Rural Karnataka Teacher Builds Low-Cost Humanoid Robot To Boost Learning In Village Schools

This article was originally published on the NITI Frontier Tech Respository.

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In many Indian villages, digital learning remains out of reach. Chalkboards and handmade visuals are still the norm, and overstretched teachers juggle multiple roles. It was against this backdrop that Akshay Mashelkar decided to act — not by waiting for top-down reform, but by building something himself.

Inspired by the idea of bringing innovation into rural classrooms, he designed Shiksha: an interactive, humanoid teaching assistant that could support learning even where resources were scarce. His goal was simple but powerful: make lessons more exciting, consistent, and accessible.

Meet Shiksha

Constructed over 1.5 years with an investment of just Rs 2 lakh, Shiksha is no ordinary machine. It responds to programmed cards that trigger subject-specific lessons in Kannada, English, and Mathematics. With one card to activate it and others to initiate individual lessons, the robot engages students through recitations, questions, poems, and educational trivia.

Shiksha doesn’t just deliver information — it interacts. The experience it creates is immersive, fun, and relatable, turning classrooms into spaces of active participation rather than passive instruction.

A growing presence across rural schools

Today, Shiksha is operational in more than 25 schools across the Uttar Kannada district. Schools such as KHB School and Urdu School in Sirsi have reported visibly improved classroom engagement. Teachers note that students are more attentive and excited about learning when the robot leads the session.

The robot also relieves teachers of some instructional load, allowing them to focus on individualised support. For schools with limited staff and growing student needs, this dual benefit has been transformative.

A blueprint for grassroots ed-tech

What sets Shiksha apart isn’t just its affordability or clever engineering — it’s its replicability. Designed using locally sourced components and adaptable content formats, Shiksha offers a model that could scale across rural India, especially in primary classrooms where foundational learning needs the most attention.

Under the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020, there is a strong emphasis on foundational learning, multilingual instruction, and the integration of technology in classrooms — especially at the primary level. 

Additionally, Shiksha complements the aims of the Samagra Shiksha Abhiyan, which promotes equitable access to quality education in rural and remote regions. As India scales its Digital India mission and initiatives like PM eVidya and DIKSHA, grassroots solutions like Shiksha can play a vital role in extending the reach of technology-enabled education to the country’s last-mile learners.

Humanising tech for the youngest learners

Shiksha represents the best of what grassroots innovation can achieve — practical, affordable, and transformative. In a country striving to make education inclusive and future-ready, this humble humanoid stands as a testament to what’s possible when educators become inventors.

It reminds us that technology in education doesn’t need to be high-cost to be high-impact. Sometimes, all it takes is one committed teacher and a little ingenuity to reimagine how learning reaches every child.

To read more such stories, visit NITI Frontier Tech Repository.

Sources: 

‘30-YO Teacher in Rural Karnataka Built Jugaad Robot to Make Learning Fun for Students’: By Tina Freese, Published on 17 May 2023.