“Coding is referred to as the third language. After doing research in various countries, I realised that it is a skill that needs to be taught to students in our country because 60 per cent of the total jobs are computer dominant,” says CodeVidhya founder Shivram Choudhary.
Founded in 2016, CodeVidhya is an ed-tech startup working to convert Indian school classrooms into programming powerhouses, with a vision to enable the new generation to innovate.
“We are catering to over 12,000 Class 1 to 10 students in 27 schools, 11 in Coimbatore and rest in Rajasthan. We are also working with ISHA Foundation and the underprivileged kids. A fee of Rs 1,000 per student per annum is charged from the schools. A few collaborations in Mumbai, Pune and Bengaluru have also been finalised. We are now in talks with the schools in Delhi-NCR. We will finalise something in February,” adds the English lecturer-turned-entrepreneur.
The 41-year-old says, “We provide books to the schools, take care of the teachers’ training, and the annual project mentorship. This is the most important part because here we ask students to find a problem in their vicinity, and find a solution to it using technology. A group of seven Class 8 students from a school in Sikar found out that there were less blood banks in the city.
So, they developed a website titled ekunit.org, where they started connecting donors with seekers.”
While some of their students have created a news portal where they upload the news related to the students’ need, another student won Google India’s Code to Learn contest.
“Since coding is not an easy subject for young students, Madras Institute of Technology has developed a language called Scratch. It uses instructions to help develop critical and computational thinking in the students,” concludes Choudhary.