Chimple Learning, a two year old Bangalore-based startup, has been selected as one of the finalists of “Global Learning XPRIZE” competition and has been awarded ₹6.4 crore ($1 million).
The Global Learning program from XPRIZE, which is awarding around $15 million via this competition, has been funded by Elon Musk. The idea behind this competition is to develop learning software solutions for empowering children across the globe.
Chimple, which is a self-funded non-profit entity, is among the five finalist teams selected from a total of 198 global entries. It has been working to radically improve how children read and learn.
So, how this startup makes children read and learn? Simple — by incorporating game playing into learning. It believes that the fun challenges of a game and the exhilaration of winning one could be a game changer in the field of learning.
The company, which has a 12-member team, has so far designed 60 learning games. They have also developed a prototype in Kannada language which was given to 20 first-grade students, via tablets.
The software from the company gamifies each aspect of the learning process and customise the rewards to each child’s ability. This ensures that every child gets a sense of achievement at the end of the learning day.
The XPRIZE Foundation, which is running this Global Learning program, is a non-profit organization that designs and promotes public competitions to bring about technological developments beneficial to humanity.
The goal of this program is to “empower children to take control of their learning.” More specifically, the program “challenges teams from around the world to develop open source and scalable software” to help children in developing countries teach themselves basic literacy and arithmetic skills within 15 months.
According to UNESCO, some 250 million children around the world lack basic arithmetic skills and 1.6 million teachers are needed to fill the gap.