Jayaraman: true calling

Serial edupreneur Vidya Jayaraman is founder-director of the Bengaluru-based StudyMatix Learning Pvt. Ltd (estb.2024), an edtech venture dedicated to bridging the gap between pedagogy and technology. The company offers two flagship products designed to address foundational gaps in early grades: Learning Well!, a games-based foundational literacy learning app for K-class VI children, and Lexillion (lexillion.com), an AI-powered teaching assistant serving students from pre-K through graduate studies across all subjects.

Newspeg. Last July (2025), Learning Well! was shortlisted by a global jury under the ‘Games in Development’ category for the 13th International Educational Games Competition staged at Nord University, Norway. “Although Learning Well! didn’t win the competition, its shortlisting validated our research-led design on a global stage, proving that our framework for active learning is on a par with the best in the world,” says Jayaraman.

History. A chemical engineering alum of NIT-K (Surathkal), Jayaraman began her career in 1992 in the chemicals industry with several top-ranked companies including SM Dyechem Ltd, Toyo Engineering India, Supreme Petrochem Ltd, and ThyssenKrupp (Uhde India). However, raised in a family of educationists and mathematicians, she quit corporate life in 1999 to follow “her true calling” — education — starting with a tests prep centre.

“Early in my academic career I discerned the most intelligent students were being held back by fear of maths, rooted in conceptual gaps” recalls Jayaraman. To get to the bottom of this widespread apprehension, Jayaraman invested five years working directly in schools with class I-VIII students and teachers to investigate math phobia.

This research prompted the promotion of Math Adventures in 2012 with investment pooled from friends and family. Over a period of nine months, Jayaraman conceptualised the Math Master Series (MMS), an activities-based maths curriculum for classes K-VIII. Since then, the curriculum has been adopted by 18 schools in Bengaluru, Mumbai, Balipara, and Jodhpur with 75,000 children learning the Math Adventures way.

However in 2018, Math Adventures was acquired by the ill-fated Think & Learn Pvt. Ltd, aka Byju’s, where she served as Vice President (Content Development) for four years. Simultaneously, she was a weekly volunteer teacher for the next seven years at the city’s Ramagondanahalli Government School, teaching maths, running game-based learning sessions for classes I-VIII students, and conducting teacher development workshops.

Direct talk. “At StudyMatix, we focus on ensuring students have a strong foundation. We use game-based learning to promote active participation, ensuring foundational mastery from the beginning. While our Learning Well! framework began with mathematics, it is a versatile model we are extending to all core subjects. For more advanced needs, we developed Lexillion, which features specific modes to support the entire educational ecosystem: a Study Buddy for students, a Teaching Buddy for educators, and a Writing Buddy for enterprise and professional applications. By strengthening these foundations, we provide the rigour essential for success in competitive exams and the global AI-driven economy,” says Jayaraman.

Future plans. Jayaraman is bullish about the positive response to Lexillion, an AI-powered personal tutor all set to launch in June 2026. “A global personal computer manufacturer has shortlisted Lexillion as the pre-installed default application on one of its new devices in the affordable price range. Simultaneously, we have signed an agreement with Orange Education Publications which specialises in maths and computer texts, to embed QR codes directly linked to our Lexillion program. I am hopeful that children in India, with its ancient tradition of mathematics learning and application, will learn to love maths again and with strong fundamentals take to AI-driven education,” says Jayaraman.

Fair winds!

– Paromita Sengupta