TagHive India’s First Team Meeting

First ever TagHive team meet in Bhopal
Meet our India team!

Last month before the Indian summer descended over the sub-continent, we at TagHive India had our very first in-person meeting. Attended by 13 people from 6 states, conversations and sessions were prepared to bring Clarity of (Purpose, Platform & Role), Deeper Connection with (Team and Product) and Confidently Looking Ahead to (Grow the business).

Jasmeet and Amrut participating in an activity
Jasmeet and Amrut participating in an activity

With ice-breaking sessions for the team in place, everyone got a chance to share about themselves in small and big groups. Further, to cement the “why” of TagHive, the whole team visited Government Secondary School Bhopal to see Class Saathi in action. As it was the academic year-end, our team saw teachers revising Maths and Science using the Class Saathi clickers and app.

Female student using Class Saathi clicker for quick assessment
Female student using Class Saathi clicker

Mrs Alka Sharma, the school principal for the last 22 years, along with grade 5 math and science teachers, spent time with the team. They shared their experience and helped us understand the on-ground needs of teachers and school leaders. The goal is to empower teachers to transform their role from “a sage on the stage” to “a guide on the side”.

Class Saathi team meeting with secondary school principal in Raj Bhavan, Bhopal
TagHive team meeting with secondary school principal in Raj Bhavan, Bhopal

With the motive of taking away concrete learning points from the team meeting, new team members understood the different Class Saathi solutions (Desktop, Mobile, and Large Scale Assessments). As a team, fruitful discussions on the kind of changes that are required took place. Herein, all team members shared their organisational goals to plan and execute as a collective. Now, it’s onwards and upwards!

Favourite Features to Guiding Goals – Hearing Personally From Our Employees

By Yena Lee | UX intern for Summer 2021

Coming to TagHive as a two-month summer intern, I was fascinated by all the roles each company member played. Moreover, it was interesting to see how they each had different outlooks about the app according to their roles yet still seemed to merge into one purpose of Class Saathi. Intrigued by their differing perspectives, I asked them each to share their thoughts on our service and its future direction.

Here’s what they had to say:

Is there anything from our app you especially want to highlight to users as a {job title}?

From Our Designer

I would highlight the design elements included in the flow for when a user plays a quiz: screen layout, animations in-between, and how problems & solutions appear. During this task, I was challenged with making it appear simple and apt as a quiz-taking environment so users could focus on the problem only.


From Our Marketer

Yes! It would definitely be our newest feature of coin wallet. As a marketer, you have to think about how to generate revenue which is exactly what this feature is about!

But more importantly, making money is also connected to how we are going to make our service better for users to happily purchase it. So, as we introduce new features, we have to constantly think about making our app appealing and desirable for them.


From Our Senior Manager

Though not a particular feature, I always want to place emphasis on providing actual improvement and results. After all, that is our mission. Thus, I think it’s important to establish to users that the more you use our service, the higher your understanding and grades will rise.


From Our Frontend Developer

In the mock test mode, there are many front-end features that pay close attention to making a test-like setting. For example, the timer function, going back and forth between questions, a pop-up problem preview, etc. Because mobile settings are limited, I paid attention to a lot of details on this part. Therefore, if users found these features helpful, it would be very meaningful.


From Our QA Engineer/Junior Product Manager

I would actually like to point out two features. First, the recommended question quiz is a feature I conduct quality assurance (QA) on every day, almost like a routine. Therefore, I’m confident with the way this feature works. Also, I was the project manager (PM) for the rather new live quiz during which the server, web and even Android development were involved. Though it was a complicated process during development and even QA, I have high hopes for its use. When both these features are used in a balanced manner it creates a harmonious combination of both everyday (recommended quiz) and fun (live quiz) ways to study.


From Our Junior AI Developer

I would emphasize the question recommendation feature to our users. This feature recommends problems to students based on question and skill-level evaluations. As an AI developer, I think this is where I spend the most time and effort. When I see student reports showing definite improvement as they answer more and more questions, it makes me the proudest. Not only is our system’s ability to recommend accurately and reliability improving, but more students trusting our system too.


