New Products & Trends

In times when artificial intelligence, robotics, and virtual reality are making their presence felt in every sector, these five startups are using technology to mix entertainment with education.

But as new-age as it might sound, edutainment is not an entirely novel concept. It has existed as part of oral tradition, in the form of fables and parables for ages, driving home key values and lessons to young learners. Only with time, these mediums have been taken over by tech tools, replacing traditional pedagogical techniques with gamified apps and storytelling with an interactive experience.

Slow and steady for sure, but entrepreneurs closer to home have set the ball rolling for the Indian edutainment market. If the various market reports are any indication, at the moment, this sector accounts for a whopping $6 billion market share. And this vertical is only bound to grow from here, thanks to a renewed interest from a host of innovative domestic startups that have taken upon themselves to blur the lines between “Education with Entertainment”.

At the heart of this segment, though, the idea remains the same: To make learning seamless by engaging students and young learners – mostly aged 12 and below – in fun and immersive experiences through the means of smartphones and other internet-connected devices, virtual reality-powered tools, and other gamified digital learning content.    
Here’s a look at 5 such Indian startups who are bridging the gap between education and entertainment in India:

Ontamo Entertainment – Ria Rabbit 

That quality tech has penetrated deeper into the pockets of India 2.0 – or Bharat – when compared to quality education and good educational infrastructure shouldn’t come as a surprise. But what should indeed raise concern is how little thought is put into the curation of edutainment content for the youngest consumers in India, aged six and below. 
Mumbai-based Ontamo Entertainment, which is dedicated to creating original, monetisable intellectual properties for all age groups across multiple channels, understood this concern and developed a premier product called Ria Rabbit. It is, as the company claims, India’s first age-appropriate, culturally relevant home-grown intellectual property for children in the age group of zero to six years.

"Since young minds are especially impressionable, it is imperative to ensure that children are exposed to age appropriate content, The core idea is to offer an engaging and organic paradigm that captures the attention of our young audience while inculcating within them a passion for learning." - Co-founder and CEO of Ontamo Entertainment, Prashant Pinge.

Panda & Wolf Holding – Eco-warriors 

Why restrict the benefits of edutaiment to maths and sciences, when it can be used to create a deeper and long-lasting impact on young minds and raise awareness about the environment? With this in mind, husband-wife duo Veda and Brian Dean – the founders of Panda & Wolf Holding – created a mobile gaming app for children between the age of six and 11 to create an awareness about the environmental crisis across the world.Through an engaging storyline and immersive stages, the app – which has even received the patronage of UNESCO – informs young users about issues plaguing the environment like deforestation, waste pollution, and overconsumption.

"We wanted to explain what pollution really is or how saving the environment or waste sorting can be done in a way that makes it interesting for kids, and more importantly, educates them, This mix of gamification and game-based learning in eco-warriors has proven to be effective when one wants to educate kids, and for us it is a better way to align technology and edutainment." - Founders of Panda & Wolf Holding, Veda and Brian Dean.

ConveGenius  

His ideas are reflected in his entrepreneurial endeavour as well. His edutainment startup, ConveGenius, launched in 2014, is creating pedagogical techniques and content that are entertaining, have inherent educational value, and incentivise kids to learn so as to have more fun. 

The idea is to create an ecosystem that is designed to educate children by bringing in elements of fun, entertainment and associated rewards, simultaneously. And to do so, the startup aggregates content of all the best players in the market and makes it available in the right sequence and right manner.

"Learning is driven by both intrinsic and extrinsic motivational methods. Just providing quality digital content ensures learning for only those kids who are intrinsically motivated to study, Kids who prefer playing, watching TV, and fun over learning have to be extrinsically motivated." -  Founder and CEO of ConveGenius, Jairaj Bhattacharya.

Paper Boat Apps – Kiddopia  

Contrary to conventional belief, gaming has been proven to work as a positive reinforcement in the learning process. Not only does it make the entire process more engaging but also boosts cognitive development in people, especially children. 

