Bengaluru tech start-up wins $1mn in Elon Musk-backed competition
What's the story
Chimple Learning, a two-year-old Bengaluru-based technology start-up, has become one of the finalists of "Global Learning XPRIZE" competition, winning a $1mn milestone prize. The idea behind the $15mn competition, funded by Elon Musk, is to develop learning software solutions for empowering children across the globe. Chimple is among the five finalist teams selected from a total of 198 global entries. Find out more!
Information
About the competition
The Global Learning XPRIZE competition began in Sep'14. 198 teams from across the globe challenged each other to develop learning solutions to teach reading, writing and arithmetic to children in developing nations within an 18-month competition field-testing period.
Chimple Learning
Current methods of education are getting older: Chimple team lead
Chimple team lead, Srikanth Talapadi, invested his own money in the start-up to help it meet "Global Learning XPRIZE" level. Talapadi always believed there was a need "to make learning better and exciting" for children. Chimple's 12-member team designed 60 learning games. They developed a prototype in Kannada language which was given to 20 first-grade students, via tablets, at a school in Bengaluru's Gottigere.
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Srikanth Talapadi's statement
"(Based on the prototype) We realized that children like to play a lot of games, and don't like too much instruction. We also understood that they are very social, if a child learns something and is excited by it, he/she will share it with others."