Chitra Ravi, Founder and CEO of Chrysalis, a Chennai based educational reform startup has said that more than 15 lakh schools in India are failing children by not helping them realise their potential.
Started in the year 2001, Chrysalis has steadily grown from a small organisation of five-members to employing more than 100 people today. It has its presence in 11 states, where it is working with almost 2,50,000 students from 800-plus schools.
In an attempt to bring about a large-scale change, Chrysalis has established a roadmap to bring in a fundamental change in the existing education system by engaging five principal media–policy makers, government schools, private schools, parents and public, by selective use of their open source intellectual property.
Its flagship product -ThinkRoom is a student-centric academic programme developed in-house after 16 years of intense pedagogic research. It aims to help every school student to discover his or her potential and replaces programmes and textbooks where the focus is limited to academic outcomes.
In an attempt towards realising this dream, Chrysalis raised a pre-series ‘A’ funding round from Indian education sector focused investor Gray Matters Capital earlier this year.
Gray Matters Capital is headquartered in Atlanta, United States. While it is invested in all sectors like microfinance, information technology, healthcare, energy and education, it turned its focus to education for the under-served children in developing countries, especially India, in 2007.
The amount raised will be used by Chrysalis to build on its research and development and to strengthen its multichannel approach, leading the company to further target on its goal of improving education in K-12 schools. There are currently 250 million children enrolled in these schools of which 100 million are in the private school segment, as reported by Economic Times.
Speaking to the publication, Ragini Bajaj Chaudhary, India CEO, Gray Matters Capital said, “We see Chrysalis as one of the most innovative, mission-driven and student-centric educational enterprises in India, which has the potential of bringing about a tangible change in the way education is imparted in our schools.”
(Edited by Shruti Singhal)