes in the majority of students. They use tech tools and Artificial Intelligence to solve this systemic problem and to scale the solution effectively, to large numbers of schools, teachers and students. Voice technology is slowly gaining recognition for its many advantages and benefits and in three to five years, is going to play a very big role in education. They use voice technology along with Artificial Intelligence to reach schools in the middle and bottom of the pyramid through their virtual voice teacher – Tara. Tara also has a comprehensive suite of educational solutions centred around it – a digital content platform on the cloud and teacher training programmes (both long-term and short-term) which work along with Tara in a systemic and systematic manner to improve teacher quality and improve student learning outcomes. Tara uses voice-tech platforms (such as Amazon’s Alexa) along with proprietary content created by Learning Matters’ experts. Tara currently teaches spoken English to learners on Alexa (either through a voice-enabled device such as the Echo Dot or a smartphone).
About the Founders: Learning Matters was founded by Ramamoorthy G (Moorthy), Gowri Mahesh and Saraswathy Ramamoorthy. Gowri, Saras and Moorthy are from the education and technology domains in which they have worked for about 20 years each.
How NSRCEL’s program has helped the start-up: In the first quarter, Learning Matters interacted with several mentors who provided guidance and assistance in developing various components of the programme. In the last three months, Learning Matters has completed initiating the following tasks with support from the following mentors:
- Mentor: Archana Pillai: Developing Theory of Change and Stakeholder Mapping
- Mentor: Ananth Chandramouli: Insight into South East Asia Market and scouting for potential contacts
- Mentors: Veena Deshpande; Mangirish Herwadkar: Update on progress made on the Products and Engineering side; mentors have agreed to help further with contacts/experiences/technical knowhow of people/businesses who have used AI-based voice technology
Mentor: Rajiv Kucchal: He has offered to keep an eye on potential funding opportunities and impact investors who might be able to help
