[100 Emerging Women Leaders] How Teena Paul’s Giftolexia is helping students with learning disorders

At the age of 13, Teena Paul’s son was diagnosed with dysgraphia, a learning disorder. Three years later, Paul and her husband came across a gaze pattern-based screening tool from Sweden—an early screening method.

Dysgraphia is a neurological disorder and learning disability that concerns impairments in written expression, affecting the ability to write, primarily handwriting, and coherence.

At the time, Paul had been working in the learning space with an edtech startup for almost eight years, and her experience with her son prompted her to bring this useful tool to India.

“We had started conversations to get a licence from the Swedish firm when I got admission to the first batch of the Women’s Startup Program at NSRCEL at IIM-Bangalore. I was one among the 50 women chosen for a boot camp that gave me good exposure on how to start up,” Paul tells HerStory.

Importance of early screening

In 2017, she started Giftolexia with seed funding from NSRCEL to help children with dyslexia and other learning difficulties with methods and tools for early identification and remediation. 

“In the meantime, we realised that the licensing cost of the Swedish tool was very high—Rs 1,500 per student. This was not feasible for the Indian market. Our mentors at NSRCEL had advised us to look at developing our own tool, and we started looking at other options,” says Paul.

By December 2017, she found a collaborator in Cyclops Medtech—a Bengaluru startup known for its eye-tracking device. The partnership led to an application that captured gaze data, which it initially tried out with children. 

Paul explains, “One cannot discern a learning disability by looking at a child. This is not an intellectual issue, but a processing difference, and one needs screening to identify this.”

The average age of assessment for learning disorders in India is around 13 years, she points out, as they are usually assessed before the board exams to avail of special concessions.

The Right to Persons with Disabilities Act advises screening before the age of nine, but according to Paul, it’s not a diagnostic screening but identifies if the child is at risk.

While there are different assessments for dyslexia, including the Pearson DST, they require expertise and have to be conducted by a child psychologist, a trained clinical psychologist, or a trained teacher.

With India woefully short of clinical psychologists and with little awareness and understanding of learning disorders in the country, Giftolexia saw the need for a tech-enabled screening tool. 

Screening for different learning disorders

“We ask the child to wear an eye-tracking device that is similar to goggles. Some text is projected on a smart screen. The device is calibrated, and the child starts reading the text on the screen,” she elaborates.

The text is age and grade-appropriate and can be accessed in the language medium of instruction in school. The collected data is analysed to conclude whether there is a risk or not. 

“We also give what is called a fluency report, based on very simple parameters, which we explain in detail in the report,” she adds.

With this deep tech tool, the screening age is reduced to eight years from the current average of 12 years and the screening time to five minutes per child from 30 minutes taken for a pen-and-paper screening. It can screen for specific learning disabilities.

In 2018, Giftolexia was one of the winners at the Maharashtra Startup Week. Following this, it screened over 2,400 children from Pimpri-Chinchwad Municipality in a year. It also developed the screening in Marathi and organised training of teachers in the region.

Paul says that the equipment is outsourced from Cyclops Medtech, which runs on an in-house developed software. 

During the pandemic, Giftolexia organised online programmes open to every child with learning challenges. After a break of two years, it started screening again, adding Malayalam and Kannada languages.

Lack of awareness and stigma

Giftolexia’s focus is on schools, as Paul rightly points out, not many are willing to accept or acknowledge these learning disabilities. In fact, teachers are not trained to understand these disabilities. So, awareness is key for early intervention. 

Giftolexia has partnered with the Indian Institute of Psychology and Research for students to help with different forms of awareness—videos on YouTube busting myths on dyslexia, and more. 

The startup has screened over 4,500 students in government schools, and with a recent partnership with NASSCOM, it will screen students in 30 schools. If the screening is offered through a CSR fund, it’s not charged.

Paul admits to crossing several hurdles to develop the screening tool, but she got immense support from the ecosystem partners.

“We are fortunate to have a founder who is an expert in analytics, supported by C-Camp, Department of Science and Technology, mentors from leading educational institutions, and NGOs, and most importantly, being a part of NSRCEL. However, lack of awareness and stigma surrounding learning disorders is the biggest challenge,” says Paul. 

The need to find a solution for children suffering from learning disorders made Paul take a leap of faith and start up in her 50s, with little background in tech.

“Even after almost eight years, the network I built at NSRCEL holds me in good stead. If you are starting up with no experience, look for a programme that’s suitable for you. Also, find the right mentors to guide you,” she advises.