The Chennai-headquartered start-up firm, Robotix, that gifted the world Phiro, an educational robot, is now gearing up to release another product.
“Currently in the development stage, the product is aimed at children aged 3 to 8. We will be launching this at the Consumer Electronic Show at Las Vegas. It is a global stage where next generation innovations are introduced to the market place,” said Aditi Prasad, Chief Operating Officer, Robotix.
Started in 2009 by Ms. Aditi and her sister Deepti Rao Suchindran, who looks after the firm’s U.S. operations, Robotix aims at changing the way children learn at school. The sisters are also instrumental in introducing the Indian Robotics League, an annual competition.
Phiro helps children learn problem solving, computational thinking, coding and robotics in an easy and fun way.
Phiro looks like a toy car and has arrow keys. “Children can code a song and make the robot dance to their favourite songs. They can even create a design,” Ms. Aditi said.
Phiro was launched on kickstarter in November 2015, raised over $80,000 and delivered to customers by July 2016. The funds were utilised for tooling and production of the first batch of Phiros.
Tie-up with schools
The start-up has tied up with eight schools and of this three are international schools. It is focusing on STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) education. “We are aiming to be a $10 million company, making educational robots for the world market and teaching children the latest in technology to develop 21st century skills,” said Ms. Aditi. She was looking at more schools to join her network. “More schools now are getting excited about introducing new subjects like robotics and coding to their children, than before,” she added.