This idea, having received validation from various researchers, has over time fuelled many a business prospect, one of them being children-focussed edutainment studio Paper Boat Apps. 

The bootstrapped startup, founded in 2013 by husband-wife duo Anupam and Anshu Dhanuka, works towards building world-class edutainment apps for preschool kids.
 Their flagship product is the Kiddopia app, which offers a wide array of interactive games and activities that help foster self-expression, cognitive development, and social-emotional learning.

Such has been the popularity of this model that Kiddopia currently boasts more than 2.5 million downloads globally with over one lakh active subscribers.

Shirsa Labs 

For Mumbai-born Sukhada Tendulkar, bittersweet memories of childhood served as a major inspiration when she embarked on the entrepreneurial path. Her aim was to create something that would leverage life-like simulations of the digital world to take children on virtual tours of varied concepts. 

The result was Shirsa Labs - a quality digital platform for kids aged between five and 15 years with which they can play and get entertained while learning in an organic way. 

Their offerings include Planet of GUI, which is a goal-oriented virtual world for kids with videos, games, and worksheets, NewsPIK, a digital newspaper for children, and also a B2B product to instill creativity in schools’ curricula.

The Canon Pixma TS5320 does a fine job with text, graphics, and especially photos, making it a good basic AIO for families who require moderate printing and copying.

Near the bottom of the pecking order in Canon's TS series of consumer-grade Pixma photo printers, the Pixma TS5320 Wireless All-in-One ($99.99) is an upgrade to the TS5120 reviewed here in March 2018. Like most of Canon's photo-centric TS all-in-ones (print, copy, and scan), the TS5320 is relatively slow but prints quite well, especially photos. Another thing it shares with most TS series Pixmas is a steep consumables cost per page, making it best as a low-volume print and copy solution for family and home office use.

Choosing the Right Pixma

Without counting previous versions, the TS series consists of one single-function (print-only) machine, the Pixma TS702, and a handful of multifunction models with built-in scanners for making copies and scanning documents and photos. Located just above the Pixma TS3320 in price and features, today's budget-oriented TS5320 is one of the more basic of the bunch, with the wide-format, scrapbook- and crafting-oriented TS9521c flagship leading the pack.

That last one is, along with its Editors' Choice Pixma TS9520 sibling, the most feature-rich and fastest. Both, for instance, have automatic document feeders (ADFs) for sending multipage documents to the scanner, whereas the other TS models have only flatbed scanners capable of capturing just one page at a time.

Two of the higher-end, letter-size (8.5 by 11-inch) Pixmas, the TS9120 and TS8320, boast six ink cartridges: They deploy not only the familiar four CMYK colors but a Photo Black ink for darkening text and enriching black areas in photos and a Photo Blue that increases the printer's color range and augments blue regions of pictures such as bodies of water and skies.

The TS5320 seen here and TS3320 are at the opposite end of the spectrum, literally: Not only do they stick to the basic four-color model, but they utilize only two tanks, one holding black ink and the other containing the red, green, and blue inks. This configuration, also found in HP's DeskJet 3755 and several other entry-level inkjets, wastes ink and increases running costs because when one of the three color reservoirs empties, the entire cartridge must be replaced.

The  Pixma TS5320 comes in four colors—black, white, pink, and green, as shown above. Also, while several higher-end TS series models provide color touch screens for configuring and executing walkup functions such as copying, the TS5320's control panel consists of a 1.4-inch non-touch color OLED display and an LED status bar, surrounded by a handful of buttons that include navigation arrows and an OK button as well as Start and Stop buttons for making copies.

THe  TS5320 measures 5.9 by 16.8 by 12.5 inches (HWD) and weighs 13.8 pounds, which is similar to its predecessor and close in size to the TS3320, though the former weighs about five pounds more. It's also a close match for Epson's somewhat more robust Expression Premium XP-6100 Small-in-One and a little smaller and lighter than Brother's more business-oriented MFC-J497DW.

