The Hindu Business Line : Tick it right

Burdened by parental and peer pressure to achieve higher scores, many children today spend a lot of their time shuttling between school and tutorials. "Readntick.com was born to inculcate the habit of self-study among youngsters," says Anita Tayal, creator of the portal.

This free, interactive Web site has been specially designed to suit the academic curriculum of junior schools — Class I to Class V, with more than 13,000 questions covering all subjects. Within 11 months of its launch, the site has received about three lakh hits from the 12,000 children using it. "We are getting encouraging response from NRI students, too," says Anita.

But it was not easy for this Panipat-based creator to put together the site's interactive content. A parent of two and an educationist, she was not new to the demands of the competitive world and familiar with the undue importance attached to a child's marks-sheet rather than its overall development.

"I wanted to create a medium where education can be enjoyable for children," she explains. Once she had conceived the idea, she spent more than a year studying the curriculum. She did not restrict herself to any one publisher.

"I read books from as many as 10 publishers for each subject. At times, books from lesser known publishers offered more information," she recalls. With help from daughter Prerna, who designed the Web site and son, Prateek, she launched the site on Children's Day last year.

So what is her site's USP?

It induces youngsters to get into the habit of self-study. And, above all, the questions and answers are in objective form to help children gain an in-depth understanding of the subject. The site's colourful, interactive and animated features are geared to attract children's interest. An added advantage is that even children living in remote areas and outside the country can keep themselves updated with the CBSE (Central Board for Secondary Education) syllabus.

"Our objective is to make learning exciting and not burdensome. The site not only helps students update themselves regularly with the lessons taught at school but also develop the right mentality to face competitive exams in the future, says Anita. And parents can keep track of their child's progress by clicking on a `performance chart'.

Anita plans to give star of the week, star of the month and Readntick master awards to the children who excel.

Asked if the site is generating revenue, Anita says, "Generating revenue is not the main intention. The project is a non-profit venture of Tulsi Ram Education Trust, striving to promote meaningful and cost-effective education."

Responding to demand, she has even come out with a Readntick CD to save on Internet costs and logging hassles. All five classes and five subjects are contained in the CD, which is priced at Rs 250 and can be updated from the site.

To promote the CD and generate revenue, Anita is looking for support from the corporate sector. "Corporates can offer Readntick CD-ROM to customers along with their products. The cost to them will be much less," she says.

Anita plans to extend the site to cover Class VI from this year. "We intend to go up to Class XII. In another year or two, plans will be afoot to create Readntick cafés to make the product widely available."

Though she has approached some schools with the product, her main promotion has been through word of mouth and the response at the 16th World Book Fair held in Delhi.

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