Avishkaar: India’s First Robotics Educational Institute for Kids

Avishkaar creates products, services and experiences that talks to that maker and inspires them to make. Currently, they have a range of products in the domain of Educational Robotics this inspires primarily children to make/invent.

Beginnings & History:

Avishkaar was started as Building Blocks Learning Solutions Pvt Ltd in the year 2010. Over the last eight years, the company has evolved from first services to second solutions and now a product company. However, the focus of the organization has always been to develop creativity and innovation amongst the children.

Over these years, they have set up Robotics/Tinkering/Science Labs in close to 700 schools across the country. They have a presence in all the states of the country via their channel network and boast a very strong product development (hardware, software, web and industrial design team). In addition to a robust Product team, They have noteworthy Marketing, Events, Channel Development and Curriculum and Training Team as well. Their  IRC League is the biggest Science and Technology competition in the whole of South Asia and has close to 50,000 students participating every year.

Starting from one man’s dream to bring innovation to classrooms, they have now grown into a committed group of 85 people whose biggest dent in the universe is to inspire a Maker in each one of us.

Product Portfolio:

Avishkaar’s product ecosystem starts from the age group of 5 years and goes all the way to 16 years (however, if you have managed to keep the childlike curiosity alive in you then their products work for 5 years to infinity).

Their introductory product (Robby) is just the right non intimidating friendly Robot for your 5-8-year-old who can make it dance or swing it from the fingertips of an app or even program it from a child-friendly desktop Application. The goal here is to introduce logical thinking, sequencing and programming to young kids.

Our first construction set is Avishkaar INTRO – it’s a full-fledged Robotics design system that aims at 8 to 10 years old to create moving models that can solve day to day problems of moving, picking, carrying etc. The goal here is to teach Creativity, Imagination and Scientific temperament to the users.

Building upon INTRO is their LITE set that has the capability to teach limited Programming skills in addition to a wholesome Robotics Design system. Since it comes equipped with a microcontroller-based brain, one can control various designs that one makes either through a program or a wireless controller. Its aimed at 10 to 12-year-olds.

Our full-fledged Programming based Robotics Design set is the FULL kit that boasts of all sorts of sensors, a child-friendly GUI Language, a fairly Robust brain and a comprehensive design system. This is just the right set for 12 years and above.

At Avishkaar, They have embraced the open-source movement and our X series is an initiative in that direction only. It fits in well with various Arduino, RPi or open hardware movements of the world and is just the right prototyping platform for 14+ students.

With all the above products, they have a very strong and sturdy ecosystem that caters to all of your needs for 10 years once you enter at the age of 5 years.

Tarun is founder & CEO at Avishkaar, is a passionate Maker who believes that making is better than consuming. This belief led him to start Avishkaar, whereby he has set up more than 400 Robotics and Tinkering Labs across the country. Tarun has many firsts to his name – right from patenting the first Modular Design System in Educational Robotics, to introducing the first social Robot (Robby & Bonny) in an Indian home, to setting up India’s biggest Science and Technology Competition called IRC League. Tarun also worked with NITI Aayog to get Avishkaar for setting up Atal Tinkering Labs across India.

He garnered engineering degree from Delhi College of Engineering in 2001. He got a master degree in Business Administration from the University of Washington and interned in the US with online companies Drugstore.com and Expedia. He started his career with Aplion Networks, headquartered in the US. His $105,000, or around Rs.63 lakh, a year Microsoft job helped him pay off student loans and set aside cash for his first start-up, Building Blocks.

He left Microsoft office in early 2006 and once back in India.  He began looking into ideas to set up his own business. He had taught briefly in the US as part of the “Challenge for Charity” programme, where he used Lego kits to teach robotics in schools. That inspired him and he started offering science workshops in New Delhi schools. By 2008, he had launched Building Blocks, an education start-up that sets up robotics clubs in schools, offers science workshops and organizes the annual Inter-School Robotics Challenge (IRC league).

Message from Founder, Avishkaar…

Tarun is motivated to take innovation to every household in Asia and has already got successes in Maldives, Singapore, China and Bangladesh. Under his leadership, Avishkaar has become one of the fastest-growing and trend-setting robotics maker companies in the sector.

Tarun is a cross-fitter and likes to do Vipassana in his free time.