Smart boards and videos can be wistful dreams for students of rural and low resource urban schools. But such dreams have come true for students of 450 schools in remote areas of the Thiruvallur District of Tamil Nadu, which are accessing some of the best quality digital resources. This has been possible through Asha Kanini, an application to provide easy access to the best quality digital resources to enhance their classroom teaching experience.
The application is network independent, supports most operating systems and devices, and can be customised to work with any language and curriculum.
Pravartak, a Technology Innovation Hub supported by the Department of Science and Technology (DST) under the National Mission on Interdisciplinary Cyber Physical Systems (NM-ICPS) at IIT Madras and Asha Chennai, a public charitable trust that works for education of the underprivileged, are spreading the use of Asha Kanini to all government schools, by running a pilot program in Thiruvallur District. They aim to make it available for all the schools in Tamil Nadu and the rest of India.
The two organisations have come together to launch Pravartak Asha Rural Technology Centres (RTC) at Seethanjeri and Kanakamma Chathiram in Tiruvallur District, which will take Computer Science Literacy to remote Government Schools and enable tapping of the potential of school students in rural areas. A total of 25 more RTCs are being planned in the coming years across Tamil Nadu.
Along with eleven other entrepreneurial start-up companies, Pravartak launched a consortium in deep tech and engineering domain under the mission I-STAC.DB – Indian Space Technologies and Applications Consortium Design Bureau. It will focus on building an end-to-end Atmanirbhar ecosystem for space technologies including on-demand access to space, rapid launch capability, satellites, sensors, future generation communication such as 6G, satellite data, and its applications.
The consortium will work on space vehicle (Light and Super Rocket) design and manufacturing, multiple and rapid rocket launch capabilities, satellite design, manufacturing, assembly and fabrication, software, hardware, and communication components, security systems of satellites in the form of cyber/communication security and physical security as well as ground stations, data processing, assimilation for communication and geospatial application sectors.
The RASA (Regenerative Agriculture Stack Architecture), a proposed technology stack initiated by Pravartak in collaboration with BNY Mellon will aid the farmers to monitor and fine-tune their cultivation and harvest process in a proactive manner so as to realize maximum benefits. The stack will comprehensively address the entire farm-to-kitchen cycle, including pre-cultivation, cultivation, harvest, storage/shipment, marketing and payment.
IITM Pravartak Technologies Foundation along with SONY challenged the youth of India for finding solutions to problems of social relevance in India, making use of the SONY SPRESENSE™ board. The participants used the features of the board and built a proof of concept of their solution. The challenge was announced pan India and had participants from multiple cross sections of society.
