Headquartered in Australia, edtech platform Matific (estb. 2012) has a presence in over 60 countries across the globe. Its AI-driven personalised and adaptive learning process makes maths comprehension easy for kindergarten to class VI students. Matific has garnered one lakh users since the launch of its India operations in June 2019. Rajeev Krishnan, vice-president, Matific India talks to Dipta Joshi about Matific’s unique selling proposition and future plans.

Q) How has Matific been customised to suit Indian users? 

A) Matific follows the student-led learning approach and offers an immersive and gamified learning environment that automatically adjusts the activities as per the individual’s level of understanding. Our goal is to make it easier for both parents and teachers to assign work and support students with personalised practices. 

We further offer customisation of our courses and plans for students worldwide. Our K-6 mathematics learning concept is one of our key selling points to provide every child in every country with a mathematical experience of the highest possible quality. Furthermore, we are empowering young learners in over 60 countries and are localised in over 40 languages including Spanish, French, Portuguese, Tamil, Marathi, etc. Furthermore, it is aligned with the local (Tamil Nadu and Maharashtra), national (ICSE/CBSE) as well as the international curriculum (IB), and has been fully integrated into the education system through Google Classroom and Microsoft. Understanding that some of the education institutes are likely to stick with a hybrid model of teaching, our platform features an offline mode that allows students to access math and sync the work performed once connected again.

Q) What factors have led to Matific, India garnering one lakh users since its launch?

A) The pandemic made the edtech sector a necessity for school education. Additionally, the response from the Indian market has played a massive role as Indians understand the importance of mathematical applications and are keen on learning easy ways to comprehend mathematical concepts. Considering these factors, we offered our platform complimentary to all schools in India.

Our Junior Maths Championship organised for the first time in India saw the highest participation and engagement from students as compared to any other country. Over 50 million math problems were solved and on average, each participant solved at least 485 math problems in the three-day event spending approximately 3.5 hours each day learning mathematics. This showed us how eager Indian students are to learn and adopt our ways of teaching to learn themselves. 

Q) Tell us about Matific’s pedagogical principles. 

Our brand is driven by a five-point pedagogical principle theory which is based on foundations like conceptual understanding, critical thinking, meaningful context, personalised learning and intrinsic engagement. With conceptual understanding we try to develop an understanding of the foundational building blocks of maths, taking knowledge beyond procedures and formulas, while critical thinking promotes building problem-solving skills and cultivating natural curiosity, and encourages students to experiment with a hands-on environment. We focus on bringing mathematics to life by presenting real-life problems in natural scenarios which shows how our context of teaching is meaningful. Additionally, the rigorous gamified environment incentivises perseverance and nurtures a love of maths. We intend to revolutionise the learning of STEM subjects for students, right from kindergarten to secondary schooling. Our platform has been proven to increase students’ results by 34% when used in the classroom.

Q) What has been Matific’s business approach in India? 

A) We follow a diverse approach wherein we operate business to business (B2B) to offer services to schools, private and non-government education institutions, business to government (B2G), where we work with government organizations to build the strong basis for foundation numeracy as well as business to customer (B2C) to serve individual learners.

Aligning with our vision and operating a business for a purpose, we have modelled Matific to be flexible when it comes to business models. Our model ensures that educators are well equipped with the infrastructure needed to impart knowledge without any limitations. We are working with schools, governments, associations and parents across India. We follow this approach on the grassroots level to make sure that the license price does not serve as a barrier and every student can unlock their potential and opportunities that are personalised for them.

Q) How much of the 58 million USD funding that Matific raised earlier in 2016 is being spent on your India operations?

Most of our current investments are being utilized to increase our headcount in India and also create support infrastructure to drive our constant growth. With 130 million students in the primary years of their learning, India is our largest market across the globe. Over the next few years, our focus is to accelerate our growth in the country. Over seven lakh students across 1500 plus schools in India are expected to use Matific by the end of 2021 and these numbers will grow three-fold in 2022.

Today, our focus is to support as many curriculums and languages as possible, so that children can get access to maths learning solutions in their native language. We keep getting requests from many corners of the world to support higher classes and we are actively evaluating it at the moment.

Also read: Apps can make math fun to learn