Swoyan Satyendu
Founder & CEO
The need of a mentor to harness one’s true potential echoes equally across all walks of life. But do mere school students also need proper mentorship? This is the one question that led to the foundation of DIGICHAMPS, an idea that says yes to the question just asked. Incepted in 2016, DIGICHAMPS is one–of-the-first EduTech platforms in Eastern India that aims to change the dynamics of the current education system in India. With a simple process designed to help students not only to score marks but also to understand and retain the concepts they learn, DIGICHAMPS ensures that a child grows in his weak concepts with the help of a step-by-step systematic approach, under the guidance of a dedicated expert whom they call DIGIGURU.

“Our end-motive is to help a child grow! For this, we believe individual attention is most important. But with scarcity of good teachers being an everyday reality, individual attention becomes a myth for aspiring students. This is where we have introduced technology to improve the entire teaching-learning process by upto 60 percent,”informs Swoyan Satyendu, Founder & CEO.

The company provides real-life based practical videos on the CBSE curriculum of Mathematics and Science accompanied with analytical tests, study notes, question banks, dictionary and other such complementing study boosters absolutely free so everyone could learn without barriers.

“With our advanced tests and analytics, each child in a class gets to know in which chapter’s which concept is he strong or weak at,and at the same time the teacher gets a cumulative analysis of how many students require help in exactly which concepts,” he says.

The Formation of a Mentorship Platform
The ideation behind DIGICHAMPS is a humble story which took shape when Satyendu got an opportunity to do a cameo in his father’s school. That is when he realised the untapped opportunities in the education space. Coming with an experience in e-commerce, Satyendu was quick to sense the requirement of technological innovation and more efficient practices in the K-12 space. “The biggest thing I noticed was that we were not personalizing the approach of education for all the students. That is the problem that I wanted to solve and that is when the journey of DIGICHAMPS began”

The initial days at DIGICHAMPS were challenging! The journey began with only a handful of people,

inexperienced, under-qualified, undaunted with a never-say-die attitude. “As we took on more challenges, we grew in number and therefore in strength. United we stood to do the impossible, completing the entire content of Maths and Science from class VI-X, only in a matter of 9 months. Our product launch took place in June, 2017 post which there was no looking back, Satyendu mentions.

"Even top-quality content and analysis will not ensure a child’s academic growth unless the child follows the process regularly. To ensure he does, we have introduced the DIGIGURU."

The team constantly strived and their hard work was soon recognized. They were awarded as the Best Start-up in Education 2016 by Odisha Business Awards and also at BIG-Shift by Inc42 and Amazon Web Services. Soon after this, the team rolled out their B2B model and in a span of six months, they implemented the Individualised Learning Program in 80schools, catering to a collective strength of around 55,000 students, just across Eastern India. This time, they were honoured with the Innovative Digital Learning System of the year award by the Secretary, HRD Ministry.

“We believe we have achieved this because of being able to provide an individualistic learning approach to each student. We understand every single child is different but today’s mass learning system fails to accurately acknowledge the individual weaknesses unique to a child. When we identify such weaknesses right, we are able to work upon them better. This is why we are being loved and readily accepted by most of the schools and the young minds studying in them,” he says.

Dedicated Mentor for each Child
The DIGICHAMPS team aims to identify exactly in which concept a child is going wrong and then ensure his growth under expert guidance by a DIGIGURU. They treat every single child as a unique individual with unique strengths, unique weaknesses and hence unique needs.

Satyendu says, “We have just introduced technology into the picture to take care of the teacher-to-student ratio, and in the process, weare trying to make the content practical and fun, so that children would enjoy watching it.”

Talking about their systematic approach, the team flips the general method and introduces a test before a chapter called the Pre-requisite Test. A child is tested on the basics needed to understand a complex chapter. If he performs well on the test, he gets the confidence to proceed further without fear. If he doesn’t, he understands exactly which concepts he needs to brush up so that he can understand the coming chapter best. His DIGIGURU analyses the weak areas and helps develop the child’s basics, then ensure he watches the videos covering that topic. The videos are made keeping in mind the attention

span of an average child, keeping them fun and experimental to achieve higher understanding. Post the videos, another dedicated test called the Chapter Based Test identifies in which concepts of that particular chapter is the child weak at. The DIGIGURU then works with the child on exactly those concepts so he understands them and hence, grows inevitably. A 24x7 Doubt Clearing empowers the child to clarify any extra doubts, at any point in time.

“Even after catering top quality content and analytics, one cannot really guarantee a child’s growth unless the child follows the entire process. This is exactly why we have attached a Personal Mentor, a DIGIGURU, for every child. Heunderstands the specific needs and then makes a short-term as well as a long-term plan which he ensures that a child follows properly so he has fun in learning and grows unquestionably.All this at a price less than their generaltuitions!” he informs.

The DIGICHAMPS app-flow follows the same structure as the learning process. There’s the Learn section offering video lessons complimented by the PRT and the CBT. The real-life video lessons help children understand a concept better and the tests evaluate how much have they understood so they can exactly work on what they haven’t. Even the study materials including Notes and Question Banks help the child increase in knowledge through practice. If a child has any doubt, it could be cleared in the 24x7 Doubt Clearing Section. And his DIGIGURU will ensure he follows the entire process regularly to ensure unquestionable results.

A Road to Endless Possibilities
Over the last two years, DIGICHAMPS has had a phenomenal growth. Starting with 2 persons, the company has grown to a team of 60 now,from few to 55,000 students on-board, and from a one-room office to a 5000 sq.ft. office. They are also working with Governments of Jharkhand, Assam and Odisha to make efficient teaching and learning methodologies affordable and accessible for the state-board students.

The company has recently started an initiative- School on Wheels.

“We are initiating a digital bus with all the required Odia Medium Content for State schools. That bus will run from village to village and organize evening classes with the e-learning module. We are currently promoting digital education in Odisha's nook and corner. This is something we will be doing completely for free to truly reach out to the bottom of pyramid,” expresses Satyendu.

In the next five-six months, team DIGICHAMPS envisions reaching two lakh students other than introducing AI in the field of personal mentorship. “We are getting the right team set for both these things and also looking for expert guidance to help us here,” he concludes.