Nerdiz targets the education sector of Bangladesh to make Virtual Reality more familiar and easily accessible to the students to help them explore and learn better
Imagine you want to apply to the University of Toronto for your higher education. You also want to see the campus before applying, and you can only visit the campus after you get admitted.
On another occasion, your younger sister is reading about Lalbagh Fort in her textbook. Now, she wants to visit the place; but that is not possible due to the countrywide lockdown.
Instead of simply watching a campus tour video of the University of Toronto or Lalbagh Fort on YouTube, you can now experience the sensation of visiting those places through Virtual Reality. Nerdiz, developed by two young entrepreneurs of Bangladesh, brings you the opportunity.
Pradeepta Kumar Saha and Sagar Mazumder, young university students, came up with the unique idea of introducing “Learning through virtual reality” to the students of Bangladesh in 2016. The background idea of the project came from Pradeepta Kumar, the CEO of Nerdiz, after he realized that learning with the help of visual sensation is far more effective than merely reading from sources, such as books, magazines, or newspapers, or watching unidirectional content on the internet.
Despite being invented in the early-mid 1990s, Virtual Reality in the context of Bangladesh is comparatively a new idea. Due to the lack of access to the latest technology in Bangladesh owing to the low-income economy, the use of Virtual Reality in the education sector is not advanced enough. Nerdiz targets the education sector of Bangladesh to make Virtual Reality more familiar and easily accessible to the students to help them explore and learn better.
Services of Nerdiz
After launching in 2016, Pradeepta and Sagar have expanded Nerdiz to a great extent by introducing different segments to the users of Nerdiz, namely -- Historical Places, to showcase different historical monuments of Bangladesh (Ahsan Manzil, Lalbagh Fort, Shaheed Minar), Science, to showcase different scientific experiments (Flame-test Calcium Chloride, Diffusion in Blank Inc test), Foreign Places, to explore foreign destinations from home (Mother Teresa’s Tomb, University of Toronto) and Events, to celebrate traditional occasions virtually (Ekushey Book Fair, Pahela Baishakh). During the lockdown imposed due to the Covid-19 outbreak, Virtual Reality has become the best way to travel for many people around the world, and Nerdy paves the way for Bangladeshi people to do just that.
Projects of Nerdiz
Nerdiz currently has two active projects -- Project Nkidz, which targets kids aged between 6-17 years; and Project Rupantar, which provides curriculum-based VR education to underprivileged students. The programs are designed to teach the students both soft and hard skills, such as coding, presentation, arts and crafts, and app-making.
Moreover, Nerdiz has been working with different NGOs since the beginning. In collaboration with Its Humanity Foundation, it has successfully held more than 25 VR education sessions in the Gazipur area from 2017 to 2019. The participants of these sessions were local school and university students and underprivileged children. Another successful VR education campaign was held at Chattogram in 2018. It was held in 25 sessions, where more than 30,000 students participated. Nerdiz has also executed different projects in collaboration with Tech for Bangladesh, Youth Voice, and Youth Worldwide Foundation.
Accomplishments
Beginning in only 2016, Nerdiz has come a long way till date. It has bagged some of the most prestigious national entrepreneurship-based awards, such as -- Top 13 of Grameenphone Accelerator Programme 2018, the Top 13 of Banglalink Digital IT Incubator 2018, Championship of BRAC Centre for Entrepreneurship Development Programme (CED) 2018, and National Finalist of Entrepreneurship Worldcup Bangladesh 2019.
Objective
Having Pradeepta Kumar Saha as the CEO and Sagar Mazumder as the COO, Nerdiz is now a large family consisting of seven certified content creators. As of yet, Nerdiz has impacted more than 40,000 students around the country. Pradeepta shares his objectives for the institution: “After some time, we realized our services could be much more useful for people in rural areas. They have not seen many of the heritage and historical sites of Dhaka and other parts of the country, such as Ahsan Manzil and Central Shaheed Minar. We figured that the rural population would be more receptive to visual learning.”
“We look forward to creating visual learners of the future and enhancing their important skills such as creativity, critical thinking, and problem-solving. We also look forward to an education system where VR lessons will complement regular traditional lessons,” added Sagar Mazumder, COO, Nerdiz.
For more details on Nerdiz, visit: http://www.nerdiz.com
Leave a Comment