‘AR and VR have enormous potential for making daily lessons of students more immersive and interactive’: Edtech Company KOMPANIONS Co-founder

Incorporated in 2015, KOMPANIONS is a Gurugram-based ed-tech-sci start-up that aims to make learning processes fun, easy and impactful. The company has various innovative products and solutions in educational games for children between the age of 3 and 15 years. The learning elements are based on advanced gamification modules, virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR), mixed reality, skill remediation and assessment architecture for enhanced learning experiences and outcome.

The brains behind the company are Yuvraj Krishna Sharma and Gautam Arjun who are technology enthusiasts with experience of working in the education space. The Tech Panda spoke to Sharma about how AR and VR can help make education not just fun but better.

“AR and VR have enormous potential for making daily lessons of students more immersive and interactive. AR will have the greatest impact on education as it enhances the ability of children to remember what they’ve learned – and lead to faster acquisition of information and skill. AR allows an individual to interact with computer-generated holograms within their own environment and brings the classroom into your living room. This technology can enhance learning by simulating images, videos, three-dimensional charts, graphs, etc., that otherwise would have simply been drawn on a whiteboard or shown on a computer screen,” he says.

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Sharma explains that concepts can be presented through interesting VR journeys – simple exploration-based or game-based. VR can also be used to create environments that are difficult to experience in reality like the solar system) or even the ones that are not real like a maze of words that requires just a VR kit and a smartphone with a VR app.

The education sector faces several gaps right now. The current system has been in existence for years where students still focus on scoring marks or appearing for competitive exams. According to him, the mind numbing competition and rote learning crush the creativity and originality of millions of Indian students every year. The education focuses on memorization and cramming subjects rather than highlighting the lifelong learning.

“Teachers today are still teaching in the same way they used to a decade ago. With the fast evolving technology, India has taken small steps in using digital classrooms, AR/VR etc. but we have a long way to go.  The various industries are changing at a very fast rate, the theoretical concepts in books are yet to be updated. We are yet to see more industry ready curriculum in the colleges and universities backed by advanced technologies with the help of which students can be industry ready and at the same time be technically updated,” he says.

He stresses the significance of exposing the Indian student to technology. Technology and education have always offered an immense opportunity for transformation. Today, the progressive schools and colleges, technology conscious parents and students are slowly adapting to this technology for fast and fun ways of learning. According to India skills report 2019, the Indian workforce is estimated to increase approximately 600 million by 2022 from the current 473 million. India being one of the fastest growing economies of the world, education will play the main role in shaping the workforce it requires for the fast growing industries and in building the new technically powered ecosystem. Since 54% of Indians are below the age of 25 years exposing them to technology will definitely bring the new skillset and requirements in the new job-market.

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“With the establishment of the industrial revolution 4.0, the uses of advanced technologies are becoming inevitable in almost every industry and so are the basic technical requirements for the students,” he says.

Kompanions uses AR, VR and Gamification as a medium for learning in today’s digital age. Their products use these emerging technologies as a bridge to the huge learning gap that exists in the education sector in India.

“We make children ready for the digital generation of today. We realized that AR, VR, and gamification techniques could become powerful learning tools in the age of smart phones and tablets. Having worked closely in the education sector before starting the company, we realized the gaps in the Indian education sector.  Moreover, the problem that plagues India’s education sector has been poor comprehension, which often leads to poor learning outcomes among school students. We believe that in today’s age when children can use laptops and smartphones from a very early stage, technology can offer tremendous opportunities to make learning explorative, engaging and highly informative for them. This led to the idea of establishing KOMPANIONS,” he says.

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