Startup Of The Week – NutSpace

Name of the startup – NutSpace
Founded in – 2016
Industry – Education
Founder – Rohini Vij
CEO – Rohini Vij
Startup Motto – Building 21st Century Skills using Stories.
Startup Funding – Bootstrapped

Below is the transcript of our interview with Nutspace

Could you tell us about NutSpace?

Everything we do, we do to brighten the future of our children by making them creative, innovative and better human beings. We shape the future of our children by using simple theme-based stories that are easy to understand, encourage reflection, impart knowledge and drive curiosity. We design story-based courses for children, parents and teachers. Currently, we are focusing on creating content for children (and their parents/teachers) of 0-8 years.

How do you come up with the idea of online education?

The idea of online education is not new for us. We have been advocating the same since 2012, however, we did not have many takers as they were skeptical about online security or did not have the right infrastructure. We realized that we were creating good and credible content and wanted to reach out to a wider audience. We decided to reach out to people via youtube. We started by taking a simple idea of making the dictionary more engaging and useful – we started doing this by creating VocabAct videos. Although the videos, were for young children and their parents to understand the usage of simple words, we began to get a lot of views from aspirants of competitive exams. Today we have about 25,000 subscribers on our youtube channel with about 1.5M views per month. The positive response there gave us the encouragement to start our own Learning Management Platform (https://lms.nutspace.in) and creating programs for schools as well. We also opened our physical centres/franchises to provide a hybrid learning experience.

Could you share what 21st-century skills are? And why is it important?

The world is changing at a rapid pace with the overload of information and the changes in work environments, technology and cultures. Children today will need to adapt to the changing world. To adapt to the changing world students will always need: Critical Thinking & Problem Solving, Collaboration across Networks & Leading by Influence, Agility and Adaptability, Effective Oral & Written Communication, Initiative & Entrepreneurship, Accessing & Analyzing Information, Curiosity & Imagination. This is why parents need to focus on developing 21st Century Skills in Children.

What are your challenges during the initial days you faced? And how did you push through?

Changing mindsets is always a difficult task. Getting parents to realize the importance of 21st Century Skills over getting better grades at school and giving importance to reading, storytelling and free play were and are still our greatest challenges. However, we really believe in why we started Nutspace and that’s what has worked for us. NutSpace has grown because of our early adopters. They have been instrumental in spreading the word and moreover, they have seen their children evolve, and in the process, even their grades have improved.

How do you ensure the quality of information? What is the source of your research?

Since at NutSpace EdTech we create original content, for young impressionable minds, we must put in a lot of thought and research into it. Our content creation team is constantly reading research papers and studies and upskilling themselves. This helps us stay in touch with the latest trends and offer only the best. Other than that we truly believe in the power of stories, stories have the power to communicate, emote, mold and much more. With stories at the core of all our lessons, we feel confident about the content we create. We were also fortunate to be a part of the JioGeneNext Program and Read Alliance Program by the Centre of Knowledge Societies funded by USAID. These programs gave us access to industry leaders and mentors, who helped us shape our content and business strategy and systems.

What makes your startup different from your competitors in your industry?

While most of our competitors are making a lot of academic content engaging and easy to understand. We at NutSpace EdTech are working on building life skills, social-emotional skills, values, critical thinking skills and problem-solving skills.

What are NutSpace’s future plans?

We envision a learning environment where children prepare themselves for the future by enhancing their Social-Emotional skills, where empathy is an enormous part of all classroom learning and where the focus of education is problem-solving, critical thinking, collaboration and more. All this can be achieved if there is a story-based curriculum, that we at NutSpace EdTech have created and are constantly adding to it.

Karan Jain

Born in the family of entrepreneurs and have inherited the same. Started building applications in order to pay for my tuition. Later founded a tech company, marketing agency, and media outlets.