From Our Senior AI Developer

The mock test predicted score based on AI technology is a new feature we are developing. This feature will enable users to anticipate their scores based on their previous outcomes and our data analysis. Thus, I would like to introduce this as a new feature for users to anticipate in the near future.


Do you have any personal goals as a {job title} in relation to your broader goal for this app?

From Our Designer

My main goal as a designer is to always not lose purpose in the task I am doing. It’s actually quite easy to get lost in the design and stray away. Thus, it’s important to keep track of where your design is headed even while adding other elaborate elements for aesthetic or fun purposes.  

Also, on a bigger scope, I hope to establish designs of Class Saathi into one that is clearly branded. In other words, I hope our elements like logos or colour palettes become immediately recognizable and symbolic of who we are.


From Our Marketer

Looking at the broader picture, I would like to make our service into something clearly appealing so anyone who sees it for the first time will say it is good and happily spend their money for it. 

This will enable me as a marketer to sell it proudly to our customers. It’s important for me to have confidence in what I deliver to our customers.


From Our Senior Manager

A leading science and math study tool both fun and practical. This is what we want for our users. We aim to consistently show results and outcomes that are spent on both gaining their interest as well as the instrumental dimension of helping them learn and stay motivated.


From Our Frontend Developer

The mock test currently only includes questions that Class Saathi provides but I think it would also be great if users would be able to upload, share, and communicate their own questions in the near future. Also, it would be my goal and wish for the quiz questions to become seamless and completely bug-free as a frontend developer.


From Our QA Engineer/Junior Product Manager

Regarding the live quiz, as a PM, I want to add a little more interactive elements to the live quiz to create an environment where you can study with more fun. We want to develop it into a locked-in feature that can only be experienced in our app.
And as a QA, I want to focus on optimizing and stabilizing the app, in general, to ensure users have a smooth, comfortable time using the app.

Check out more about our live quiz here!


From Our Junior AI Developer

As an AI developer, gathering data is first priority, and to gather a lot, a lot of users are needed. Quite ironically, to increase the number of users, it is important to increase the reliability of the AI system, and vice versa. Therefore, my goal would be to gather even more users of our service to create greater data and even more accurate analysis.


From Our Senior AI Developer

I would like for our system to become a truly credible and recognized AI service for users. Our AI-based recommendation is improving day by day but I would especially set my goal towards the customized mock test feature we are developing at the moment.



Click here to check out more about Class Saathi’s goal as a team!

Live Quiz Feature: Creating interactive and carefully monitored online learning bubbles

The pandemic has been a stressful time for everybody globally. We have somehow accepted the new normal. Sanitisers have become the currency and our realities have been fully relegated online. This also means education has seen a very new development – one that is unprecedented and still posing challenges to academicians around the world.

Children have been out of school for over a year and a half and some disturbing trends have come out of it. For instance, students are finding ways to skip classes by replacing their screens with pictures, deliberately missing online classes under the pretext of technical difficulties, switching browsers to play video games, you name it!  Needless to say, it is impossible for teachers to zone in on each specific child and monitor their behaviour virtually.

Photo by cottonbro from Pexels

Over and above that, teachers in our Class Saathi community have been urging us to provide them with a solution that helps them retain control over their students in virtual classrooms. Unlike in physical classrooms, moderating student behaviour and ensuring everybody is paying attention to what is being taught was a challenge that had not been tackled previously. With many action items on their agendas, including filing reports, making lesson plans and learning tech compliance, teachers have been having a rough time to be sure.

Given all the struggles teachers were going through on a daily basis since the onset of the pandemic, Class Saathi decided to launch the “Live Quiz” feature which allows teachers to monitor each student in the classroom with maximum scrutiny. We launched the Live Quiz feature as a tribute to all the teachers that continue serving our students hail or shine, to make their online classroom management a truly simple yet revolutionary experience.

