Driven by a need to lend a helping hand to the country’s neglected and educationally deprived children, after working in India’s booming IT (information technology) industry for 18 years with blue-chip corporates including Wipro, i-flex, Deustche Software and HCL, Latha Srinivasan, a software engineer and business management graduate of Bharathiar University, Coimbatore and U-21 Global, Singapore went solo in 2009 and promoted the Bangalore-based Chipper Sage Pvt. Ltd. Since then, the company has established a library and learning centre which provides bulk lending, group reading, teacher training services for schools and child-friendly English, science and maths learning progammes for children in the age group 2-14.
Arvind Venkatadri, an electronics engineering alum of R.V. College, Bangalore and IIT-Roorkee, also acquired vast experience over a period of 21 years working with ISRO and IT industry majors such as C-Dot, Wipro and Texas Instruments before signing up (2007) as head (library programmes) of the Bangalore-based Akshara Foundation, promoted by social entrep-reneur Rohini Nilekani which has established 1,620 libraries in government primary schools in Karnataka. In mid 2013, Venkatadri put in his papers and signed up with Chipper Sage which has seven full-time and 12 part-time employees on its muster roll.
Newspeg. In September, Chipper Sage launched its latest English language learning product for 2-14 year olds branded Smart Tiles. Somewhat reminiscent of scrabble blocks, a lower kindergarten set of 60 tiles comprising alphabets, phonics and consonants blend tiles, magnetic board and text-book, is priced at a modest Rs.650. With phased subsequent purchases of a total of 220 tiles, a child will normatively develop an English vocabulary of 3,000 words by age seven.
Direct talk. “Smart Tiles is based on the pedagogy of sight word recognition which enables children — and illiterate adults — to recognise entire words and memorise their meaning. In school, Smart Tiles is supported by our software program branded Flow of English which is teacher-led and develops the LSR (listening, speaking and reading) skills of children. The USP (unique sales proposition) of Smart Tiles is that children keep them at home for self- learning and reinforce what they learn in their classrooms,” says Srinivasan who designed the software which supports the Flow of English and Smart Tiles programs.
History. The first ‘product’ launched by Chipper Sage in 2009 was Tailorbird, a library-cum-learning centre for children to visit as often as they liked to read age-appropriate English books and listen to readings and indulge in play-cum-learning activities. Subsequently the company introduced its Leader Reader (a schools-based, teacher-led progr-amme to develop English reading and compreh-ension skills of preschool to class VII students); teacher-led science exper-iments, and Win-O-Math programme designed to help children learn basic maths “willingly and effortlessly”. Smart Tiles is the latest English vocabulary development programme developed by the company.
Future plans. With Venkatadri’s excellent track record of establishing over 1,620 affordable and customised libraries in schools across Karnataka, Chipper Sage has drawn up plans to multiply its Tailorbird libraries-cum-learning centres countrywide. “There’s huge and unsat-isfied demand for English language learning across the country which is exacerbated by a massive shortage of adequately trained teachers. Our Leader Reader software package priced at a mere Rs.500-1,600, which is a great aid to teachers in government and budget schools, supplemented by Smart Tiles which enables children to learn English at home, has the potential to substantially meet this unfulfilled demand,” says Venkatadri.
God speed!
Dilip Thakore (Bangalore)