Infy co-founder Shibulal starts offline edtech incubator EduMentum

SD Shibulal, cofounder Infosys has started EduMentum, an incubator being launched in partnership between his Advaith Foundation and Mantra4Change, a Bengaluru-based NGO.

The aim of EduMentum is to incubate early stage organisations working in the space of offline education transformation. The platform will offer funding of ?7.5 lakh per annum to each selected organisation along with a series of workshops for the incubatees. A network would be offered that would connect to the ecosystem for the selected organisations.

Shibulal said, "EduMentum is designed to promote social entrepreneurs who are working to transform the education ecosystem. EduMentum will encourage development and use of indigenous body of knowledge in the area of school education through ShikshaLokam.”

ShikshaLokam is an education leadership platform under Advaith. Kumari Shibulal and SD Shibulal had setup the Advaith Foundation to promote philanthropic ventures in the field of education and research.

Started in September last year, the first cohort of the programme, which has five startups,. The startups in this program include Loop Education Foundation, Vidhya Vidhai, Samarthya, Sanjhi Sikhiya and i-Saksham.

Ram Prakash, cofounder Vidya Vidhai  said, "Through EduMentum, we have got a lot to learn that helps enrich our domain knowledge and knowledge on organisational development. Experiences in EduMentum bootcamps have been very rich as we share each other's learnings. Getting good mentorship is usually difficult for startups," which aims to bridge the gap between the resourced and under resourced schools.

During the end of the programme, the startups get to pitch to potential investors. The programme aims to incubate 50 organisations across different parts of the country by 2022. The next batch will start.