A software that helps children learn English


Product will be rolled out in 1,00,000 Indian schools

An Artificial Intelligence (AI)-based software that helps read and comprehend any material in English has improved learning outcomes for an estimated one million Indian students across eight Indian States in 2016-17. The product, developed by Indian-American entrepreneur Venkat Srinivasan, is set to roll out in 1,00,000 Indian schools, covering at least 15 million children in 2018.

The U.S. Agency for International Funding and Mr. Srinivasan’s company EnglishHelper funded the 2016-17 expansion with support from some corporate social responsibility funds and high net worth individuals. “EnglishHelper is going to fund the 2018 roll out target of 1,00,000 schools ourselves,” Mr. Srinivsan said.

Mr. Srinivasan, a Chennai-born, Chartered Accountant-turned-AI-enthusiast, has built a number of companies, all harnessing the potential of AI. His company Rage Frameworks was acquired by Genpact in 2017 for an undisclosed amount.

Entrepreneurship has brought him immense wealth, but Mr. Srinivasan prefers to call himself a “social entrepreneur”. “Social enterprise for me is measuring success by impact, not profit. These are for profit businesses, but they are built and designed for impact,” Mr. Srinivasan, a philanthropist, said.

EnglishHelper machine reads the existing textbooks as they are, and develops them into more effective teaching material. “The programme trains itself on the curriculum-prescribed textbook. It then assists the teacher to focus on ensuring that students are learning and enables students to learn,” Mr. Srinivasan told The Hindu in an interview.

“A major advantage of this AI intervention is that it is within the current infrastructure and implemented by the current teachers,” he said, noting that one major limitation of most social interventions is that they come with their proprietary content and methods which makes scaling them very difficult. “…not to mention the significant change management involved”.....Read more

 

Source web page:The Hindu

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