Rajat Dhariwal, Madhumita Halder and Manuj Dhariwal are co-founders of the Bangalore-based MadRat Games Pvt. Ltd (estb. 2009), which has designed Aksharit, a first-of-its-type word boardgame in Hindi.
Newspeg. Aksharit has recently been introduced in ten regional languages including Kannada, Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, and Bengali. The mobile telephony behemoth Nokia recently bought the rights of Aksharit’s mobile version to introduce it in its newly launched range of N8 handsets, while Intel has partnered with MadRat Games to release India-centric apps (applications) for its Netbooks and AppUp store.
Unique proposition. “Though Scrabble — the popular word game in the English language — has existed for the past six decades, there’s no word game in Hindi or any other Indian language. Aksharit is the first word boardgame developed in Hindi and is now available in ten regional languages. By playing this stimulating word-building game, children can develop vernacular language vocabularies and skills,” says Rajat Dhariwal, ‘head rat’ of MadRat Games. A computer science graduate of IIT-Bombay and Carnegie Mellon University, USA, Dhariwal rejected plum corporate jobs to follow his “true passion and calling” — teaching. On his return to India in January 2006, he and his wife Madhumita, a batchmate from IIT-Bombay, signed up as science teachers at the alternative-style Rishi Valley School, Chittoor.
Genesis. “It was while teaching at Rishi Valley that Madhumita and I discovered the power of play as a learning tool through which children can find solutions to the toughest problems. I quit my job at Rishi Valley in May 2009 to promote MadRat Games together with my brother Manuj and was joined a year later by Madhumita. The objective of MadRat is to develop games which will help children and adults learn through play,” says Rajat who gives Manuj — ‘the ideating rat’ — credit for designing the first prototype of Aksharit.
According to Madhumita, the ‘design rat’, Aksharit has been well received by schools, teachers, parents and children. “The education ministries of the Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and more recently West Bengal, state governments have accepted and introduced Aksharit in their schools. We are also working closely with NGOs such as the Azim Premji Foundation, the American Institute of Indian Studies, Eklavya and the Vidya Bhawan Society to spread awareness about Aksharit as a fun game to help children learn their native languages,” says Madhumita.
Future plans. The creative trio has drawn up ambitious plans to transform MadRat Games into a full-fledged educational games company.
Paromita Sengupta (Bangalore)