Ed-tech startup to offer free AI, coding & robotics courses for children in rural areas

Robochamps, an edtech start-up dedicated to introducing kids to early AI education, recently launched online courses in robotics and coding in multiple languages, including Hindi, Gujarati, Punjabi, and English.

An official release said the company would provide free courses to kids in the age group of 6 to 17 years, living in rural areas.

Robochamps has entered the vernacular segment in view of the sudden surge in the number of inquiries from Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities, following the launch of its English online courses. Within a month of the launch of its English courses, its website has received 3 million footfalls.

Robochamps aims to use language localisation as a key channel to penetrate rural and semi-urban markets in India and will soon launch courses in other local languages.

The company will help students experience hands-on practice in STEM Subjects by using robotics and other digital methodologies. The start-up will also conduct a series of webinars to guide children in their careers and will also collaborate with famous academicians such as Anand Kumar.

Akshay Ahuja, CEO & Founder, RoboChamps said in an official statement: “As per market research company Kantar, India’s rural market is contributing in a big way to the digital revolution, with a 45 per cent growth in internet penetration in 2019, as compared to urban India’s 11 per cent. Rural India has 264 million internet users; this is expected to touch 304 million in 2020. Also, the report highlights that local language content and video drive the Internet boom in rural India, with a 2.5 times rise in penetration in the last four years.”

According to Ahuja, the Internet and smartphones have been used widely by rural India for the past couple of years. A number of brands across sectors have made an entry through both these mediums and made an impact using language localisation. “Our motto is just the same; creating young AI Millenials in rural India so they can help prevent a future pandemic. We plan to train children to make apps, robots, and other tech innovations that could minimise human interventions. With the launch of our vernacular courses, we are targeting to capture more than 150 cities across India by the year-end and reach 2 lakh students in the next 1 month,” he added.

The start-up has been operating in a B2B offline classroom model. With the help of its team of specialised trainers, it will educate students online through various curriculums it has been using across schools, the company said.

According to a report by IAMAI and Nielsen, as of November 2019 rural India had 227 million active Internet users, 10 per cent more than urban India’s 205 million users. The report highlights that the rural areas have 22.7 crore Internet users, while in urban areas, the active number of Internet users is 20.5 crore. The findings also said the country has around 71 million kids in the 5-11 age group who use the internet from their family members’ devices. Google’s recent report states that Hindi web consumption has grown over 90 per cent during 2015-16, while English content growth was only 19 per cent.