Ashhar Alam/New Delhi

A team of IIT alumni and engineers from Flipkart and Uber has launched padho.ai, an AI-powered learning platform designed to provide every student with a personal 24/7 AI mentor. Combining a Digital Brain Twin, interactive learning tools, and proprietary mastery algorithms, padho.ai adapts to each child’s unique learning style and pace, making personalized education accessible across India.

With over 250 million school-going children in the country, conventional classrooms, where one teacher handles 40–80 students struggle to provide individualized attention. Students often advance without fully mastering prior concepts, causing cumulative learning gaps. padho.ai tackles this by offering truly personalized learning that identifies foundational gaps and rebuilds understanding step by step, regardless of location.

Unlike early edtech solutions focused mainly on exams, crash courses, and test scores, padho.ai emphasizes deep conceptual understanding. Its approach aligns with India’s National Education Policy (NEP) 2020, promoting competency-based learning, critical thinking, and holistic education over rote memorization.

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The platform models millions of granular skills as “neurons” in a student’s cognitive map. Using Bayesian Knowledge Tracing (BKT) and Item Response Theory (IRT), it tracks what each student knows, predicts potential forgetting, and dynamically adjusts the learning path. When a student struggles, the AI mentor navigates the concept map to uncover the root problem, even revisiting earlier grades if needed.

Learning happens through a visual, collaborative notebook, where students and the AI mentor solve problems together drawing, annotating, and visualizing concepts in real time. Every interaction feeds the platform’s algorithms, making learning measurable and adaptive at a level no traditional classroom can match.

Sessions are generated live in real time and follow a Socratic method, prompting students to explain their reasoning. Available 24/7 in 11 languages, including English, Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, and Kannada, padho.ai extends high-quality education to tier-2 and tier-3 cities, towns, and rural India. The platform supports CBSE, ICSE, and State Boards, along with JEE, NEET, Olympiads, Science, and Computer Science subjects.

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Since its pilot launch three months ago, over 1,000 students have joined organically, with even Grade 2 learners achieving international ranks in IMO and NSO competitions. Bootstrapped and growing, padho.ai envisions a future where the “school” is not a building, but a digital interface that adapts to each child.

By focusing on concept mastery instead of rote answers, padho.ai aims to develop critical thinking and long-term problem-solving skills. As AI transforms education globally, platforms like padho.ai offer an alternative to conventional exam-driven learning, creating a thinking-first model for India’s next generation.