RAJEEV PATHAK
Co-founder, eDreams Edusoft
Co-founder, eDreams Edusoft
Making Learning a Fun Experience
A need to make learning fun for children is what inspired a group of three friends to build technology company eDreams Edusoft. Rajeev Pathak, Suryaprakash Konanuru, and Haris Poonthala had two aspirations – create a fun product for children and build a global product company out of India. They created a software solution, Funtoot, which aids better learning at school and is delivered through the cloud. Pathak, the company’s CEO, claims it to be a clone of a human teacher. It observes and assesses each student’s ability and intervenes and corrects the child when he is solving questions on the software. Funtoot, built using technologies such as artificial intelligence and natural language processing, imitates the human brain and interacts with students through its virtual characters. The programme starts learning about the student right from the first interaction through a series of questions, like what sports does she like? “As more data comes in, the programme becomes more intelligent,” says Pathak, who quit his job at Wipro before giving wing to his idea. “The business model is all about making Funtoot work in the Indian market,” he adds. The trio pooled in their own savings of 30 lakh and raised a little over 50 lakh from friends and colleagues to launch the venture. Most of the employees didn’t even draw salaries for a year. However, as the firm scaled up, the company managed to raise 5 crore from Mumbai Angels in January 2012. The promoters plan to raise venture capital funding within a year. Funtoot is being used in 30 schools across South India. Pathak plans to take this number to 50 by March 2013. “We hope to reach 25,000 students by that time,” he adds. The company is also planning to bring out an athome PC-version.
Sreejoni Nag ET
A need to make learning fun for children is what inspired a group of three friends to build technology company eDreams Edusoft. Rajeev Pathak, Suryaprakash Konanuru, and Haris Poonthala had two aspirations – create a fun product for children and build a global product company out of India. They created a software solution, Funtoot, which aids better learning at school and is delivered through the cloud. Pathak, the company’s CEO, claims it to be a clone of a human teacher. It observes and assesses each student’s ability and intervenes and corrects the child when he is solving questions on the software. Funtoot, built using technologies such as artificial intelligence and natural language processing, imitates the human brain and interacts with students through its virtual characters. The programme starts learning about the student right from the first interaction through a series of questions, like what sports does she like? “As more data comes in, the programme becomes more intelligent,” says Pathak, who quit his job at Wipro before giving wing to his idea. “The business model is all about making Funtoot work in the Indian market,” he adds. The trio pooled in their own savings of 30 lakh and raised a little over 50 lakh from friends and colleagues to launch the venture. Most of the employees didn’t even draw salaries for a year. However, as the firm scaled up, the company managed to raise 5 crore from Mumbai Angels in January 2012. The promoters plan to raise venture capital funding within a year. Funtoot is being used in 30 schools across South India. Pathak plans to take this number to 50 by March 2013. “We hope to reach 25,000 students by that time,” he adds. The company is also planning to bring out an athome PC-version.
Sreejoni Nag ET
2 comments:
Wow..the Software product seemed to be Supercomputer or Super-Robo kind.
Thanks for sharing Sir
My pleasure..Thanks for feedback
Post a Comment