Culturally, Indian parents have tremendous aspirations for their children. They desire world class products in education, nutrition, health and finance. Particularly in education services, parents seek world class products that directly result in improvement in learning. Such products when are delivered in a trusted environment like the school itself and allow parents to compare their children with others resulting in focused improvement are received even better. There are about 2 million high income households in India.

To serve this BIG desire, Firefish Networks launched the Primary Olympiad.

The Primary Olympiad, now in its fourth successful year of running, consists of the English, Maths and Science Olympiads. It is a national level certification program and competition for children in standards 1 through 5. The English Olympiad focuses on Spelling and Grammar. The Maths Olympiad focuses on Arithmetic and Geometry. The Science Olympiad focuses on Science and Environmental Studies.

Enrolled children receive book sets published by the Cambridge University Press which are of the highest international standards. Participating schools receive trainer's guides and sample papers. After about 5 months of preparation, children write a city round competition. Selected children move on to a national round competition.

In addition to awards, certificates and recognition, students receive a detailed score card that analyzes their performance in a variety of competency dimensions. Schools also receive a confidential score card that shows how the school performed relative to other schools.

This program helps children learn English, Maths and Science in a very structured format with a lot of activities. This also helps them have a strong foundation in English, Maths and Science. By participating in an international level competition, early in their life, children are better prepared to take on challenging competitions in the future.

Primary Olympiad 2012-13 received 8,000 enrollments from 20 cities across India. A large number of schools across various cities like Ahmedabad, Amritsar, Aurangabad, Bangalore, Baroda, Delhi, Hyderabad, Jaipur, Kolkata, Lucknow, Ludhiana, Mumbai, Mysore, Nagpur, Nasik, Pune, Rajkot, Surat, Solapur and Trichy are part of this competitive program.

The Government of Chhattisgarh wants to improve the level of teaching of the English language in the state run schools in Chhattisgarh. The level of knowledge of the English language in government schools is poor with most children in grades 6th through 8th unable to understand a simple English written paragraph. Chhattisgarh state has 36,000 government schools with an average enrolment of 500 - 1,000 students.

In order to improve children's learning levels, one of the several approaches the government took was to invest in the training of teachers. In partnership with the NGO Pratham and the Cambridge University Press, the government of Chhattisgarh, offered an English training program for teachers. Firefish was the operating partner for this project.

Teachers enrolled in the program received a set of books published by the Cambridge University Press. Firefish trained the master trainers of the state government. The master trainers in turn worked with enrolled teachers to provide periodic inputs. After a 6 month period, teachers took a written exam. Detailed scorecards were issued to each participant to help identify weak areas to focus on in the future. All participants received certificates.

Over 1,300 teachers enrolled in the program over the course of 3 years. Each teacher works with about 500 children.

English language skills are considered the pathway to a better life in India due, in part, to perceptions created by the booming outsourcing industry which requires skilled English speakers. Most urban high-paying jobs too require English. As a result, those servicing workers in the urban high-paying jobs are forced to interact with them in English to an extent. Hence, there is a very big demand to learn English since a majority of lower income Indians do not speak the language fluently.

Partnering with the NGO Pratham, Firefish developed a unique bi-lingual English learning product targeted at lower income young adults from urban and semi-urban locations.

Firefish hired 20 teachers and ran concurrent classes with the aggregate capacity to teach over 1,000 people at any time. The English skills of the students progressed from basic alphabet recognition to being able to engage in conversations using simple English sentences in a 3 month period.