Success ‘matra’

“English board games are popular but researching for my project I was shocked to find hardly any in Indian languages. Scrabble has been adapted in 30 world languages but not Hindi,the third most spoken language in the world,or any other Indian language,” says 26-year-old Manuj,an IIT Guwahati graduate.

When Manuj was in college,Madhumita and Rajat- both 2004 IIT-Bombay graduates-were not satisfied with their software jobs and were looking for more creative career avenues.

Intrigued by the education system,they took up jobs as teachers in Rishi Valley School near Bangalore in 2006. “In the four years we taught science to middle-school students,we didn’t use any textbook and conveyed concepts entirely through games and activities. We observed deep retention of concepts,” says 29-year-old Rajat. When Manuj started working in Bangalore,Rajat and Madhumita visited him on weekends. It was then the idea to develop the game as a product took shape.

Converting an English board game into Hindi,a language structurally very different,with its akshars and matras,was challenging. “In English,any word on the board can be built using the 26 alphabets,but Hindi has a different structure with akshars and matras,and more than 600 characters are required,” says Rajat. “If one were to blindly copy the English scrabble,the game would have 4,000 tiles and the board would be the size of a king-size bed. We came up with the concept of keeping akshar tiles opaque and matra tiles transparent and the game has 100 tiles of each,” says Manuj.

In 2009,the trio entered a business idea competition. Their concept won among 400-odd entries. “The challenge was to keep the solution easy,yet enjoyable. We must have played the game close to 1,000 times in that duration. I still remember how we made the first board by hand,using wood for the tiles and drew with sketch pens,” says Madhumita.

With the prototype ready,they fine-tuned it and sought feedback. They got a rude shock. “Everyone loved the product but they did not want to buy it because board games are not very popular in India. That’s when we realized we needed to marry the game with a need,” says Manuj. That need was education and they approached the Chhattisgarh government to try it in 1,000 schools as a pilot project. “The idea was to benefit a large segment of children,” says Madhumita.

It was appreciated by students and teachers alike and was also adopted by the Madhya Pradesh,Rajasthan and West Bengal (in Bangla) governments,reaching around 3 lakh children. It is also available as a retail product.