byitc introduction
March 2, 2022 2025-10-25 15:10Dr Rashmi Mantri
Chief Operating Officer @British Youth International College
BSc (Hons), MSc (Dist), PhD Computer Science, University of the West of Scotland byitc.org, Supermaths.co.uk
Introduction
Mother Teresa was an inspiration to countless millions, and I am no different. Her lifelong devotion to working for the whole of humanity imbibed a sense of altruism in me.
I am a blessed Mother and an Entrepreneur. Most of my life I worked as an Educator, a Researcher, a Professor in various universities in UK, Software Team Lead, Software Course Content developer and a Corporate Software Trainer.
I am extremely devoted to work towards improving and investing in youth education. Like Nelson Mandela once said, “The youth of today are the leaders of tomorrow”. For a country to have a bright future, the youth have to be addressed, helped and shaped.
My Story Behind the Online Business
Education is undoubtedly my passion and I believe that the world can be changed through education.
- My life’s journey, including my move from teaching adults to teaching children, all revolves around my son, Dhruv Maheshwari. When Dhruv was in Primary 5, I asked him to solve a simple arithmetic sum for me. It was as basic as subtracting 13 from 35. But much to my disbelief, he couldn’t solve it. I was disappointed and decided to change the way my child looked at numbers.
- I started teaching him Maths informally using an interesting and humble tool called Abacus. The Abacus is as old as the civilization itself, yet not many use it in today’s times. Believe it or not, after learning the Abacus method, Dhruv could have calculate sums faster than a calculator!
- Dhruv responded to the new method very well and picked up the Abacus Mental Theory in just 6 days. He is now proudly known as the “Human Calculator!”. The name was given to him by an ITV show, Little Big Shots, where he was invited to perform and display his incredibly fast calculations.
- Post the show, we received a huge response from parents all over Scotland. Many of them came rushing in requesting me to teach their child the same method. They simply couldn’t believe that this was real!
- Catering to my son’s request, I also organized an Open Day at his school and received an astounding response from students as well as their parents.
This was the beginning of BYITC_SuperMaths.
How to Improve Maths Skills Using Abacus?
Here is how the worlds first Abacus maths application works
Creating a Brand BYITC_Supermaths Physically and Digitally
- Call it a coincidence or destiny, but whatever I did as a mother for my child’s academic development at first place was soon structured and compiled formally as a course to be taught to other children.
- Dhruv always helps me with the classes and continually provides me with ideas and feedback from a student’s point of view. In fact, the name SuperMaths was also coined by him, which comes under the umbrella of British Youth International College.
- All I wished by having this name is that we will be able to deliver quality education to the children Internationally and this dream came true eventually after we gone online.
- We manage to build a reasonably good branding physically and digitally within a year as a result of parent’s belief on our high quality education. Word of mouth contributed to our speedy success.
Building a ‘Hit’ Business Model
Soon it became an established business model in UK mainly because
- There was no Indian Abacus centre in Scotland that time
- We have developed contents mostly suitable to UK children.
- We (Dhruv and I) have done a full research of the available courses, elsewhere in the world and made the best-in-class contents.It took us a full 2 years to develop these 11 levels.Suitable contents was the key of this triumph.
- I had to obviously leave my highly paid job to develop these contents. Basically, we worked for ourselves and helped ourselves to build on our dream. All my corporate course content development and research experience came handy here.
- This Model could be replicated by others, and we were ready for another victory by franchising and running in the schools, that too was a instantaneous that it went to the extent which resulted in a ‘Hit’ Business Model.
- We had 6 physical centres successfully operating across Glasgow and Edinburgh. At the same time, we had a great digital presence with the first ranking on Googleand thousands on follows on social media handles.
- This noble cause of sharing knowledge motivates me and Dhruv to keep working together, and it is extremely rewarding to see children excelling in all-round academic skills.
Worlds first Abacus Maths Application – Gala Moments
- As we all know Necessity brings innovations. My journey from Binary digits to Abacus digits helped me in understanding & designing the world’s first online e-learning Abacus application.
- Even though pandemic paused the world for a few months, we decided to take the entire classes online because Quality Education cannot and should not stop. My education and professional background in computing came in handy here.
- I’m happy to mention that due to such an exemplary Abacus web application, we have now gone global with students from as far as Australia, Dubai, India and even the USA.
- All the classes are conducted virtually. We are in touch with certain schools as well, in plans to deploy our courses through their channels.
