STARTUP GOA

By IG Team

CREATING SUSTAINABLE CODING EDUCATION FOR THE KIDS

With more than a decade of “ experience as an assistant professor in The IT (Information Technology) Department in one of the leading

Engineering & Science Colleges of

Goa, Suwarna completed her Bachelor of

Engineering in the field of I.T. in year 2007. The only daughter of to her parents she is a mother of seven year

old boy. ”

With more than a decade of experience as an assistant professor in The IT (Information Technology) Department in o n e o f t h e l e a d i n g E n g i n e e r i n g & S c i e n c e Colleges of Goa, Suwarna completed her Bachelor of Engineering in the field of I.T. i n y e a r 2 0 0 7 . T h e o n l y daughter of to her parents she is a mother of seven year old boy. After working as a professor for more than a decade and teaching the Information technology to the students she decided to come pursue her d r e a m s i n t h e f i e l d o f entrepreneurship and today she runs an upcoming startup dealing with the emotional intelligent of the students who wants to excel in the field of coding.

When and Why did you decide to enter into your own business ?

I belong to the IT field and the speciality of this field is you can make use of this platform to solve the problems and when I saw the students struggling in coding because their basics were not very strong I decided to solve this p r o b l e m b y c r e a t i n g a platform that will teach them coding at tender age with the help of a play and learn kit. I believe that if they have been given an opportunity to learn the coding in tender age they will develop a liking towards it and in future that will become much simpler for them. When I v i s i t e d t h e g o v e r n m e n t s c h o o l s i n t h e s t a t e f o r conducting workshops I was shocked to see that so many students had a talent and scope for doing something but they had no means to access the required knowledge. After discovering that there is a need of giving access to the c o d i n g t o t h o s e underprivileged students, I decided to train them with the Coding skills and teach them robotics that will help them in their future growth and job prospects not matter what profession they chose they will come across the technology. According to me the child who has learned the tech skills has better concentration level and develops a more innovative and creative mind.

What are the hurdles you faced initially and how did you overcome that ?

The major hurdle was creating awareness among the parents that learning tech at an early age in very important thanks to NEP, our product is very well connected to the Coding requirements of NEP. Second hurdle was searching f o r t h e r i g h t t a l e n t a s employees as most talented people prefer to migrate to metro cities in a search of better prospects and finding them locally and those willing to work with startups took us some time.

What challenges you are facing now and how you are trying to over come that?

The major challenge in front of me is reaching out to the investors and once that is done which seems to be very difficult, connecting to the e d u c a t i o n a l i n s t i t u t e s , specially the government schools where the access to tech and coding is rare and last but not the least is getting a local manufacturer of the kits at very competitive price.

How is the startup scenario in Goa and how much it helped you till date ?

The state government and Incubators are trying to build an ecosystem that is suited best for the startups in Goa. Right from having policies to understanding what exactly startups need has been a long way. Goa is definitely getting better at being the startup state. We have been backed by the incubators and have received a lot of help on our business development. They have also helped us raise funds from startup India.

How scalable is your idea and what are your short

term and long term plans ?

We are in the process of creating a Self sustainable, Multilevel touch and feel kits based on curated content. Affordable & Interdisciplinary solution to existing pain points. State of the art m e t h o d o l o g y t o i m p a r t k n o w l e d g e o f I Q & E Q offering more affordable solutions. Our products will soon reach pan India while also focusing on tier 2 and 3 cities. Our short term goal is to Make the best gamified product for learning coding and EQ, and our Long term Goal is to be the first and the best gamified learning company. In simple terms we want to create chefs of technology who could cook an excellent technological innovation simplifying the life of common man.

You have already received the funding, how much it helped you in prototyping and scaling?

We have already burned half of the funding so far and have moved beyond being just a prototype. The funds have definitely helped us explore new vendors outside Goa and get better quality products at a lesser price. We used the funds basically for production, m a n p o w e r h i r i n g a n d marketing.

What are your future plans ?

I n t r o d u c i n g t h e h y b r i d learning ways which includes Tech as well as Social skills for children in the age group 10-16 years. We are working towards providing the best gaming experience while keeping the learning going the fun way. This will surely provide more skilled employees ready for industrial revolution 4.0