Exclusive Interview with Mridul Ranjan Sahu, Co-founder, CuriousJr

Curiosity Edtech Private Limited (CuriousJr) is a Gurugram-based online platform that was established in September 2020 to facilitate coding learning for children aged 8 to 17. It is mobile-first, offers a curriculum in vernacular languages, and allows students to publish and share their works with the greater community. Analytics Insight has engaged in an exclusive interview with Mridul Ranjan Sahu, Co-founder, CuriousJr.

1. Kindly brief us about the company, its specialization, and the services that your company offers.

Curiosity Edtech Private Limited (CuriousJr) is a Gurugram-based online platform that was established in September 2020 to facilitate coding learning for children aged 8 to 17. It is mobile-first, offers a curriculum in vernacular languages, and allows students to publish and share their works with the greater community. CuriousJr aspires to be the most trusted learning platform, providing technology-assisted, impact-based learning to 500 million children worldwide by 2030.

2. With what mission and objectives was the company set up? In short, tell us about your journey since the inception of the company?

During the lockdown, along with my college friends and co-founders of CuriousJr, Ali and Amit got on a Zoom call and started writing down challenges we could address that would empower children all across the world. CuriousJr was born out of this need for a mobile solution for K12 children to learn to code. We planned the MVP and launched our first product within 3 months of that zoom call in September 2020.

It started with the idea of enabling students without laptops to learn to code on their mobiles. The team is envisioning and innovating coding on small displays in order to enable students to study and code on mobile devices. The CuriousJr App Store was created so that children could publish and share their work with their friends and family. Later, a competition platform was developed so that students could compete with their fellow coders to see where they were in the ecosystem.

Currently, the app has over one million downloads and a 4.8-star rating on the Google Play store.

We further aim to create the most trusted learning platform that offers technology-assisted, impact-based learning to 500 million kids across the globe by 2030.

3. Kindly share your point of view on the current scenario of Big Data Analytics and its future.

In recent years, big data analytics has become a phenomenon in the business world, with companies and organisations realising their potential. It is fueling everything we do online and in every industry. The Indian data analytics industry is massive, and it is predicted to reach the US $118.7 billion by 2026, owing to the government's push for digitalisation and the development of new data centres.

Companies and government agencies use data analytics to collect data and find patterns. This assists in the generation of improved decision-making insights and automates the decision-making process.

The enormous potential of data analytics and big data in the education sector, in particular, is transforming digital education from exclusive to accessible. It increases quality and overcomes the limits of traditional learning approaches in terms of time, place, and participation. The data points we collect about each and every user help us learn more about them, such as how they learn, what they need to simplify their learning, when is the best time for them to learn, what kind of content they prefer, what excites them to learn more, and how we can help and recommend suitable content. From the standpoint of the teacher and the institution, they are able to use that data to educate in an effective manner and to use technology in the appropriate way so that they may automate the activity that involves more physical effort but has a lower outcome. It assists teachers in delivering more interesting content in a better manner and at the proper pace, hence improving student performance.

As we move forward, big data will continue to play a huge role in improving the current models we have and allowing for advancements in research. As data grows and expands, cloud storage providers will provide additional features and versions to aid in the storage of big data. This gives businesses more scalability and efficiency. This also means that more employees will be hired to handle this data, which creates more job prospects for data officers to administer a company's database. The data analytics industry is expected to employ more than 11 million people by 2026, with investments in artificial intelligence and machine learning increasing by 33.49 percent.

4. What is your biggest USP that differentiates the company from competitors?

We are focused on making coding accessible for everyone by innovating practice-led coding on mobile phones and making learning effective with vernacular content. India has 88% of students out of 270 million who do not have access to laptops. To help everyone learn to code, we need to bring innovative solutions that are compatible with our system, hence CuriousJr solving for the masses to learn coding. Mobile brings in scalable solutions that have the capability to educate more than 100 million students at a time. CuriousJr's goal is to bring 100 million K-12 students in the next 5 years onto the platform.

5. Please brief us about the products/services/solutions you provide to your customers and how do they get value out of it

CuriousJr is a mobile-first coding app for kids that provides lessons in vernacular languages and enables the publishing and sharing of creations by students with their friends, family, and within the larger community. We also have a competition platform developed for students to compete with their fellow coders and be a part of the ecosystem.

Students can learn multiple languages on mobile devices, like Block Coding and JavaScript, along with concepts of computer fundamentals. Very soon, more languages like Python, HTML, and CSS will be launched. We are in the process of building a class-wise practice-oriented curriculum so that quality education can reach the masses.

We have identified and devised a 3-step learning process in which students learn in bite-size content, code on the code arena, and publish their creations on the CuriousJr App Store. Also, students can follow the guided learning curriculum to learn more about coding in a structured way. Students do love the learning process and like to use apps and games with their peers.

6. The industry is seeing the rising importance of business and technology enablers like virtualization, convergence, and cloud. How do you see these emerging technologies impacting your business sector?

Digital transformation is made possible by technology. Until recently, most organisations' digital innovation was based on four technological areas: social, mobile, analytics, and cloud. The digital transformation is now being accelerated by the IoT, Big Data, Virtual Reality, and Artificial Intelligence. The adoption of big data, artificial intelligence (AI), and the Internet of Things is driving the growth of the cloud services industry in India. From INR 384 billion in 2020 to INR 1,103.4 billion in 2025, Indian public cloud services consumption is estimated to expand at a CAGR of 29%. Next-generation applications and new business opportunities are created by all of these technological domains coming together.

In the education sector, in particular, technology has now made it possible to match academic learning and skills training with real-world needs. We can see technology's impact in the education industry in areas including personalising learning experiences, holistic learning and overall student development, multi-sensory education, and gamification, among many others. They have fostered more effective collaboration between academia and industry in the education sector to ensure skill development.

7. Where do you see growth coming for the sector?

EdTech is growing every day, and India is able to solve problems that are acceptable globally. In 2020, Indian EdTech start-ups raised more than $1.43 billion in 100 deals. Both parents and educational institutions were pushed to implement tech-enabled learning solutions as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic disruptions and subsequent lockdowns, making EdTech the most well-funded sector in the country.

8. What are some of the challenges faced by the industry today?

Despite the enormous development potential, EdTech companies in India face numerous challenges, including poor accessibility and inadequate infrastructure, a lack of uniform principles, and inadequate training for online preparation. The obstacles are compounded by online learning and acceptance issues, as well as the different mentalities of online students.