Education | Rocket Learning

85% OF BRAIN DEVELOPMENT HAPPENS BEFORE THE AGE OF 8

Rocket Learning, formally registered as Ekho foundation, is one of India's leading non-profits focused on catalyzing early childhood education (ECE) and community engagement. We link the government school and Anganwadi system with parents, using technology, media and social influence techniques.

Rocket Learning impacts 1 million children. On average, a child in a Rocket Learning (RL) cohort scores 30 percentage points higher than a non-RL class. We partner with India's Ministry of Education, Ministry of Women and Child Development, seven states (Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh, Delhi, Haryana, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, and Chandigarh, Uttarakhand) and MIT-JPAL to create, measure and scale impact.

OUR IMPACT

1 million

Children

100m

Views

60,000+

Parent communities

States

A DESPERATE SITUATION:

Quality ECE ensures school readiness, increases school completion and earnings and frees up women to enter formal employment. However, 35 million low-income children in India can't access quality ECE.

Public schooling at the Pre-K level is limited to daycare centers that focus on nutrition, while primary schools produce famously low learning outcomes.

Parents lack the confidence and information to support their child's learning. This shows up in dismal educational statistics - 43% of low income children can’t recognize alphabets and 35% numbers 1-9 in Grade 1.

Children become inherently less capable as this lack of stimulation and building of neuronal connections becomes impossible to change through later interventions.

OUR SOLUTION:

Rocket Learning builds vibrant digital communities of parents and teachers to support early childhood education for underprivileged children. We partner with governments to deliver age-appropriate, play-based learning content to teachers and parents of pre-schoolers, via Whatsapp groups.

This group model creates social motivation and peer effects to incentivise teachers and parents to conduct these activities with children and share responses back with the group.

Our technology complements this with real-time behavioural nudges and rewards such as personalized report cards and medals that are sent at scale through automation.

Our solution has demonstrated learning gains, and is inherently cost-effective and scalable - our variable costs are 50c/child/year. Impact collaborators include CSF, MIT Solve, UNICEF, DRK Foundation, ACT Grants, World Economic Forum, Godrej Foundation and Microsoft.

Whatsapp Demo

Partners

Partnerships with government systems and civil society are central to our philosophy. Fundamentally, we link the government system with parents and communities, using technology, media, and social influence techniques.

The governments of Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Haryana, Chandigarh, East Delhi, and Maharashtra districts are key regional partners, in addition to our collaborators at the Ministry of Education (NCERT) and the Ministry of Women and Child Development.

We are grateful to all our investors – the Central Square Foundation, ACT Grants, the Harvard University Impact Fellowship Fund, Sarva Mangal Family Trust, MIT Solve, World Economic Forum, Google.org, Microsoft, Hewlett Packard, Deloitte, Amazon, Capgemini, the Godrej Foundation, The Yuj Foundation, Eight Roads Ventures, Accel Partners, N/Core, Fast Forward, Magic Edtech and the DRK Foundation.

Rocket Learning is also fortunate to partner with some of the best organizations across India and the world, including UNICEF, The Language and Learning Foundation, Khan Academy, Samagra Governance, Tic Tac Learn, Brookings, the Akanksha Foundation, MIT-JPAL, Agency Fund, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Douglas B Marshall Jr., Dovetail Impact Foundation, EkStep Foundation, Fast Forward, The Lego Foundation, Mulago, Pilot House Foundation, Veddis Foundation, Yuj Foundation and NCERT.