Class Saathi has been partnering with teachers across the country in a bid to orchestrate a movement within the company that builds for the present day requirements. As such, the “Live Quiz” feature was built to give teachers control in online classes that they claimed they were steadily losing.

Class Saathi Live Quiz and Homework
Class Saathi Live Quiz & Homework

How does it work? Once a teacher finishes a concept or a chapter in class, they can launch the Live Quiz feature on their phones that builds a quick assessment based on the pre-set requirements. Students have to be online and active at the same time to attend the quiz segment. Once all the students are active, the teachers can launch the quiz, thereby knowing how much each student in the class has managed to assimilate from the teaching segment. This is a very powerful tool since our reliable, automated reports allow teachers to customize their teachings based on evidence and students are forced to comply with the basic rules of classroom decorum which they were otherwise happily flouting.

In the event that a Live Quiz cannot cover all the portions taught, teachers have the option to assign Homeworks from their app which students can take from the comfort of their homes. As is the case with the Live Quiz, teachers do not have to spend any time whatsoever in collating reports either. The reports are generated automatically and can be viewed in dashboards specific to each student.

Class Saathi Homework Report
Homework Report

One of our star Class Saathi teachers, Sabitha Ojha, stated that she is relieved that there is a community of people who are taking the woes of teachers seriously. “We wanted a tool to monitor our students. We needed a method to regulate their teachings and we wanted to do that without antagonising our students. This Live Quiz feature truly checks all those tick boxes.”

While the idea of launching the Live Quiz feature came from within the teacher community, we decided to launch a feature that would complement our flagship product, the classroom clickers, so that teachers always have the option of switching to the clickers when physical classrooms open up without letting go of the Live Quiz feature. Our goal is to leverage sustainability wherever we can.

Option to switch from app to clicker
Teachers always have the option of switching to the clickers when schools open!

We at TagHive, are committed to ensuring quality teaching and learning through our offerings. For that reason, we listen to our teachers and students and we find out what they are looking for. As a company, our core value is to cater to the needs and interests of the academic world instead of creating a need where there is no necessity. So to say, “necessity truly is the mother of all invention” and for that reason, we proudly present Class Saathi’s “Live Quiz” which is a game-changing experience in a world that is growing desperate for control and audit.

Students will now be monitored stringently and teachers can rest assured that their online classes have the impact they are working towards.

A little belated Earth Day blog – Simple Ways to Save Our Planet

A lady wearing a face mask and medical gloves holds Earth globe.
Photo by Anna Shvets from Pexels

With the recent backdrop of Earth Day you might wonder, is saving the planet just another fancy idea or is there some real-life urgency to it? Well, given the scale of the challenges our planet is facing it may all seem way beyond our scope, especially as children. However, given the right thought and deliberate effort, each one of us can make our fair share of contribution in saving our planet. So in today’s article, we plan to give you some ideas that you can implement even as children and that can go a long way in making Earth Day really meaningful to all of us.


Read on to find out simple tips on how to save the planet:

1. Save the habitats
Just like humans, other living organisms need food, water and shelter to thrive and grow. The places that provide all these necessary things are known as habitats. Some commonly known habitats are e.g forests, grasslands, oceanic habitats, etc. Since they play such an integral role in the well being of living organisms it is important that we do all that we can to protect them. Some quick and easy suggestions are: 

  • Not littering in natural places that you visit.
  • Reducing the use of plastics that pollute the forests and oceans.
  • Reducing the use of fossil fuels that pollute the air.

2. Reduce, reuse, recycle!

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, Repeat.
Photo by Anna Tarazevich from Pexels

No one can deny the enormous amount of needs we have today. We have products for each of our needs and most of them we don’t use for as long as our older generations did. Be it our electronic devices or our stationery items, we are not using them for more than a year or two. Please remember every product that we buy goes through a rigorous manufacturing cycle and thus has a huge environmental footprint since a lot of energy, water and raw material goes into making it. Also when we are done with the usage most of them tend to end up in a dumping ground thus increasing the amount of waste we are depositing on our planet. It may take 100s of years for it to decompose. Being cognizant of this entire impact should motivate us to reduce, reuse and recycle as much as we can. Some quick and easy suggestions you can implement are:

  • Do not fall for consumerism. Buy new products only when you need to.
  • Stop using polythene bags and use cloth or reusable bags instead.
  • Convert those old bottles and cans into some DIY projects like decorations for your room.

