How a Mohali man’s experience in Finland is helping to gamify maths and make it fun for kids in South Asia

He says Eduten, which won the 2022 Unicef EdTech Award, uses Artificial Intelligence (AI) to gamify maths. “It transforms the much-feared subject into an enjoyable experience for students from kindergarten to Grade 10,” Goel adds.

Since 2022, UNICEF’s Global Learning Innovation Hub has also been helping to introduce Eduten in various countries in their bid to democratise education. “When I was exploring global education models, I studied over 300 companies in the West. Finland stood out for its education system. That’s when I came across Eduten, which was expanding internationally,” Goel says.

He saw an opportunity in 2020, when physical classrooms became inaccessible and Eduten began looking beyond Finland to scale its programme. Having worked with the company for several years, he was granted a licence to run Eduten’s operations in South Asia.

Weekly digital mathematics lessons are at the heart of the Eduten pilot. Each week, teachers assign a set of online exercises that students complete during class and optionally at home. The results have been encouraging: teachers reported reduced workloads and better student engagement, and 92 per cent of the students said they enjoyed learning with Eduten.

The core idea is simple—use AI and gamification to make students practice maths several times more than they usually do. Teachers can personalise the learning experience for each student, while school leaders can track progress through a central dashboard. “We focus on reducing the fear of maths while teaching them everything from algebra to geometry,” Goel explains. Data analytics also map the strengths and weaknesses of each child.

Bhutan has already signed up to roll out Eduten’s tools nationwide, starting with students in grades 4 and 5. Sri Lanka is next in line, with teacher training set to begin soon. In India, while states like Punjab have shown interest, scaling up remains slow. “Government schools with 26 crore kids in India are the best way forward, but our reforms are slow, and embracing AI in education is even slower,” notes Goel, who rues that teaching too lacks passion as it is not well-paid and is seldom considered among the top professions.

Frank van Cappelle, who heads the Unicef Global Learning Innovation Hub in Helsinki, said, “These exciting results show how Finnish education excellence, Unicef’s global reach, and the agility of a startup from a top Finnish university can come together to deliver real learning gains for children. At the Unicef Global Learning Innovation Hub, we are thrilled to see such impressive progress in Bhutan and look forward to building on this success.”

Ask Goel, who has two children, aged 9 and 11, about the general fear of students getting too much screen time, and he clarifies, “The idea is not to replace teachers or traditional learning but to blend technology with it.”

The South Asia hub has also undertaken several social impact initiatives. As part of CSR efforts, it provided free maths modules to monastic schools, and in collaboration with the Tata Steel Foundation, helped students from underprivileged backgrounds to prepare for and clear entrance tests to top schools.

For Goel, the mission goes beyond business. “Education needs to be stress-free and enjoyable. That’s how we can create a future-ready generation of innovators,” he says.