TapToLearn
- Years
- 2011 – 2015 (advisor to 2021)
- Where
- San Francisco · Menlo Park → Pune
- Role
- Founder & CEO
- Scale
- 50+ games · 20M+ downloads · 18,000 schools
- Backed by
- Y Combinator W12, ImagineK12, Khosla, Shasta, Eniac, Start Fund
Three guys and a dog, in Silicon Valley
In 2012 three of us from Pune went through Y Combinator's Winter batch as TapToLearn — the second team out of India to do YC (after HackerRank), and the first to do ImagineK12 at the same time. That's me on stage at TechCrunch Disrupt with Paul Graham and Harj Taggar for YC Office Hours.
The idea
Kids were already spending hours on iPads. We wanted those hours to teach. Games-first and tablet-first: start with something a child wants to play, and hide the learning inside the loop.
What we built
More than fifty titles across math, spelling, grammar, geography and science — Math vs Zombies, Tiny Countries, Tiny Fractions, Grammar App, Spell with Friends. Teachers found them before we marketed to them; 18,000 schools ended up using them.
What happened next
In 2013 we realized we couldn't make premium apps pay — subscriptions weren't a thing on the App Store yet. So we came home to India and chose real-time multiplayer games as our life quest. The same team became June Gaming, and then SuperGaming. The originals now play free in the browser again at taptolearn.com.