3. Eat greener

Vegetables placed on a plate representing a human face with arms and legs surrounded by other vegetables in a circle.
Photo by Viktoria Slowikowska from Pexels

The food we eat contributes immensely to global greenhouse emissions. It is also partially responsible for the biodiversity loss we are experiencing. This is true more in the case of meat and dairy production. Rearing animals and the related industry take up huge tracts of land and consume huge amounts of water. Thus some simple actions you take to eat more sustainably are:

  • Find plant-based alternatives to protein-rich products like meat and fish products.
  • Waste less amount of food.
  • Use kitchen gardens wherever possible.

4. Stand up for our planet

We are one of the first generations to be fully aware of the adverse impact we are having on our planet. We are also the ones who need to put a stop to the destruction we are causing before it’s too late. Speaking up for this cause is one of the small yet very powerful steps you can take even as children. Some simple actions you can take are:

  • Use social media to support and share the causes that mean a lot to you
  • Volunteer for the various support groups working towards saving the planet
  • Support brands that are striving to manufacture more sustainably, e.g the local khadi brands.

5. Travel responsibly

Painted yellow bicycle icon engraved on a wall.
Photo by Pixabay from Pexels

Responsible travel means travelling while being mindful of the impact we are having on the planet and the living organisms around us. Some quick and easy to implement suggestions are:

  • Take your own water bottle instead of buying disposable bottles.
  • Walk, bicycle or use public transportation whenever possible.
  • Do not encourage usage of animals for entertainment: e.g horse chariots, or elephant rides.

It takes lots of people working together to make change happen, but it all starts with ourselves. So why wait? Make that first contribution to saving our planet today! Also, feel free to share your thoughts in the comment section below.

Founder’s favourite Class Saathi features

We have been speaking a lot about how Class Saathi benefits students and we believe every word that we’ve spoken is wholly true. While the benefits are many, we haven’t yet shared with our readers what our app’s best features are. For the sake of this article, we roped in Pankaj Agarwal, our founder and CEO to tell us what his favourite features are and who best to hear it from other than the creator of the app himself?

Pankaj Agarwal, CEO and Founder of TagHive
Pankaj Agarwal, Founder and CEO of TagHive
Who best to hear it from other than the creator of the app himself?

To break it down better, we asked Pankaj to talk about some of his favourite features in the two most popular variants of our app:

  1. The free quiz app available for download on the app store
  2. The clicker based solution model

Our free quiz app:

Pankaj designed our free quiz app with the aim of giving students everywhere an opportunity to create their own learning environment. He believes that students should feel empowered enough to be the master of their own academic learning curve and it is with motive that the free Class Saathi quiz app was produced. The app has a reserve of quizzes for students from Class 6th to Class 10th, designed by IITians from around the world. Each quiz report is designed to curate key performance indicators that allow students to work on strengthening their concepts. It also has an answer key designed for aural and visual learners.

Here’s what Pankaj loves about the free quiz app: “The free quiz app’s best feature is its mock test segment. It helps students learn independently. Another great feature about the app is that it churns out certificates of excellence every time a student hits a study milestone!” We love receiving certificates and we think the learners who use our app do too!


The clicker based solution model:

This model of our product has been designed to make any classroom smart with very little investment. Our clicker based solution model is a clicker for each student and an app for the teacher. When paired with the app, the clicker allows students to respond to multiple choice questions in real time. The teacher’s app curates reports on key performance indicators that also show them where to focus their remediation efforts on.

