Promoting heritage through games

A dual Master’s degree in the field of Engineering and Business administration from abroad, having been overseas for 11 years with a big corporate job, and then deciding to come back to India to help young generation learn about our culture. Seems like a very unusual and tough decision to take. But there are some who have the daring to take such tough decision. Charanya Kumar is one of these tough ones.

Charanya Kumar is the founder and CEO of Chittam Games. She had taken this bold decision to resign from her job at the apex of her career. She had been to 30 countries, and during her stay, she realized that there isn’t a proper portrayal of Indian culture and heritage. During her course of interaction with a lot of children in India, she observed that stress and depression were the most recurrent problems faced by them. These conversations made her retrospect the ways and the reasons that made her bounce back after facing every setback in her life. According to her, the source of her strength to emerge much stronger is always her cultural rootedness.

She sought guidance from ancient Indian texts like Mahabharata and Bhagavata Purana whenever she faced hurdles, and the morals from these texts acted as a coping mechanism for her. The main mission behind starting Chittam Games is to instill the virtue of resilience in the younger minds to face difficulties instead of escaping from them. In the present-day scenario, children and teenagers are running away from their problems instead of dealing with them. As per the founder’s understanding, stories from our Puranas and Itihasas enhance kids’ mental fortitude from a young age. Through this startup in the field of edutainment, Charanya aims to instill knowledge and life skills in these blooming minds.

She expounds that the scriptures elucidate the consequences of performing certain acts or actions. These morals teach children to analyze the situation and guide them to make apt decisions. To practically implement this whole ideology, she and her qualified team members are trying to gamify the wisdom and morals from the treasure troves of our indigenous history and culture.

On 27th January, 2023, Chittam launched its five games. Those are Bharath Vilas, Bommalatam, Suprabatham, Sarathi, and Neivedya. The key features of their games are that they are age-appropriate, enhance family bonding, and the thoughtful design of their games imbibes cultural rootedness. Another main objective behind the launch of these cultural games is to bridge the gap between the generations. Present-day children are less interactive, and communicative because of the influence of social media. These games boost their interaction with older people (grandparents and great-grandparents) at home. The founder supports this point by asserting that gameplay is something kids are good at, and elders have a good hold of content. So these games aid in building a healthy bond between the grandchildren and grandparents.

The efforts by Chittam group have been yielding some fruits. The games have been adopted by SSVM (Coimbatore) and DPS (Noida) at large scale workshops conducted with teachers, on how to integrate the games into pedagogy. The games are now part of classes. Multiple HNIs, realizing the potential impact, have generously donated the games to underprivileged schools. Chittam has been invited to participate in curated exhibitions (such as ‘By Hand, From the Heart 2023’) where the response to the games has been very positive. Organizations such as Madras Branding Company and Startup Pedia have profiled Charanya, taking Chittam’s story to large social media audiences. Plenty of heartwarming stories are coming from people who have played the games together as a family.

We wholeheartedly wish that more companies come forward, and make our culture part of the learning process. Charanya Kumar would definitely be a guiding light to all those entrepreneurs, who wish to take a step in the regard…!!!!