When Suriya Prabha (31) rode a two-wheeler for the first time, little did she realise that the learning would prepare her for a different kind of journey. Hailing from a small town in Theni district, to her learning to ride was an empowerment and freedom to travel.

“It was that learning which made me think that if there is necessity and a right kind of motivation, anything can be achieved,” Prabha said.

Prabha wasted no time to express her bigger ambitions to her husband. She had an idea of taking artificial intelligence (AI) to an unusual audience - children in remote villages.

A supportive husband that he has always been, Karthik Kannan (36) not only helped her launch 'Youcode Intelligence Solutions', but also taught her technology. A microbiology graduate by education, Prabha used free online tools to learn the intricacies of coding.

But the unique business idea had its set of challenges.

Prabha could not find tech toys and consumable robotics in the country which left her with the only option of importing them from the US and UK. Youcode currently has a range of robots such as MekaMon, Nintendo, Sphero and Lego Boost.

“It took me several calls to even make them understand what my need is but finally they not only sent the robots but also appreciated my efforts,” Prabha recalls.

Using ‘kids consumable AI contents’, Youcode teaches AI to rural children in three stages : Be a robot, code a robot and experience AI, where kids are first made to feel like robots using augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) technologies.

“Rural children have never seen a robot except in movies like 2.0. So when we took robots to their doorsteps, their excitement cannot be described in words,” said Prabha who gave AI experience to 7,000 students in Madurai, Ramanathapuram and Virudhunagar under Artificial Intelligence for kids (AI4KIDS) campaign.

The company which has developed speech and object recognition tools using Google’s free AIY kit and Amazon’s Deep Lens technology also won the stage one evaluation of Google India’s accelerator program, which recognises Indian startups that use AI and machine learning (ML) to solve problems.

“We have received $3000 worth free credits from Google which can be used for developing advanced AI kits” Prabha said.

But why AI only for rural children when it has not reached even the schools in the metros? “AI will reach urban students soon but I don’t want the rural children to be left behind in this aspect too,” Prabha says. “My target is to teach AI to one crore rural children,” she says.

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