Our Story
Instruction is complimented by thousands of all-English exercises, the world’s most advanced speech recognition / pronunciation engine, personalized mastery queues, and live teachers to help guide learners down the path of English mastery. Our programs are being used across India.
NGOs, such as Hope Foundation, Barclay’s, Tech Mahindra and Dell, rely on Talking Yak to rapidly enable beneficiaries to thrive in 100% English speaking environments. Colleges and universities across India use Talking Yak to increase placements and prepare graduates to excel in today’s highly collaborative work environments. School students realize tremendous advantages, such as faster reading, perfected grammar, effortless conversational ability and clear, confident speech. Even state governments harness Talking Yak for teacher training and have shown as much as 7 level gains in as little as three months of study.
Talking Yak was Manufactured in India
From humble beginnings on Sundaramurthy Road in Bangalore, four talented people, including three former Teach for India fellows, began work on a project to change the way English is taught in India.
Talking Yak embarked on a simple goal, albeit difficult goal: to remove the barriers to learning English by making the most intuitive, effective and accessible system ever created.
Our effort included a deep, systematic dive into curriculum, content, skill assessments and interactive communication. It required a nuanced understanding of the means by which technology can enhance education, and, of course, it required an intimate, local understanding of our audience, the Indian learner.
Those who contributed weren’t limited to this initial team. Through its history, our company has benefited from the efforts of nearly 100 people, including:
Teachers with expertise in curriculum design, lesson crafting and actionable assessments, writers fluent in English, Hindi and Tamil, translators and script editors, filmmakers and video editors, sound engineers and sound editors, animators and illustrators, graphic designers and UX/UI experts, actors (including some remarkably funny comedians and accomplished stage performers), voiceover artists, content producers, statisticians, program managers and a handful of mature and responsible interns. And, of course, bringing our product to life was the role of, unarguably, some of the best software developers in India.
And, that was just inside our walls.
We’ve also been greatly assisted from the outside community. We’ve received invaluable inspiration, help and insight from NGO partners across the country and from university and government advisors, foundation leaders and industry giants. We are especially thankful to the schools and colleges that welcomed us into their institutions for research and field testing.
To all those who contributed, you should proudly know that through our combined efforts, we have changed the way English is being taught in India. We are working wonders.
On behalf of myself, our organisation and the billions of English language aspirants worldwide, thank you.
Sincerely,
Tom