Here’s what Pankaj loves about the clicker based solution model: “The best thing about our clicker based solution model is that it requires no internet to function at all. Our clickers can operate anywhere without an internet connection or electricity. The app gives teachers and principals data points straight from the source without any bias or error. The best feature however, is that through the app, teachers can sort seating arrangements and pair students in such a manner that it promotes peer learning.” We love that so much thought and meticulous planning have gone into the creation of all these features!

Blueprint of Class Saathi clicker device
Blueprint of Class Saathi clicker
So much thought and meticulous planning have gone into the creation of Saathi. Indeed!

So go ahead and check out our free quiz app or get in touch with us to see a demo of our clicker-based solution model! We promise it will be worth your time!

 

TagHive Impact Story 1: Our Partnership with KEF

Developing countries operate under so many chaotic conditions. When there are so many policy issues gripping the various sectors of the country, foundations step up to support the government’s policy visions. This holds true especially for those foundations that are working in education.

Working to further quality education in India is one such NGO of high acclaim – Kaivalya Education Foundation (KEF). As of November, TagHive had the pleasure of partnering with them.

Kaivalya Education Foundation or popularly known as KEF operates with the vision of solving complex problems in the public education system through ecosystem specific tech-based solutions. They work in 50,000 schools across 15 states and 30 districts across India, running various programs that aim to mobilise communities towards effective education.

As of November, TagHive is partnering with Kaivalya Education Foundation (KEF).
As of November, TagHive is partnering with Kaivalya Education Foundation (KEF).

What we will chiefly discuss in this article are the various ways in which TagHive’s flagship product, Class Saathi, has been able to support KEF in its cause to bridge educational gaps.

Class Saathi is disrupting the education system by automating many of the tasks involved in conducting assessments (baseline, midline, endline and other formative assessments), thereby saving key stakeholders time and money while also delivering an efficient system of monitoring, evaluation and intervention.


So, how did we collaborate with KEF? Let’s examine that a little:

  1. We onboarded 900 schools across 3 districts in 3 states to our Class Saathi platform
  1. Through this partnership, we plan to conduct baseline, midline, endline and regular formative assessments, for over 10,000 students and 1500 teachers, helping them curate learning experiences that are designed to deliver impact
  1. We provide all key stakeholders with detailed reports school wise, teacher wise, student wise and district wise performance to help them take necessary corrective action.

To further clarify, let us examine how exactly we have helped them by breaking it down a little:

  1. Transitioning to tech-based learning interventions is expensive and requires huge infrastructural support. This is the reason why most schools in the country have to still grapple with digital divide.
  1. With KEF, we could deliver our tech-based solution model on such a large scale only because of our affordable technology. We provide under-resourced schools in their project with technological interventions that save them cost instead of being a heavy investment. This is also our method to reduce digital divide in our education system.
  1. Our Class Saathi app can adapt to any ecosystem (read: language, curriculum) and for this reason, we could model assessments for KEF based on the different languages, curriculum and subjects in their schools. The 900 schools that come under this partnership are governed by the education boards in three different states – Maharashtra, Haryana and Odisha. 
  1. We also want to reduce the burden on the education system from the complex challenges they face every day, by reducing their administrative grunt work. By automating reports and assessments fully, teachers can better utilise their time inside the classrooms, principals can review real-time performance indicators and the board/foundation can see data points that will help them formulate better interventions. We champion their cause in delivering better learning outcomes.
  1. As of February 2021, 3055 tests were conducted over the app which only goes on to show the volume of impact we are supporting in such a short period of time.

We truly believe that our education system needs all possible support and those who support our education system needs more applause than they receive. We show our appreciation for the work KEF does by helping them in their pursuit of excellence through our humble, yet effective technology.

If you’d like to discuss how we can help you, please don’t hesitate to email us at [email protected].

Pankaj Agarwal goes back to school with Class Saathi

American philosopher John Dewey once described education as “a continuing reconstruction of experience”. Pankaj Agarwal, CEO and Founder of TagHive, put Dewey’s quote into action and gave us Class Saathi, an intelligent classroom assistant, built to challenge the existing frame of the educational experience.

