Learning Via Educational Advertisements

Coming from an underprivileged background, Vijay Kantharia – founder and CEO of Cerebroz EduTree, faced various struggles in life to achieve something. With the support of his mother, who was the single owner in the family, Vijay was able to complete his studies and become a researcher. He has served in premier research institutes of India such as Indian Institute of Sciences (IISc), Institute of Genomics and Integrative Biology (IGIB) and also Stower Institute of medical research in USA. 

“Once I was there everything was going great until I realised that I was spending quite a lot of time on screen, be it a TV screen or mobile screen”, says Vijay Kantharia. He further elaborates and told that it was not just him but the whole world was doing the same, everyone has become, more or less, a slave to digital screen. With the access of new age technologies, everything around the world is changing, the world is influenced by what they see on these digital screens. And the most affected population are the children starting from the age of 4 to 5 years. 

“While watching television, we don’t watch any advertisement carefully and switch channels when the ads appear but still we remember them thoroughly”, he said. Kids tend to catch the advertisements, they speak or sing advertisements as it appears. Even though they don’t try to memorise it but it happens automatically.

Thinking about this issue Vijay had an idea that instead of remembering these advertisements and getting bombarded with brand messages, one can learn something positive and useful content through the same medium. “To validate the idea I travelled wide in US, Europe and India talking to people of different geography and asking them about the problem of screen addiction and the solution we plan to develop”, says Vijay.

After talking to people and analysing the issue, he came up with the idea to replace television advertisements with educational content and thus Cerebroz EduTree was born. Vijay quit his research career and came back to India to work on his start-up. With an initial investment of 30 lakhs, Vijay bootstrapped for a couple of years and developed the prototype to demonstrate which garnered interests in the form of pre-orders.

Vijay says, “As the screen addiction is growing day by day and the whole world is influenced by it, Cerebroz EduTree is the need of the hour to solve screen addiction. We take pride in being the world’s first and only Technology Company solving this global problem. Parents are really concerned about their kids with over usage of digital screens”.

“As a generation who has lived in both the era, where there was a use of minimal technology and the era where technology took over, we feel that we can understand this problem in a better way. We feel it’s our moral responsibility as well to tackle the problem and save the world from plunging into total chaos”, he added.

EduTree also solves the problem of screen addiction in a holistic way by working on television as well as on mobile phones and tablets through its unique app. The product solves the new-age problem of screen addiction and the old-age problem of better education in the most innovative and effective way possible so far.

“EduTree is a blessing for our kids and this is the much needed innovation in todays time”, says Vishwnath Thomre, EduTree user hailing from Vadodara.

EduTree is an interactive learning tool for replacing television advertisements with educational content that is of the same duration as an advertisement. The educational content created aims to teach a topic in a short span of time. The product works as a middle technology disruptor between television, computer, and mobile phone and can also be used as a WiFi router. The product has five major features called EduTips, EduTest, EduProgress, EduEye, and Educast.

EduTips provides guidance and counseling for kids and parents. EduTest is an interactive learning platform to assess knowledge and learning. EduProgress is an application to keep track of the learning activities for kids along with the ranking system. EduEye is a uniquely designed parental control system. Educast is used as a mirror with the mobile screen to a larger screen of TV or Projector.

Cerebroz aspires to make the world where technology can be used to its full potential and benefit mankind in the most positive manner possible. The company’s vision is to make the world where people use technology rather than being used by it.

The company has received its first funding of 4.7 crore rupees from a Dubai based company, Human Network International (HNI) and generated a revenue of one crore rupees in a short span of time.

The company plans to expand across India by the year 2020, sticking to the current innovation and make it penetrate further into the market. Vijay also plans to launch the product in the Middle East, North African, US and European markets.

“As a founder, I have a target to make our start-up a unicorn by December 2020. I would like Cerebroz EduTree to be one of the billion dollar start-up India has produced. In the next 3-5 years we want EduTree to be in each and every house hold around the globe impacting the lives of billion individuals”, he says.