Unlike the TS3320, with its single 60-sheet paper tray, this Canon holds up to 200 sheets in two 100-sheet trays, one up front and one that pulls out and up from the rear. The rear feeder can also hold up to 20 sheets of letter-size photo paper, which is a lot of capacity for a budget inkjet all-in-one. The TS5320 also has an auto-duplexer for two-sided printing, which the TS3320 lacks, and can print borderless photos up to letter size instead of stopping at 5 by 7 inches. You also get support for Instagram's 3.5- and 5-inch square photo media formats.

Connectivity, Voice Activation, and Software

Standard connectivity consists of Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4.0 LE (Low Energy), plugging into a single PC via USB 2.0, and PictBridge Wireless for printing from compatible Canon cameras. Mobile device support includes Apple AirPrint, Google Cloud Print, Mopria, and the Canon Print app.

Like many consumer AIOs nowadays, the TS5320 supports voice-activated printing and scanning via Amazon Alexa or Google Assistant smart speakers or a smartphone app. You can also deploy other platforms, including Apple's Siri or Microsoft's Cortana, that support IFTTT (If This Then That) scripting technology using scripts from IFTTT.com and other sites.

 The software bundle includes Scan Utility (a robust, easy-to-use scanner interface for Windows and Mac), Scan Utility Lite (a scaled-down macOS-only version), and Easy PhotoPrint Editor Software (for touching up photos). You can also download the mobile version of Easy PhotoPrint Editor, which lets you make enhancements and corrections to shots you take with your handheld device without having to move them to your PC.

Also downloadable from Google Play Store or the Apple Store is Canon's Message In Print app, which allows you to embed hidden messages—text, music, animations, video links, and more—inside printed images. After installing the app, family, friends, or coworkers can see the messages or open the links by holding their mobile devices' cameras over the image.

Passable Print Speeds

Canon rates the TS5320 at 13 pages per minute (ppm). When I clocked its print speed over a USB 2.0 connection from our standard Intel Core i5 testbed running Windows 10 Pro, the AIO churned out our standard 12-page Microsoft Word text document at the rate of 12.7ppm. That's just over twice as fast as the Pixma TS3320, ahead of the Brother MFC-J497DW by 1.7ppm, and 3ppm behind the Epson XP-6100.

Related StorySee How We Test Printers

I continued my testing by printing our collection of Adobe Acrobat business documents, Excel spreadsheets and charts, and PowerPoint handouts containing numerous business graphics and colored text at varying sizes. I combined those results with the Word figure for a score of 4.4ppm. That, again, doubled the speed of the TS3320, tied the Brother, and trailed the Epson by 2.2ppm.

To finish up, I averaged the TS5320's time at 32 seconds as it churned out our colorful and detailed 4 by 6-inch photos. Once again, the Pixma TS3320 took about twice as long to print the same images, while the MFC-J497DW was comparable and the XP-6100 about 8 seconds quicker.

Good-Looking Output Overall

Canon's photo-centric Pixmas typically deliver excellent output, with dark, well-shaped, easy-to-read text and well-delineated charts and graphs with evenly flowing gradients and solid, mostly streak-free fills. As with several other color printers we've tested, I did see some mild banding in one full-page PowerPoint gradient that flows from dark green to black.

As a TS series Pixma, though, photos are the TS5320's specialty, and it printed our sample images quite well for an under-$100, four-ink AIO. Colors were accurate, bright, and well saturated, and detail was as good as I've come to expect from Canon imaging devices. Of course this printer can't match the accuracy and detail of its deluxe five- and six-ink siblings, but its photo output definitely surpasses drugstore quality.

