The story behind the idea
While in college, Neelakantha Bhanu did staggering 100 stage shows and has taken over 500 classes to learn that every student is capable of learning and loving math. 3 out of every 4 students across the world are math-phobic. This is mainly because math isn’t relatable and interesting. In 2019, Bhanu and a small team experimented with different styles of teaching math to make it more interesting. They started implementing these ideas in 100’s of public schools in India. This gained nationwide traction in 2020 and helped 2M+ students learn math through TV broadcasts during the pandemic. This is how Bhanzu was born and later took the shape of becoming an ed-tech.
Why the name – Bhanzu
We earlier named ourselves ‘Exploring Infinities’, which was the title of the first talk show given by Bhanu. However, as enrollment started growing, we had a realisation.
The primary product, our math programs, is the true brainchild of Bhanu. Either immediate impact or key learning takeaways like speed math, academic improvement, and getting a wholesome math learning experience, every single thing that the consumer experiences from the courses of Bhanzu is the thought extension of Neelakantha Bhanu. His experience and journey are condensed into these courses.
The children, who are currently enrolled with us, are well aware of the fact that they are learning from the curriculum which is directly created by Bhanu, so we wanted to go with the name synonym to him. Hence, the name “Bhanzu” was chosen.
Moving forward, we definitely see us use Explore your true potential, Explore the infinite capabilities of the human mind, Explore the subjects as you like, but objectively could be even the campaign and not necessarily the brand name.
About the Founder – Neelakantha Bhanu Prakash
Neelakantha Bhanu, 22, holder of 4 World Records, 50 Limca Records, and titled the World’s Fastest Human Calculator. Establishing himself as a global math figure in 2016, Bhanu set on the journey to share the joy of learning math. He has travelled across 23 countries, given keynotes, and interacted with students across cultural backgrounds. He won India’s first-ever Gold Medal at the Mental Calculation World Championship (MSO 2020, London). A St. Stephens graduate, Bhanu has also broken records once held by India’s math legend Shakuntala Devi.
After winning Gold at the Mind Sports Olympiad and being nationally celebrated, he founded Bhanzu in 2020 with the vision to eradicate global math phobia and change the way students perceive math.
Through his immense grit and determination, Bhanu has set precedence in influencing the transition toward creating intriguing tools and modules that introduce students to the joy of learning math. Bhanu has interacted with and addressed the students of Commonwealth Nations and audiences across 23 nations.
Brief Description of Bhanzu – How it works
Bhanzu (formerly Exploring Infinities) was launched as an ed-tech entity in early 2021. The focus of this innovative platform is to create a love for math by offering experiential learning, which leads to enhanced numeracy skills and cognitive development. The revolutionary curriculum is backed by personalised pedagogy to build confidence in students and make them apply math in real-world situations. An AI-aided technology is under development to meet that objective.
We cover the entire school syllabus of the child in the first 75 sessions, with better narratives, more relevant examples, and by exactly telling children where these concepts are applied in their everyday life. How is this possible in such a short timeframe? Purely because of the foundation that we have built through speed math. Speed is not the entire journey, it is the perfect launchpad for a child to excel in life. IT IS JUST THE BEGINNING!
USPs – What and how Bhanzu is doing differently
The courses at Bhanzu are created by the World’s Fastest Human Calculator, who is lauded across the world as the “Usain Bolt of Mathematics”. The curriculum at Bhanzu is not a mere bridge between supply and demand but the outcome of 4+ years of expansive research. The Bhanzu way of learning helps students become quicker, and sharper at math, and helps them ace the school curriculum while encouraging them to explore the STEM fields.
Every student is capable of learning and loving math in its truest sense. The school curriculum approaches math conceptual understanding by making students accept facts as they are. Asking the right questions and emphasising the WHYs of math rather than the HOWs and the WHATs differentiates us from the school curriculum substitutes. We do this with fun story narratives and emphasis on real-life applications.
Our customised learning trajectories for students to explore the realms of coding, AI/ML, science and other social science fields are gaining popularity as parents are slowly moving towards outcome-oriented learning than eye candy courseware like coding classes, which lack the rigour and depth. Bridging the gap between dreams and competence, we see our courseware enabling students to realise their full potential and never let their math competence be a barrier to innovation.
Math confidence, cognitive development, modern exploration of STEM fields, academic excellence, and redefining ‘what learning means’ are the value propositions that we provide.
How Target Audience can enrol for the Bhanzu program. What are the possible outcomes the target audience can expect in their Math Skills, mention if it also helps in developing skills like better analytical skills & others? What are the Popular Programs? Link to the program
We offer math learning programs for children ages 6-16, where they begin their journey by becoming 4 times quicker and better at math, confident at math, and more importantly, building the right foundation to develop cognitive abilities. This is done through modules built on fun story narratives. The students apply this subject knowledge to the world around them.
This bottom-up approach helps students sustainably learn and master STEM fields. Teaching coding and AI to students without this fundamental math knowledge is an absolute farce. Our curriculum bridges this gap and introduces the concepts of technology, coding and AI through the lens of math, just how it should be done.
Courses details can be found here bhanzu.com/#courses
How to enrol in Bhanzu’s classes: Interested parents and students can sign up for a free demo class from our website bhanzu.com to experience our top-notch live class. After successful completion, Bhanzu’s business development team reaches out to the parent.
