GUVI, a platform to help students learn technology in their regional languages, has received a funding of ₹6 crore to carry forward its educational technology platform. Last year, it had received funding of ₹1 crore from a U.S.-based company.
The funding comes in the wake of GUVI opening up its platform during the lockdown for students. It is an online regional-language based education technology company incubated at the Research Park in the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, with support from the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad.
S.P. Balamurugan, who completed Master’s in Computer Application from Anna University, began his career in PayPal. He along with two other colleagues, M. Arun Prakash and M. Sri Devi used their free time to develop short videos in Tamil to enable students to learn technical concepts better.
Mr. Balamurugan said the idea emerged when they sat on the recruitment panel as part of their company. They hosted their videos on YouTube which became popular. This encouraged them to make similar material in Kannada and Telugu. What started as a small initiative has since spawned a company. The “edu tech” platform has been associated with at least 1,000 colleges. Now, GUVI has its own platform.
GUVI’s work caught the attention of the IIT-M Research Park officials, who invited them to build a startup. With soft loans from the Institute, GUVI built its base. Recently it started developing content in Arabic and Malay. “The experience taught him that students’ retention ability is higher when they learn in their own language. It helps if they can learn in the language that they speak and are comfortable with,” Mr. Balamurugan said.
The company will use the funds to scale up their platform and offer new courses. According to him, the effort started as a method to impart skills to students and improve their chances of finding employment.
