Rajeev Pathak started his career as a rocket scientist with ISRO between 1994 and 1996, where he was part of the INSAT 2-C, INSAT 2-D and INSAT 2-E teams. He joined Wipro in 1997 and went on to head the $100 million ISV (software products group) business, before leaving to start eDreams Edusoft in 2010, with the vision of creating student centric technology innovations and inventions. They launched the product FunToot, an intelligent and adaptive personal tutor, after spending almost four years in the research and development of pedagogy and technology, using 40 experts.

FunToot is a digital tutor that helps children learn based on their interests, overcome issues during study, improve the speed of learning and other characteristics. It has been built using dozens of algorithms around artificial intelligence, machine learning and natural language processing, for which the company has filed patents.

FunToot gains experience as more and more students use it, and gets personalised as students start spending more time on it. It organises information using complex ontology, similar to the way the human brain contextualises knowledge. Teachers can schedule homework and assignments that are served automatically to the students. They can also assign them pre-study material before a topic is taught in class. Detailed analytics about the progress of each student allow teachers to identify learning gaps and remedy the same. FunToot currently has a deep knowledge of Maths for Grade 2 to 9, and Science from Grade 2 to 5.

FunToot has won the Bloomberg Pitch Award 2011-12; were finalists at the Marico Innovation Award 2012, and was selected by the Nasscom Social Innovation Foundation among the top 3 finalists for 2013.

Over the past two years, FunToot has identified and remediated four million learning gaps automatically, and has made six million learning interventions for more than 50,000 students. They have a presence across cities like Bangalore, Chennai, Hyderabad, Vijayawada, Tiruchy, Hubli, Belgaum, Kochi, Chikmagalur, Hassan, Mysore, Guntur, Karimnagar, Bhubaneshwar, Delhi, Jaipur, Kanpur and Chandigarh, and work with schools like DPS in south and central India, CBSE and State Board schools of KLE group, IGCSE schools like Vidya Sanskar, Faridabad and top residential schools like Oakgrove in Mussoorie.The software costs between `150 and `300 per student per month.

Pathak spent 19 years at Wipro, where he worked on technology products for global software product companies. “I realised that we can create global tech products from India, and had a deep desire to solve Indian problems using technology. I came from a humble background and succeeded in my career because of education. My children, who are studying, struggle with their homework every day. This is my way of giving back,” says Pathak about how he got motivated to start the venture.

FunToot now has a team of 100 people. Ram Jayaraman is the Vice-President, Engineering, who was with Pathak at Wipro as Chief Architect. Chintan Mehta is the Chief Product Officer, who was earlier Director of Product Management at Yahoo! Haris Poonthala takes care of Product Assurance, having worked at MindTree, Cisco, and Wipro.

For more details on the product, please visit www.edreamssoftware.com.

rohit@learnbizsimuations.com