Delhi based education company(MEPL) has raised Rs 2.7 crore from Accel Partners and a group of angels led by Meena Ganesh, CEO and MD of Pearson Education Services India.
The funds will help the company to scale the initial pilot project of THOTS Lab, (a scientifically designed space in schools, with a purpose to equip the future generations with the wisdom of structured thinking skills and thinking processes’) from three cities to eight cities.
Ashutosh Khurana, co-founder and CEO, Mind Edutainment said in a statement, “With this funding, we shall be able to install THOTS Lab across Delhi, Dehradun, Chandigarh, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Chennai, Kochi & Pune.”
He added, “We shall also be using a part of this funding to integrate Information and Communications Technology (ICT) in our delivery process to create an ideal mix of ICT and experiential learning. We are designing and developing Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTS) development games (in physical and digital formats) to establish ourselves as one of the leaders in learning-based games.”
Set up in 2007, Mind Edutainment was created with a focus on child development through cognitive thinking process by the husband-wife duo of Ashutosh Khurana and Sangeeta A Khurana, who pioneered the concept of HOTS development programme in India with the use of physical thinking tools and mind games’.
The company claims the programme created by them has been adopted by more than 40 schools and more than 50,000 students of UKG to Grade VIII as a complete subject on thinking skills development.
A B Tech from National Institute of Technology Kurukshetra, Ashutosh has worked with Reliance Communications for seven years.
The company has received a seed funding from Department of Science and Technology, (Government of India) and IIM Ahmedabad’s Centre for Innovation Incubation and Entrepreneurship (CIIE) in 2010.
“This investment is part of our ongoing effort to invest in startups that aim to strengthen the education ecosystem in India. ‘THOTS Lab’ created by Mind Edutainment shall bring direct focus on ‘thinking development’ within the school environment,” said Anand Daniel, partner, Accel Partners in a statement.
Meena Ganesh, CEO and managing director, Pearson Education Services India and an active angel investor in India, said in a statement, “Developing the thinking abilities amongst primary and middle years of education is indeed a radical need for the present day competitive environment. Thinking development coupled with the regular curriculum can make a potent combination for the best-of-breed education systems. And, with this investment, we are looking at providing a solution not to our country but to the other countries as well.”
