Crooning for Kruu: Anil Srinivasan takes charge of kids' learning journey
Students aged 13 to 18 are given project-based assignments to test their skills. Anil has brought several global universities on board to realise his vision of providing world-class education to children in underserved regions.
Anil Srinivasan from one of Kruu's learning sessions
CHENNAI: Kalaimamani Anil Srinivasan’s love for music has taken him to various places and inspired him to venture into innovative initiatives. With a strong background in cognitive neuroscience, he has been leading a revolution in creative intelligence through Rhapsody, founded in 2013.
“Music has been a part of me since the age of three. I consider myself an accidental musician and one of the few people to integrate the piano with Carnatic classical music,” begins the professor at a private university in Chennai.
In 2022, Anil decided to donate his earnings from music to charity. “Music is the foundation of all my endeavours. I conducted research at Columbia University on how the brain responds to music. That’s how Rhapsody was born, based on a curriculum that combines music and visual arts to learn science and the arts,” he explains. Initially, sceptics doubted the effectiveness of the idea. However, today, it is referred to as art integration.
Anil believes children can gain a constructive understanding of subjects through this method, and parents are gradually adapting to the evolving educational landscape. By 2019, approximately 4,00,000 children had benefited from the programme. However, the covid 19 pandemic posed a challenge.
“I was critically ill during the second wave of the pandemic in 2021. A specialist doctor told me directly that I was counting my days. The lack of empathy in how it was conveyed shook me. That was how the idea of Kruu was conceived,” he shares.
Today’s teenagers and young adults are often confused about choosing their career paths, and there remains a significant gap in access to knowledge across the country. “Subjects like Artificial Intelligence, DeepSeek, and the integration of technology in education are available only in certain schools. This needs to change. Through Kruu, we help students from remote areas explore more opportunities,” Anil states.
Students aged 13 to 18 are given project-based assignments to test their skills. This helps them identify their strengths and embark on a journey of self-discovery. Leveraging his network as a professor, Anil has brought several global universities on board to realise his vision of providing world-class education to children in underserved regions.
Launched in 2023, Kruu has already reached 5,00,000 students from 14 countries, including Sri Lanka, the UAE, Vietnam, and the Philippines. “For international universities, we serve as an outreach platform to connect with a larger number of students. This encourages them to design engaging projects. Our mission is to consciously reignite curiosity and creativity in children and invest in creative intelligence. While technology plays a significant role, we focus on training that prioritises human knowledge,” says Anil, founder of Kruu.
Citing an example of how project-based learning helps solve real-world problems, Anil notes, “Students from Chennai developed a machine learning project and created an app to help children with autism express their emotions. Our ultimate goal is to establish startup incubators. That’s how we turn traumas into tremendous opportunities.”
