Teaching Your Kids Hindi Alphabets is One Download Away

Mobile app developers at Fliplog show us the way with “Hindi Alphabets - Consonants”Brij(entrepreneur behind Fliplog), tell us about your app Hindi Alphabets - Consonants.

As per Wikipedia, Hindi is the fourth most popular language spoken in the world after Mandarin, Spanish and English. Hindi alphabets are made of 13 vowels and 36 consonants. Hindi Alphabets - Consonants app is an educational game for kids(developed by Fliplog) to familiarize, practice and test their knowledge of Hindi alphabets. The app comes with features that are simple and fun to use, animated alphabet pages with voice-over to learn the sound of each letter, alphabet doodling to practice writing and puzzles to test alphabet ordering.

Fliplog kidbooks is a series of interactive, multi-lingual digital books. Using elegant design and interactive user experience, Fliplog helps children enjoy conventional books in the new digital medium.

How do you differentiate Hindi Alphabets - Consonants from similar mobile apps in the market?

There have been many efforts to introduce Hindi language apps for kids. Most of them were very light on functionality. Some similar apps that were released have static experience and completely lack interactivity. Whereas, our approach at Fliplog was to package multiple learning techniques in one app, Hindi Alphabets - Consonants.

Can you tell us in detail about the features of your app? Which feature excites you most?Hindi Alphabets - Consonants app has two main learning oriented features - explore Hindi alphabets and read alphabets in a flash card style narration. Not stopping with that, we also added reinforcement and assessment type of activities. There is a tracing system wherein the kids can use touch functionality to learn alphabet writing - this is our favorite feature and kids just love it. There is also quiz and ordering activity which allows kids to learn.

Is there a story behind creation of the app?

The idea came from our experiences with our kids. Both my daughters grew up in California with very little exposure to Hindi language. We wanted to create an app that they can use repetitively to learn Hindi. Every parent wants to teach his/her kids personally, but they have considerable time constraints. Given proper incentives, the job of delivering repetitive learning can be delegated to iPad type of devices.

How much time did you take to code the app?

We finished coding the first version of the app in 4 weeks.

Did you have any prior programming experience? How easy was it to get going on iPhone?We have lot of expertise in iOS programming so the technical part was not the most challenging piece. Getting design and user experience right took us some time.

So, what platforms are up next for launch, other than the current iOS?

We are writing apps for Android, Windows Mobile, and HTML5.

Why did you choose to build the app for iPhone to begin with?

iPhone pioneered touch interface and they were the first ones to let third party developers come in and write apps by taking advantage of the touch interface. And then there were technical reasons; great set of tools, ready market place in terms of App Store, and straight forward ways to monetize apps.

Did you use any specific technology to render Hindi in iOS or did you use images?

We used Google Transliteration and image editor.

How many users downloaded the app so far?

We are very happy with the download numbers. Users from more than 20 countries have downloaded this app.

How has the response for the app been? Any interesting pointers that you would like to share with us?

The response has been fantastic. Parents are now getting tech savvy when it comes to at-home schooling activities. We get lot of positive emails from parents. Though most of the emails come from the US.

What is the immediate action item for your team?

We are working extremely hard to get the Android version out soon.

Are you planning to extend support for other languages as well?

Yes. We already have 6 international language in testing stage. More Indian languages will be coming after that.

Brij, can you tell us about the day to day challenges you face as an entrepreneur in mobile app space?Design cycles are definitely longer. Actually, this problem is growing with time. We have two diverging trends here - there are going to be more devices on more number of platforms whereas user expectations on great design experience is also growing steadily. Reconciling those two goals and doing it without breaking the bank is going to be crucial.

Are you looking at monetizing the app in any other way, apart from the current download cost?

For children’s apps, we are reluctant to include ads. We don't like the quality of the ads. Download cost is working fine for us as of now. We may look at sponsorship option at some point. Would love to partner with companies that are in similar space.

What kind of strategic partnerships helped you scale?

We work with content publishers who are best in their categories and carry great content.

Share your thoughts on how mobile learning is catching up in India? Are teachers and parents open to learning via apps?

Yes. Awareness is increasing in a big way in India. In my own apartment complex, lot of parents use gadgets for specific learning programs. This trend will catch up in next 12-16 months and will probably peak in 2-3 years.

Anything else that you would like to share with the readers of YourStory.in?

We are surprised by the whole self-learning trend. Without any teacher or parent assistance, kids are trying pretty hard to understand concepts. They think it is all play and in the process they end up learning complex subjects - something even teachers struggle to teach. Repetitive learning using apps is definitely something we are seeing as a new trend.

YourStory.in’s Technology Editor Sriram V Iyer’s Take:

This is an interesting app, from the perspective that people try to solve their pain-point by writing their own apps, and monetize it by selling it to others. On a personal front, I am happy that computing has come a long way from being dominated by uber-geeks.

This is a simple app that focuses on teaching Hindi consonants to the kids. Check it out if you have a kid, who has to learn Hindi Consonants!

Hindi Alphabets - Consonants is one of the Top 10 Apps at TechSparks 2011 App4India.

Do check out Fliplog for further details about the app. Also, share your thoughts on the story by leaving a comment or by writing to us at [email protected]

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