Ravi Bhushan is trying to answer a question that sits right at the center of the AI era: If children are growing up with intelligence on demand, what should schooling look like?
As founder and CEO of BrightCHAMPS, a global edtech company reshaping K-12 education now operating across 30 countries, he is not tinkering at the edges. Under his leadership, BrightCHAMPS has built a curriculum that blends coding, financial literacy, robotics, public speaking, and GenAI, along with STEM-accredited academics. The platform runs on a layer of Agentic AI systems that act as mentors, monitors, and guides for both learners and the business.
The work earned BrightCHAMPS the Company of the Year honors in the BIG Awards for Business. The deeper story, though, is about what comes after rote learning when AI can compute, summarize, plan, and explain almost anything on demand.
From pandemic idea to global skills platform
BrightCHAMPS was born in 2020, at the height of the pandemic, when schools around the world were closed, and children were suddenly isolated from traditional classrooms.
Ravi saw more than a temporary disruption. He saw that even in normal times, many students were not getting the skills that would matter most in a world defined by technology and rapid change.
“We are living in a very different world, and the world is changing very fast,” he said.
The idea behind BrightCHAMPS was simple and ambitious at the same time. Build a parallel layer of education that focuses on practical, future skills, and make it accessible globally.
The company started with technology education for kids in the K-12 segment, then expanded into:
- Financial literacy
- Robotics and automation
- Confidence-building and public speaking
- AI-led mathematics and academic support
Parents in markets as different as the Middle East, Southeast Asia, North America, and beyond responded quickly. The demand was not for more content in general, but for specific, actionable skills their children were not getting in school.
From rote learning to real skills
A recurring theme in Ravi’s thinking is that reading and writing are necessary but no longer sufficient. In his view, every student needs a marketable, applied skill that can actually move the needle in the real world.
That philosophy shows up clearly in how BrightCHAMPS approaches their financial literacy course.
“We live in a capitalistic society. Money moves so many things around,” he said. “But unfortunately, when we are going through formal education in our schools and colleges, nobody seriously gives a solid education or exposure around how to deal with money.”
BrightCHAMPS’ courses walk children through the evolution of money, from barter to gold coins to paper currency, plastic cards, and now cryptocurrency. Students learn what money is, how value is stored and exchanged, and how financial systems work in practice.
Ravi has a line he repeats often.
“Financial literacy is the costliest product you buy in your lifetime.”
If you get even a small advantage early, the compounding impact over a lifetime can be enormous.
The same approach applies to technology and robotics. Students are not just attending lectures. They are building apps, designing robots, planning trip budgets for their families, and practicing presentations. BrightCHAMPS treats these skills as core, not as extracurricular add-ons.
The gap in K-12 and the role of AI
Everywhere Ravi looks in K-12, he sees the same pattern. The world is changing faster than the curriculum.
Skills that were niche a decade ago are now mainstream. Certification programs that felt current three years ago can be made obsolete in a single AI cycle. Yet the machinery of formal education moves slowly. Updating syllabi, retraining teachers, and aligning stakeholders can take years.
Ravi does not argue that traditional subjects are less relevant. Instead, he points out that the list is incomplete. Many of the most important skills for the next 20 years have not yet found a stable place in the core curriculum.
That mismatch creates a gap, and AI arrives at exactly the moment when the gap is widening.
BrightCHAMPS uses AI in two primary ways.
AI as a personalized tutor
On the learning side, AI serves as a one-on-one companion that adapts to how each child learns. The math program is a good example.
The underlying concepts in mathematics do not change. Perimeter is perimeter, whether you learn it from a board, a book, or a screen. What changes is the path a student takes to master it.
On the BrightCHAMPS platform, when a student practices a set of problems, an AI engine analyzes which questions they miss, which patterns show up in their mistakes, and how confident they are on different subtopics. The system then chooses the next question based on that data, not on a fixed sequence.
If a student struggles with a particular idea, the AI pushes more practice in that area. If another student shows clear understanding, the system moves on to more advanced material instead of repeating what they already know.
Over time, BrightCHAMPS has even started recognizing different learning profiles. Some students are highly analytical. Others are more visual or story-driven.
For an analytical learner, the AI emphasizes numeric examples and structured problems. For a creative learner, it leans more on visuals, scenarios, and narrative. Content becomes personalized at the level of a single child.
As Ravi put it, you are effectively writing content “at n =1”” for each learner.
Agentic AI as the operational backbone
The second layer of AI sits behind the scenes. It does not teach directly. It observes, evaluates, and intervenes.
BrightCHAMPS runs millions of classes taught by thousands of teachers across many countries. Manually tracking how each student is doing, how engaging each class is, and where a teacher might need coaching is not realistic.
Agentic AI systems now:
- Scan session recordings to identify students whose engagement is dropping
- Trigger context-aware calls to parents to suggest ways to re-engage their children
- Score classes to see where teachers may need additional support
- Automate large parts of customer service and operations
Ravi admitted he was not sure at first how parents would react to an AI system calling them with suggestions. The adoption has been surprisingly smooth. Parents understand the context, take actions, and see their children progress, while BrightCHAMPS tunes the experience in response.
“I can hardly imagine any new corner of the company where AI is not playing its role,” he said.
Kids, curiosity, and intelligence on demand
For all the metrics, pipelines, and systems, the most revealing part of Ravi’s perspective may be what happens at home.
Every night before bed, he and his 12-year-old son run a live session with an AI assistant. It is an extension of a game they used to play at the dinner table. They call it “why.”
Why does cryptocurrency exist?
Why is the sky blue?
Why do we respect elders?
Why is Elon Musk so rich?
Sometimes the questions are scientific. Sometimes they are social or philosophical. The point is not the topic. The point is to keep asking.
This game used to rely on human knowledge and whatever was at hand. With AI in the loop, the conversation can go deeper and wider. The model can provide explanations, analogies, and context. Father and son can challenge the answers, push back, and ask follow-up “why” questions.
Ravi sees this as one of the most powerful and underappreciated uses of AI for children.
“If you can create a habit in your child to use it effectively, it can be a big, powerful tool for the child to keep their curiosity alive.”
He compares the experience to the early days of Wikipedia, when clicking through articles could turn a simple lookup into a multi-hour exploration. The difference now is that AI can respond interactively, in natural language, and adjust to the child’s level.
That loops back to his core questions.
If children have tools that can compute, summarize, plan, and explain almost anything instantly, what should schooling emphasize?
What knowledge still matters when the cost of an answer drops to near zero?
What becomes the new core skill set when cognition itself is augmented by AI?
For Ravi, the answer looks something like this:
- Teach foundational skills like reading, writing, and mathematics, but do not stop there
- Add practical, marketable skills like coding, finance, robotics, and communication early on
- Use AI tutors beside human teachers to personalize and accelerate learning
- Use AI as a curiosity engine, not as an excuse to avoid thinking
- Raise children who are both empowered by smart tools and grounded enough to question them
Why the BrightCHAMPS model matters
BrightCHAMPS sits at an interesting intersection. It is an education company, an AI company, and a global operations company, all at once.
This work is not only about building a better course platform. It is about redefining what “learning” should look like for children who will never know a world without AI.
In that sense, the BrightCHAMPS story is less about technology and more about timing. It is arriving in the moment when the old model of memorizing answers is running into a new reality: the answers are already in your pocket. The value shifts to the questions you ask, the skills you practice, and the judgment you build along the way.