Success no’s – No. of students impacted, what is the impact Bhanzu has created to the end consumer, and to the parents. Customer Demographics – Parents of Kids age group?, % breakup of kids group, Cities & Countries Bhanzu has presence, About the trainers –, what’s the ratio of trainer to kids. Please share any more insights on success no. if any more
Success Numbers:
- 1M+ teaching hours clocked in
- 30K+ students and parents impacted
- 5+ years of data-driven research
- 20K+ hours of gameplay
2M+ doubts cleared - The age group of children – 6 to 16
- Countries Bhanzu has the presence – India, United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Middle East, Singapore, Malaysia, Australia, New Zealand, Philippines, Japan
These programs are personally designed and curated by Neelakantha Bhanu after expansive data collection and research over the span of 4 years across the globe.
Competitors – Direct, Indirect
Direct competitors: The ulterior motive of training in mental calculations or any mind sport is to develop one’s cognitive abilities. Abacus, Vedic math or KUMON classes teach shortcuts and tricks to solve math problems which defeat the purpose of training in mental calculations. The journey of solving the problem itself is greater than the final answer. The Bhanzu curriculum makes students 4x quicker at math by building organic methodologies in students in significantly lesser timeframes.
Indirect competitors: Coding classes are promising similar outcomes of logical ability building and making the students future-ready, but in reality, they are far from catering to that, as the coding curriculum is built on a very thin foundation. Teaching students AI/coding without them understanding linear algebra or other mathematical concepts makes the entire exercise redundant. Our live classes tackle this by sustainably making students approach coding/tech concepts because the difference between a real coder and a mediocre one is mathematical awareness.
Funding details – Rounds of funding, Amount, Investors & What are the utilizations plans?
The funding round was led by Lightspeed ventures, and also saw participation from prominent angel investors such as Nitin Gupta, CEO of Uni; Maninder Gulati, Global CSO at OYO; Ashish Gupta, ex-Helion MD; Gaurav Munjal, CEO of Unacademy; Kunal Shah, CEO of Cred and Biswa Kalyan Rath, noted stand-up comedian.
The company is focussing on growth, tech platform building, and customer acquisition.
This is something unprecedented in the history of ed-tech products, given the fact that technological advancements never really impact pedagogy and the way subject learning intrinsically pans out. What we envision is a true game-changer. Building this ecosystem, and hiring extremely functional tech teams is our primary focus, and this is where a huge chunk of our funds will be utilised.
Moreover, we have already spread our feet in multiple geographies like the USA, Canada, South-East Asia, the UK, and the Middle East. We are expanding and making math accessible to a wide array of people across the world and in India. To scale our operations and serve a huge volume of students across the world, we would be utilising our funds.
Awards and Accolades, Acknowledgements if any
- “Olympic Gold Medalist – MSO”- Neelakantha Bhanu has become the first Asian to have ever won the Mind Sports Olympiad, UK. This is the pinnacle achievement in the field of mind sports.
- Broke 4 World Records and 50 Limca Book Records in multiple categories in 2014, 2015, and 2016
- Broke the coveted world record – “Fastest Human Calculator” by calculating at a speed equaling 12 numbers/second which was previously held by Scott Flansburg and Shakuntala Devi
- “India’s Youth Icon 2020” – Neelakantha Bhanu and his work with Exploring Infinities earned him the award title by the National Youth Council of India.
- BBC titled Neelakantha Bhanu as the “Usain Bolt of Mathematics”
- Received Nation-Wide Recognition from the Hon’ble President of India and Hon’ble Vice President of India
- Champion at International Speed Arithmetic Championship, 2013, Singapore
- Exploring Infinities has been onboarded as the “Official Math Education Partner” to the Government of Telangana, India and its Education Ministry in 2020. We have impacted more than 2 million students through our broadcast classes during the pandemic.
Quote by the CEO
“Learning math the right way is a liberating experience that helps humans develop better cognitive abilities. With Bhanzu, we aim to revolutionise math learning to eradicate math phobia and encourage careers in STEM fields among learners globally, especially SEA. To meet that goal, we have raised funds recently to enhance our global operations and building tech infrastructure.” Neelakantha Bhanu, Founder & CEO, Bhanzu.
Website URL
Links to recent press (e.g. articles, posts, panels)
- Coverage from BBC in 15+ languages – https://www.bbc.com/news/newsbeat-53894352
- Congratulatory Note from the President of India: https://twitter.com/rashtrapatibhvn/status/1299628167255080960
- https://www.thehindu.com/news/cities/Hyderabad/neelakantha-bhanu-fastest-human-calculator-math/article35540453.ece
- https://www.newindianexpress.com/cities/hyderabad/2020/may/09/killing-math-phobia-in-three-weeks-2140937.html
- https://www.arabnews.com/node/1729666/offbeat
- https://www.thehindubusinessline.com/news/national/meet-the-usain-bolt-of-maths-from-hyderabad/article32458759.ece
- https://www.forbesindia.com/video/video/watch-hyderabads-neelkantha-bhanu-prakash-becomes-fastest-human-calculator/62047
- https://edition.cnn.com/2020/09/01/world/fastest-human-calculator-intl-scil-hnk/index.html
- https://www.thehansindia.com/hans/education-careers/mission-against-math-phobia-643933
- https://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/president-kovind-writes-to-neelakanta-bhanu-prakash-for-winning-world-s-fastest-human-calculator-title/story-5nKNqIiP5GTorwPiKJPzeO.html
- https://www.indiatoday.in/newsmo/video/neelakantha-bhanu-prakash-maths-wizard-who-broke-the-records-of-shakuntala-devi-newsmo-exclusive-1717685-2020-09-02
- https://yourstory.com/socialstory/2020/08/fastest-human-calculator-beats-shakuntala-devi/amp
- https://sputniknews.com/20210215/worlds-fastest-human-calculator-neelakantha-bhanu-prakash-seeks-to-promote-mental-math-as-sport-1082080584.html
- TEDx Talks – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rh-SBTesBXQ
- Asian Boss – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VeIgntnDjyc
