Dr Rashmi Mantri – Director, BSc (Hons), MSc (Dist), PhD

Computer Science, University of the West of Scotland

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 have worked in the field of Education for over 15 years now. Though my surname is Mantri, my students prefer to call me Dr Rashmi. I found that innovative and decided to stick with it.

Witnessing my students develop such confidence and watching parents getting involved at every step of the way is nothing short of magic.

I landed in Scotland to pursue my Master’s degree in Computer Science from the University of the West of Scotland. Owing to my merit/ results in the same, I was offered an Exceptional Scholarship (double the normal Scholarship) from the same University to pursue my further studies. This was given out to only one student in the whole University.

I am passionate about advancing the community by working towards all-round development for kids. I strive to help them reach their highest potential, academically and otherwise.
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

I have worked as an Educator for most of my life. This was primarily in different IT Corporates and Universities in UK. 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 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, people can calculate sums faster than a calculator!

Here is an example of how this technique works:

A brief working of the Abacus web application can be seen here

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.

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 chosen by him.

Call it a coincidence or destiny, but whatever I did as a mother for my child’s academic development was soon structured and compiled formally as a course to be taught to other children.

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.

We started humbly with two centres in Glasgow and one in Edinburgh. 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. My journey from Binary digits to Abacus digits helped me in understanding & designing the world’s first online e-learning Abacus application.

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.

Stepping Stones – Introducing Coding Classes

Though I come from an IT background, I started with Maths classes, seeing my son’s academic success in school, as a result of knowing Abacus. At the time, there existed no other institute in Scotland (United Kingdom) that taught Maths using the Abacus method.

I started with a single motive to aid children’s development for overall academic efficiency and in turn, the betterment of the community. However, after realising that I held the solution to shrink the gap in the primary education sector, and owing to the high demand, it turned into an Educational Institution. Learning Maths using the Abacus tool has also proven to be very effective for kids with specific learning difficulties such as Dyslexia, Dyscalculia and ADHD which makes it difficult for children to understand numeric concepts.

Moreover, the Abacus does not only help in excelling in Maths, but it also develops a person’s IQ level, leading to overall brain development. Kids automatically start performing better in all subjects. This fact has also been proven by a study conducted in Chicago that tested the cognitive abilities of Abacus-trained children vs. Non-Abacus trained children.
Mental Arithmetic helps in logic building, which, to think of it, invaluably helped my son’s logic building in Computer Programming.

Dhruv’s interest in coding and programming started at a very young age. Every time he played a game, he used to pose a thousand questions – ‘How is this made? How does it work? How do the characters move on their own?’I started teaching him coding to satisfy his curiosity. At the tender age of 10, he managed to build a game himself through all these learnings. He went on to deliver video tutorials on YouTube on topics of Website and Game Development or Cyber Security for kids. Dhruv updates and maintains the YouTube channel for the British Youth IT College as well.

This is how we started providing computer coding classes for kids, covering various programming languages. Kids absolutely love developing their logical programming skills through our courses.

Following suit, we introduced the Computer Games Development Summer Boot Camps for kids. This also included a much interesting Robotics. We were the first Centre in Glasgow (in 2016) that successfully provides such a structured, regular and weekly computer coding or even Robotics class for kids of different ages, dividing the courses from Beginner to Advanced levels. And all of this, at the comfort of your home! Online classes have proven effective, efficient and extremely convenient for students. Not to forget, Safe!

SuperMaths UK students appeared on an ITV show ‘Little big shots’ to showcase their talent

Dhruv and I had the honour to share our journey at an STV2 Interview, Live at 5

Business Growth – Introducing English Classes

As the Institute kept growing, we kept expanding and went on to include an English Language course in our curriculum. Before we dive into the same, do take a look at our journey over the years, and a few milestones we have managed to accomplish in such a short time:

English Classes are largely for children whose first language is not English. We have incorporated the course in our online application (along with Maths) and come up with the most user friendly and sophisticated English web application. Students are free to log in and start practising from anywhere in the world. We are proud to have Cambridge-certified teachers to assist such students in times of need and occasionally hold workshops to educate the masses on what we teach, how it is helping people and what we aim to accomplish.

We can proudly say that we have been immensely successful with this venture so far and have ourselves seen the children becoming more and more confident in their English-Writing and Speaking skills or referring their friends to join the course as well.

Please feel free to get in touch with us should you need more details regarding the same.

You can also read about what the parents think about it through their testimonials.

All this wouldn’t have happened without the talented team that surrounds me. By now, my team has taught thousands of students from different age groups, different nationalities and different capabilities for Maths, English, and Coding. We continually recruit new workforce, train them to the best of our abilities and scale up our business to being a change in the society.

Elevator Pitch!

We are the only institute teaching Abacus based in Scotland expanded in United Kingdom. We have now expanded further like never before, teaching thousands of students from different corners of the world.

We are now Britain’s no.1 for providing Abacus Maths classes. This is enabled through our state-of-the-art web application to make learning more accessible, easy and most importantly, fun. Learn Abacus, English or Coding sitting anywhere in the world, any time of the day and receive expert help from our talented and trained teachers, trained in this unique technique.

We plan to partner with schools, institutions, coaching classes, government bodies, influencers, individuals, and better education promoters with customizable courses. The courses can be offered in online, offline, and hybrid learning models. We also plan to invest heavily in kids’ education and provide international standards to the kids globally.