Page 47 - EW-June-2025

Language barrier behind that language. GUVI was
ideated to overcome the English
breaker language barrier. What sets GUVI
apart is its learner-first approach —
each course is carefully designed to
RUN PRAKASH is founder- suit students, teachers and working
CEO of Chennai-based professionals to become computer
AGUVI (Grab Ur Vernacular literate in their own mother tongues.
Imprint) EdTech Pvt. Ltd Project GENIE was launched last
(estb.2014), an online education year with the objective of introduc-
company incubated at IIT-Madras. ing all teachers without tech back-
Supported by Google Launchpad ground, to utilize Generative AI
and Jio Gennext, GUVI offers a tools. Since then, some of the most
wide range of short-term, job- innovative apps have been designed
oriented online courses ranging by teachers who had never written
from Python with IIT certification a line of code before. Inspired from
and robotic process automation Prakash: vernaculars champion the structured training models of
to game development and basic Honeywell and the scalable systems
digital literacy skills. In 16 Indian Honeywell Aerospace for four years, of PayPal, GUVI intends to make
vernacular languages. Since it was followed by KLA-Tencor in 2007, tech education not just inclusive, but
established 11 years ago, GUVI has Kalido the next year, PayPal in 2011, transformative,” enthuses Prakash.
trained over 3 million learners in and Symantec in 2013. Even as he Course fees: Rs.1,500-3,000.
India and abroad. was set to go places in the ICT (in- Future plans. Encouraged by en-
Newspeg. Last December, in col- formation communication technol- thusiastic public response to GUVI
laboration with Freshworks (a global ogy) world, a visit to his hometown courses, Prakash and his team
SaaS company providing user-friend- forced a life-changing career switch. are strategising to roll-out Project
ly customer support and business “I saw how little things had changed. GENIE countrywide, starting with
software), GUVI launched Project Students were unable to access new private institutions and then govern-
GENIE, an AI-powered program to technologies and acquire industry- ment schools. “We are currently in
train schoolteachers — even without relevant skills, mostly because of talks with the Uttar Pradesh and
tech backgrounds — in emerging poor knowledge of English,” he Telangana governments to train their
Generative AI tools. To date, over recalls. teachers to become familiar with
1,300 educators in Tamil Nadu have Therefore, in 2011, Prakash Generative AI tools. The potential is
been trained. So thoroughly that they launched a YouTube channel with enormous,” he says.
have ideated and uploaded 336 AI- videos teaching coding in ‘Tunglish’ Shivani Chaturvedi (Chennai)
driven education apps. — a mixture of Tamil and English.
History. Born into a rural household The channel proved to be a huge ERP evangelist
of modest means, after clearing hit with several videos crossing the
higher secondary in a Tamil-medium million views milestone and enthus-
government school, Prakash resolved ing the Tamil diaspora in the UK and AVEEN GOYAL is
to qualify as a physicist. But his fa- US. the founder-CEO of
ther encouraged him to pursue com- Encouraged by this development, NNoPaperForms Solutions
puter science engineering instead. Prakash quit the corporate life and Pvt. Ltd (NPS, estb.2017), a Delhi-
“We didn’t have a computer at home. together with wife Sridevi and for- based Software-as-a-Service (SaaS)
I learned to write code on paper. One mer PayPal colleague Balamurugan company (no. of employees 400).
of my friends acted as a ‘computer’ S.P, pitched GUVI to Prof. Ashok Under its Meritto and Collexo ERP
and assessed my handwritten code Jhunjhunwala, president of the IIT- brands, NPS facilitates admissions
correcting mistakes. Thanks to him, Madras Research Park. Under his automation and e-payment
I learned coding skills and started mentorship and financial support services for over 1,200 educational
winning hackathons/coding com- from IT major HCL Group, GUVI institutions globally.
petitions in college (Sethu Institute was incubated in IIT-M in 2014. Newspeg. In January, the company
of Technology, Virudhunagar),” he Direct talk. “My mission is deeply launched Collexo Pixi, a smart,
recalls. personal as I know what it feels to RuPay-enabled cash card to facilitate
After graduating in 2003, Prakash struggle with English in a world fees and other payments by students
acquired valuable experience in where tech education is locked in higher education institutions.

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