WNS Distributes MIKO, India’s First Child Companion Robot to Winners of its Global Digital Essay Competition

PUNE, 9 August 2017 :WNS (Holdings) Limited (NYSE: WNS), a leading provider of global Business Process Management (BPM) services, through its corporate social responsibility (CSR) arm, WNS Cares Foundation (WCF) distributed MIKO, India’s first companion robot to the winners of its digital global essay writing competition, ‘The Golden Pen’ contest. MIKO is being distributed to nine schools across Pune, Mumbai, Vizag, Nasik and Chennai. Students at these schools will be able to interact withMIKO, an emotionally-intelligent, companion robot, capable of engaging, educating and entertaining a child. MIKO will be placed in the school computer learning centre where it would respond to general knowledge questions, answer queries on basic mathematics, do fun things like tell stories or sing a song.

Speaking at the prize distribution in Pune, Keshav R. Murugesh, Group CEO, WNS said “At WCF, we aim to revolutionize the concept of holistic learning for children. With MIKO distribution, we would like to create avenues of modern methods of learning and access to digital education for the children. MIKO has been developed by a team of three IITians with an in-depth background in robotics. Being emotionally intelligent, it is a perfect addition to a child’s existing social frameworks imagined by and for Indians. Interacting with MIKO enhances a child’s learning and engagement much more than a television, a computer, a smartphone, or a tablet ever will. MIKO will demystify the various misconceptions associated with robots and would aid faster digital adoption for children.”

WCF organized a global digital essay writing competition, ‘The Golden Pen’ contest that combined a physical event in Mumbai, digitally connecting children from six other countries including Costa Rica, The Philippines, South Africa, Sri Lanka, Poland and Romania. Over 134,000 students from 196 schools across the globe participated in the event. In India states like Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Gujarat and Haryana took part in this contest. Following a month long rigorous contest that saw school, regional, and country level rounds, 9 students from India emerged as global winners in the respective categories. ‘The Golden Pen’ contest is part of WCF’s annual flagship program, Global Impact Day that takes up a single theme for a global competition every year. With education for lesser privileged as its core theme In India, it organizes unique, impact driven programs such as mobile library, e-Mentoring, Computer Literacy, Dictionary learning, self-defence workshops and so on.

List of schools