BIRLA
AI LABS
Curating Rabbit holes with AI
IMPACT
30,000+
students enrolled (MVP)
7 / 10
students report they prefer this over ChatGPT for learning
TEAM
Founding Product Designer
(^ thats me)
1 Product Lead / Manager
3 Engineers
TIMELINE
3 months
2025
CONTEXT
I designed a full suite of AI x EdTech products aimed at boosting literacy skills in students and reducing teacher workloads.
Aditya Birla Group (65B+ conglomerate) started a new vertical exploring the next big bets in AI
I led 0-> 1 design for Minerva, its EdTech branch
HYPOTHESIS
As the internet becomes more and more aggregated and “summarised”
amid pointed questions -> pointed answers
We’re losing the space for internet rabbit-holes and serendipity online
PROBLEM
Because while chat interfaces proved great for “quick” sessions and homework assistance,
They’re not the best interface for learning, owing to:
texting / reading fatigue
a ‘uni-dimensional’ path
limited scope of surprise / discovery
CURIOSITY BLOCKS
solves this with
with an open learning canvas,
where every reading ‘block’ suggests some more
allowing users to discover topics in a curiosity-led way
creating a network of ideas
that you can also connect within, to discover new ones
in an interface that feels fluid, responsive and fast
IMPACT
Curiosity Blocks is currently in it’s alpha testing phase, being tested with students and teachers across 200+ schools, reaching
32000+ students
Try it out the alpha release for yourself, here
The ‘wrapper’ escape velocity
REFLECTIONS
Wrappers get a bad rep, mostly from engineering audiences
But in the AI-era, I’ve come to learn that novelty comes from interfaces and evals. When building curiosity blocks, I slowly felt an internal shift from “but i could do this in chatGPT” into “woah, this is awesome”
My key takeaways are to:
build “narrow”, prototype fast and trust your taste.