Pankaj Agarwal, Founder and CEO of TagHive
Pankaj gives us a smile!

Class Saathi refines the learning and assessment curve with the help of it’s in-school and at-home components. Class Saathi in-school is a first of its kind clicker based quizzing model, which when paired with its mobile application, provides real-time scores to all the key players involved (parents, teachers, administrators and students). Class Saathi’s at-home personalized learning app allows students to access an exhaustive database of quizzes for free; designed to challenge them by giving them immediate feedback on areas they could improve on.

The diverse range of problems in education make it difficult for streamlined intervention. But here’s what Pankaj says got him rolling!


Having grown up in a small village in Bihar, India, Pankaj had to move away from home very early on in search of better opportunities. Thanks to a push in the right direction by an academically driven grandfather and a great support system, Pankaj and his siblings enrolled in a boarding school, in another town, that furthered their academic drive. While the encouragement was wholly accepted, it came at the cost of being away from home right from his kindergarten stage.

Reflecting back, he saw that the schools in his village could have nurtured a lot more academic retention had it received a little more infrastructural support. That became a prime criteria in developing a classroom model that could limber through infrastructure handicaps.

As his ambitions grew, he moved to the country’s capital for his eleventh and twelfth grade post which he secured admission to India’s most premium engineering school, IIT Kanpur. As is/was the trend, most IIT graduates go on to pursue an MBA degree, but Pankaj had other plans.

Being somebody who is thoroughly invigorated by engineering and design, he pursued his masters in electrical engineering and computer science from Seoul National University, South Korea. He credits the Indian education system for having given him a strong theoretical foundation, and his South Korean experience for fostering his innovative and practical side. Later, he also got an MBA degree from Harvard Business School, the mecca of business management training. Somebody once said, “to educate, one must never stop learning” and so Pankaj made it his mission to gain fluency in Korean, which he has now mastered rather artfully.

Working with Samsung for close to a decade hoisted him in the direction of technological innovation, propelling him to launch his own company, TagHive that is on its mission to make learning and teaching more effective.

Logo of TagHive

Now the thing with this combination of experience and education is that more often than not, it’s a unique bunch of people who can access it. Fostering that ambition and drive is still very niche and only a small group of people world over are motivated to work for it.

“Education is a great leveller and it needs to be targeted with equity”, Pankaj resounds. It is only natural that he conceived a learning device that works to eliminate the elite component in academia.

Class Saathi is low-cost, requires minimum tech support and it uses an assessment model to track student progress that in turn allows for immediate learning interventions. It is also an unconventional operational model since most education-based companies and organisations focus on delivering teaching content and strategies.


Why would he choose to make assessments, Class Saathi’s working model? “It is simple”, he remarks “…top manager Peter Drucker said you cannot manage what you cannot measure”. So, the idea was to create assessments for learning and not assessments of learning.

Class Saathi by TagHive is India's most advanced app for online learning for Class 3-10
A glimpse at Class Saathi’s assessment model

While it may seem like a magical experience that smoothly sailed into action, the initial outcome was far from what was expected. The product test drive revealed a huge crop of problems that didn’t show up during incubation. Schools that partnered with them on their pilot project ran into tech issues even with this seemingly basic technology.

Faculty found it difficult to manage a simple sign-in; students found the method confusing and the overall transition that seemed rather simple, rose to be a pertinent issue. Constantly assessing and monitoring these problems gave them a working solution. That is exactly what Class Saathi aims to do in the space of education for students – equip all the key stakeholders to find solutions from constantly assessing their learning environment.

Teacher and students in Madhya Pradesh school using Class Saathi clicker based app in classroom
A teacher in Madhya Pradesh using our technology in its initial days

TagHive under Pankaj’s direction is happy to report its operations in over 600 schools (as of Dec. 2020) across South Korea and India. With Class Saathi growing as steadily as it is, Pankaj envisions a sustaining model that is poised to keep up with the dynamic world of education.