Gitex Technology Week: ‘Rubik’s Cube is brain food’

Dubai - Xoog (xoog.info) is a kid’s talent discovery and enrichment platform.

Fresh graduates from NIT –Trichy, India, Karishma S (22) and Ritvik Raj (23), though dressed in corporate wear, aren’t your regular start-up entrepreneurs. Yes, they speak the cool jargon, but what makes these co-founders stand out at the ongoing Gitex Technology Week, is that their company, Xoog, is their answer to the adults, who have over generations, continued to ingrain in young minds that marks is all that matter and life starts and ends at the doors of an academic world.

As we speak, Ritvik gets busy solving the Rubik’s Cube while he talks business, and Karishma speaks with passion about bringing a fresh wave of change in the traditional educational choices.

Xoog (xoog.info) is a kid’s talent discovery and enrichment platform, which aspires to trigger a positive change in the market research figures, which show that the talent for kids is measured via academics, 70 per cent, and 30 per cent via inherent skills; and hence the latter often goes unnoticed. Xoog seeks to provide solutions to issues such as identifying the natural skills of children, testing the acquired skills, and providing them with the right techniques to enhance; and the Rubik Cube’s program is one of the first by the start-up.

The meaning of the word Xoog when Google-d leads to results, which indicate that it essentially conveys strength, concentrate or force. “Engineering and medicine, there are more than these two subjects in the curriculum,” said Ritvik, a speedcuber and coach, who can solve a Rubik’s cube in 10 seconds and is a senior member of the Rubik’s community, having started to solve the cube when he was in grade nine. “Unfortunately, there are still many people, who equate talent with marks scored in academics rather than the inherent skills, which is the psychology we aspire to change,” said Karishma, the app developer.