Dipta Joshi (Mumbai)

Diane Janknegt is CEO and co-founder of the Amsterdam-based Wizenoze B.V. (estb. 2013), an edtech company which offers learners access to education content and resources on the Internet commensurate with their age and reading levels. During the past eight years since its incorporation, the company’s products — Wizeup and Web for Classrooms — have been integrated with learning management systems (LMS) of major edtech companies in the Middle East (Classera), UK (Pearson Education) and Netherlands (Online Klas). Thus far, Wizenoze has favourably impacted 2 million students around the world.

Janknegt: Internet ocean searching

Newspeg. In February, the company made its India debut with inauguration of its first Asia office in New Delhi. On the occasion, Wizenoze announced that its search engine is now mapped with the syllabus of the Delhi-based Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE).

“Wizenoze’s AI (artificial intelligence)-driven algorithms aggregate, verify and categorise content and information available on the Internet. They fish the Internet’s vast ocean of information and identify content suited to every student’s reading level,” explains Janknegt.

History. An alumna of the Public University of Utrecht, Netherlands, Janknegt has over 20 years of experience in general management, business development, sales and marketing. She began her career as one of the first Microsoft employees in the Netherlands and after a distinguished career of 15 years stepped down as director OEM in 2012.

A chance meeting with Theo Huibers, a computer science professor at the University of Twente, Netherlands, presented her an opportunity to transform into an entrepreneur. Inspired by a European Commission-funded report that highlighted challenges children face in finding relevant learning material on the Internet, Janknegt and Huibers teamed up to promote Wizenoze eight years ago.

Direct talk. “For most Indian schools, the move to online education after the pandemic is a first-time experience, and most teachers and students are unable to find online content and resources suited to their syllabuses and curriculums. We are confident that our digital platform will provide students easy access to age-appropriate, student-friendly supplementary content to enhance their learning outcomes,” says Janknegt.

Future plans. Currently, the Wizenoze team is working on introducing curated learning programmes to meet the requirements of skills and competency-based education proposed by the new National Education Policy 2020.

Swagatam!