Now a hand-held home learning device for students

HYDERABAD, INDIA: Hyderabad-based Edutor Technologies on Tuesday launched Edutor Advantage e40, India's first hand-held home learning device for school students.

After a six-month pilot project, the firm, floated by a group of young IITians, launched the device designed for Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) students from class 3 to class 10.

The touchscreen device is preloaded with a student's class-specific, curriculum-aligned content.

Advantage e40's highly intuitive and interactive touch-screen interface and multi-media content ensures children are fully engaged, grasp concepts and remember them far more effectively, said a company official.

The device also offers self-assessment with its practice tests and questions for every topic. Advantage e40 is aligned with CBSE's new Continuous Comprehensive Evaluation (CCE) initiative.

The device also features extra-curricular activities like basics of cricket, yoga, karate, spoken English content and Wikipedia topics.

Ram Gollamudi, CEO of Edutor Technologies, told reporters that the firm planned to sell 30,000 to 40,000 devices in the next 18 months.

"Edutor Advantage is designed to give Indian students a measurable home learning advantage. Advantage e40 user interface is very intuitive and easy to use for children of all ages," said Ram, an electronics engineer from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT)-Madras.

"Research shows that when multiple senses such as sight, sound and touch are used simultaneously to learn, there is a significant boost in understanding and memory. Our device is based on the multi-sensory learning principle," said Ram, who spent the last 15 years in the US, working in tech firms.

Priced at Rs.5,845 with four per cent taxes, Edutor Advantage is available in leading bookstores. One-year content in the form of a chip is available at Rs.1,635.

To start with, Edutor Technologies has rolled out its product in Hyderabad and other parts of Andhra Pradesh. It plans to extend its reach to other southern states before targeting the market in north India.

As the country has 75,000 CBSE schools, Edutor is targeting a huge market. Ram pointed out that Hyderabad alone has 200,000 CBSE students.