An alum of the top-ranked Georgia Tech University and Stanford University, USA, Raghav Himatsingka is founder-CEO of the Mumbai-based Raising Superstars Pvt. Ltd and inventor of the Prodigy Baby app that arouses the latent potential of 0-6 year-old children. Excerpts from an online interview: (see https://www.educationworld.in/ew-interview-raghav-himatsingka-co-founder-raising-superstars/)

An engineering graduate with a postgrad degree in management from Stanford, you have transformed into an evangelist of early childhood care and education. What’s the explanation of this career switch?
It all happened at a time when I was deeply concerned about my child’s well-being, his education, his future amid the Covid pandemic lockdown. Earlier after completing my higher studies at Georgia Tech and Stanford universities, I returned to India and joined the family business. Later I founded my own travel & logistics company, Truckola. But when Covid hit, it also massively hit the transport and logistics industry and I was compelled to shut down the company. Consequently, I left Mumbai and moved back to Kolkata with my parents. Around the same time, I also became a father. With all this at the top of my mind, I started Prodigy Baby as a small business to sustain my family and myself.

Now four years on, how satisfied are you with the progress of the company?
Raising Superstars is a category creator and category leader. There’s no such company in the world at our scale doing what we are doing. There are many physical spaces but nothing in the online world. We are blessed to have 300,000 lifetime parent members in 167 countries worldwide. We have a headcount of 67 employees and half of our business revenue comes from India, and the other half from abroad.

Is it like an online class for parents?
No, it’s not an online class. The way it works is we provide instructions to parents on some activities they should do with infants through pre-recorded videos of 7-8 minutes. You watch the video, and know precisely what you have to do. Each activity presented for children takes less than 5 minutes in a day. There’s no screen time for the child because we believe that it’s super evil for infants. The app is only for parents.

What is the price range of your videos?
The price differs from country to country because our costs of production differ. In India, it starts from Rs.500 and could go up to Rs.1.5 lakh for the entire program.

What outcomes can parents and infants expect from this app?
We never promise that your child will get into IIT or Stanford. Our purpose is to enable babies to realise the best version of their talents and potential. The Prodigy Baby framework is a holistic system to develop whole skills at the foundational level. For example, babies that follow our programs do belly crawling at three months instead of the usual eight months. Their speaking, language, reading, math, memory development, creativity, and problem-solving skills will develop earlier than the norm, including character traits such as persistence, curiosity and confidence.

We believe that if you provide 100 development opportunities and your child learns 70, it’s better than providing 20 opportunities and forcing them to learn all 20. After that it’s up to the child to learn what she/he wants to learn.

But isn’t this putting pressure too early on children? Critics might say you are actually pushing them too early into learning.
That’s a common misconception. We have three responses to this criticism. Firstly, nobody can force a baby or toddler to do anything she doesn’t want to do. Infants start crawling and walking when they want to. Nobody can force them. Second, there is no testing in our program because we prohibit testing or benchmarking. Thirdly, the duration of the program is 5 minutes per day. So, there’s absolutely no pressure.

So your presumption is that all babies are inherently smart to begin with…
It’s a scientific truth. We believe all babies at birth are smarter than any other person on Planet Earth. They should be provided every opportunity after birth to develop strength, stamina, flexibility until age five-six. What most parents ill-advisedly do when a baby is born, is to swaddle her in a blanket and carry her in their arms.

But there’s a reason that infants come into the world — to experience the world as it is. They need to be able to free their arms and legs, to crawl on the floor, develop their brains. If you wrap them up, you are limiting their development. The best time to start our programs is around two-three months after birth. Some parents want to start at birth. But in the first 45-50 days, babies sleep for 18 hours a day. So there is not much for parents to do besides caring, massage etc. But after two months, babies start learning very fast.

NEP 2020 has mandated compulsory early childhood education and learning for all children in the 3-8 age group. How revolutionary is this mandate?
It’s a great step in the right direction. We need to see how this mandate is implemented. But it is definitely a forward step. I’m confident that if we invest in early childhood education today, we will reap great benefits 15-20 years down the line.