People see packaging as just an additional cost and try to buy the cheapest option. But, that cheap option comes at a cost. A lot of food delivery boxes in the market are not food grade and are not meant for direct contact with food. But, customers are unaware of this and thus do not raise a concern.

Research has shown that single use plastics, especially the containers we get take-outs in, contain chemical compounds like bisphenol A, commonly known as BPA. This compound tends to migrate to food substances that are kept in plastic containers and result in endocrine disorders. Infertility, thyroid, obesity, etc. are all examples of endocrine disorders. Furthermore, the UN came up with a report on the environmental impact of single use plastic around the world. They found that only nine per cent of the nine billion tons of plastic produced in the world has been recycled with most of it ending up landfills, dumps and adversely polluting the environment.

“People see packaging as just an additional cost and try to buy the cheapest option. But, that cheap option comes at a cost. A lot of food delivery boxes in the market are not food grade and are not meant for direct contact with food. But, customers are unaware of this and thus do not raise a concern,” explains Nikhil Parekh, the founder of Schmancy, a start-up that provides packaging solutions to businesses so that they can deliver their products in a sustainable manner. All their packaging is made of sourced or recycled paper.

“With the rise of food delivery and e-commerce, a lot of small, home businesses are being launched that require designer but good quality packaging in smaller quantities. We cater to this demand,” informs Nikhil.

How it was founded and products

Schmancy was officially founded in 2016. But the idea took birth in 2013 when Nikhil wanted to come up with sustainable packaging solution for his friends where they wouldn’t have to buy in bulk.

“My friends were also looking for custom packaging that they did not have to buy in large quantities. Normally, the minimum order was 5,000 boxes and required an investment of almost Rs. 50,000,” he explains. He then catered to the packaging demands of his friends in small quantities and these friends spread the word to others in the market with similar needs.

Schmancy has an online store for people who want to buy designer packaging. “When Schmancy first went online for sales on Facebook in 2013, we got over 200 orders in a day!” exclaims Nikhil. This is when he realised that this idea would take and constantly worked on more products before officially launching in 2016.

A regular client of Schmancy is Poonam Maria who started Zoey’s Bakehouse about seven years ago. As the bakery started doing good business, she also started making exquisite tall cakes for different occasions. Her only dilemma at the time was that she was finding it extremely difficult to deliver her cakes that weighed anywhere between 3kgs to 14kgs.

One day, she was browsing through Facebook when she came across Schmancy’s boxes. “These boxes are so strong. There was nothing like this when I started using them before. Although, there are boxes available for big cakes now, Schmancy’s quality is unparalleled which is why we continue to buy from them,” says the 38-year-old...

For more subscribe to PSS Monthly Editions... 

Mithya 4D Stationery Private Limited – a Pune based company, is India’s First 4D Stationery manufacturing company and Startup Recognized by Government of India, specializes in the modern and innovative stationery products powered with 4D animations with the help of their proprietary technologies.

What is 4D?

Any 3D content which is interactive and can be seen from different angles is 4D.

What is 4D Stationery?

With the help of “Mithya 4D” app, any physical stationery like Notebook, Clipboard, Geometry Box, etc. will turn into 4D content and hence the name 4D Stationery.

Why the name ‘Mithya’?

‘Mithya’ actually originated from Sanskrit and its meaning fairly corresponds to ‘Illusion”, an appearance superimposed on actuality, or different from actuality. The “Mithya 4D” app enables “Mithya (illusion)” to bring our 4D stationery to life and it turns the stationery to alternate reality with enlivened and interactive characters.

Benefits of 4D Stationery?

In today’s digital era, mobile has become an integral part and parcel for students and hence they are spending most of their times on mobiles. With the help of Mithya’s 4D Stationery, the education and learning will become fun.

Demo

Download the FREE ‘Mithya 4D’ app from the Google Play store or iPhone App Store. Open the app and point the app’s camera at the ‘Puppet Show’ sample for demo printed on top of this page and enjoy the 4D animation.