"Every child starts school with the same instinct: curiosity. By the end of primary school, in India a large percentage of students lose it, and with it, lose belief in their own abilities.
Annual Status of Education Report 2024 (https://asercentre.org/aser-2024/) shows more than half of India's 14–18 year olds cannot do basic division expected of a Class 3 student. That gap doesn't appear suddenly in Class 9. It begins with one missed concept after another for years, and then the child quietly decides, "I am bad at maths”. Lack of engagement, missing classes and then dropping out, it’s a pattern. Less than half the children who start school finish it, the UDISE+ 2024-25 puts secondary school retention at just 47.2%. Roughly 5 to 6 million students drop out of school every year.
Unfortunately, this leads to a lifetime of lesser choices, lower earning and a higher chance of seeing the pattern repeat in their own family with their own children. A feedback loop between under-education and poverty takes generations to break.
Personally, while growing up I always felt something was missing in how we learnt. School demanded obedience when I craved exploration, sit quiet while the mind was bursting with questions. The freedom to experiment, fail and learn by feedback was never available.
We built Game Lab because the place to interrupt this loop is at the very start of it — in primary classrooms, where curiosity is still intact and concept gaps are still small.
When we started making learning games, we had just one focus - make games that kids truly love.
To make the Game Lab, we took each curriculum concept, say fractions, magnetism, or water cycle, and turned it into a game. Not a quiz, not a worksheet with stickers. A game with a goal, real stakes, and a rising challenge curve that keeps the difficulty level just right. A small win, then a slightly harder win, maybe a setback they can recover from. That's how learning works, and games are the best catalysts for it.
So Game Lab is a physical space where kids play STEM-based games mapped to their school curriculum, 1-2 times every week. In each meet, they learn deep concepts by playing with physical + digital AR games, offline board games, interactive exhibits and AI-based learning experiences. Children explore topics, play in teams, ask questions, argue, challenge each other, and learn a ton. As one teacher told us: "Back benchers come forward and participate." "Introvert child in my class becomes an extrovert in the Game Lab," another said.
Our games are heavily tactile and kinesthetic in nature, the digital games are highly immersive with AR, and AI-based adaptive learning keeps the challenge curve just right for each learner. 80 hybrid games. 300 curriculum topics. NEP 2020 aligned. 25,000+ students.
Our level attempt tracking data proves that struggling students get the maximum benefit from the Game Lab, with improvements going as high as 65% over traditional instruction.
Game Lab has grown from a single pilot in 2022 to 17 schools across 5 chains, reaching 25,000+ students. The curve: 1,000 (2023), 5,000 (2024), 20,000 (2025), 25,000 today.
Two partnerships illustrate what that growth actually looks like. At Air Force Schools - serving children of IAF personnel across metros and smaller cities - we operate under a 10-year contract framework. It proves that play-based STEM is a priority and treated as an institutional commitment. At Sanskriti Schools, we ran 436 sessions across 39 sections in six months; 48 teachers participated, and 12 led sessions independently. The model transfers to school staff - it doesn't depend on us being in the room.
Beyond physical Labs, our games are used as curriculum content by the University of Western Australia, TU Delft, and Polymath Jr in collaboration with City University of New York — institutions embedding Not a Bot games into their own courses without a physical Lab.
Over the next 2-3 years: scale AFS nationally and then take Game Lab to government and tier-2 schools. Make Game Lab a recommended path by the primary boards in India, since it's NEP aligned and schools will be happy to adopt if recommended by the board. We will use our proven strategy to accomplish learning outcomes for students in partner schools. We also intend to publish independent research exploring the effects of Game Lab participation on longer-term student retention - in service of our mission to help India break that barrier.
Game Lab can be adopted at three levels of commitment. Pick the one that fits your context.
Level 1 — Try a single game in your existing classroom. We license individual games (with teacher guides, printables, and physical components) for a single concept, grade, or unit. Cost is low; setup is almost nothing. Best for piloting the pedagogy before committing to more.
Level 2 — Run a Game Corner. A subset of the Lab - one or two stations, ~10–15 games covering a specific grade range. Sits in an existing classroom or shared space. We provide the inventory, train the teachers, and check in monthly. Best for schools without spare room or budget for a full Lab.
Level 3 — Install a full Game Lab. Dedicated room, full Grades 1–8 inventory, AR/AI tablets, multi-teacher training, yearly subscription that keeps the curriculum, games, and inventory current. Best for schools committing to play-based STEM as core infrastructure. Setup: 1 week. Ongoing: refresher trainings every term.
Across all three levels, our core promise is that the model transfers to your teachers and runs independently.
To start a conversation: write to team@notabot.ai with your school or institution context. There is no cost at the discovery stage - we will suggest the right entry level.
