Like many, he disliked school as a child. He believed it was his enemy. But that’s what got him interested in the education system. He wanted to change the way we looked at it. Vaibhav Devanathan, the 29-yearold founder of LaughGuru says, “Learning should be as much fun as a summer blockbuster fi lm and only humour can do that.” That’s actually the mission statement of LaughGuru. In 2013, he had the idea to mix oil and water, i.e. humour and education.
He quit his job at McKinsey and gave up an offer from Harvard Business School, to start LaughGuru. “I have only one life and there is no time to waste, so I had to take a leap of faith and give it a shot,” explains Vaibhav, who did his undergrad and master’s degree at IIT Bombay.
But he needed some help to give shape to his raw idea. In early 2014, Antara Telang and Ayush Baheti, who are currently directors at LaughGuru, joined his mission and they became integral to the development of a successful product. “While I was in school, Physics concepts went over my head. But had it been funny, then I’m pretty sure it would have helped me understand better,” explains Antara. “Building a story around characters that a child finds funny and relatable is what makes LaughGuru different. It ensures that it doesn’t feel like mugging up concepts,” adds Ayush.
In a country where parents run behind marks blindly, this concept of creating learning content with funny characters is remarkably progressive. “Marks are still the most important criterion for 90% of the parents and it makes sense because most careers are based on that. So we did our research to check whether Laugh- Guru improves test performances as well,” says Vaibhav, adding, “We took fi ve months to research this scientifi- cally under the guidance of a Postdoc from Yale.
The research paper even got published in the International Journal of Educational and Psychological Research that saw that Laugh- Guru’s material produced test results that were nearly 60% better than audio-visual material teaching the same portion, but lacking in humour.” Currently, they have a team of seventy with everyone sharing a passion for silly jokes and working hard to change the world.
LaughGuru has content for ICSE, CBSE, IGSCE and IB and they have plans to enable all the State Boards shortly. It has two access methods — online and pen drive. They hope to translate the content to Hindi and then regional languages and try to get it to every child in India. “I have personally seen children interact with LaughGuru. Watching the joy in their eyes as they realise that studies can inhabit the same world in which they dream, play, and live is something that reminds us of why we do this,” smiles Vaibhav