Fighting Dyslexia, Empowering Children- Devesh Kumar's "The D Labs"

Devesh Kumar is what you’d call a young achiever. Hardly a year out of college, Devesh has founded the Entrepreneurship Cell (Patna), ViDel, WhiteShark and The D Labs. And for The D Labs, Devesh has won the National Social Innovation Honours 2013.

While working with Air India NGO, Devesh had a chance to work in the slums where he taught several kids who were struggling w.r.t. their reaction time, judging the directions (or similar letters) and other academic & sports activities. It didn't take him long to understand the deeper problem and get motivated enough to build products to solve it as well.

Dyslexia is referred to as an anomalous approach to process information and a learning disability, which affects many children. To ensure that every dyslexic kid reaches to his/her potential, it has to be identified and taken care of at an early stage. And hence Devesh started up The D-Labs.

Team & Product: The 4 member team of D-Labs consists of 3 coders, 1 designer & 1 person sweating it out in the business development field. The product offered by The D Lab has been designed to provide a two way solution.

Part-A: Diagnosis - There's no medical formula existing to judge if a child is dyslexic or not, it depend entirely on how a child reacts and behaves differently to the situations. Hence, this involves a lot of data and observation.

Part-B: Software integrated with Hardware - Few games have been integrated with Kinect which is used to track the eye & hand movement, use of keyboard and other coordination which in turn is used to generate a report from the collected data. This report is sent to the doctor to understand the exact problem and accordingly take the case ahead.

Market: The D Labs products are available in the market for everyone around the globe. The idea is to get maximum number of parents using it for their children, and if they want the data can be tracked & shared with them. Though the software is free, hardware (Kinect) is available for a fixed price. And a premium is charged based on the data matrix.Socitey & NSIH 2013 Awards: The domain in which D-Labs is operating is not something purely medical. In fact it is has to do as much with our societal framework as well. Parents should understand that these games are for everyone and not specifically for dyslexic children only as they are primarily designed to test & enhance the mental abilities. Expressing his gratitude to the NASSCOM Social Innovation Honors-2013, Devesh shared -" NSIH has definitely helped us with a great visibility and some important recommendations across the industry."

Future: Devesh is eyeing a future where majority of the dyslexic kids are treated at an initial level and thus offering huge potential towards their growth. As a society, we also have to understand that dyslexia is not being mentally challenged and can be corrected with extreme ease collectively.

Disclaimer: YourStory.in is the ‘Media Partners’ for NASSCOM Social Innovation Honors 2013.

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