Former Google and Airbnb executive Peeyush Ranjan, who also served as CTO of Walmart-owned Flipkart, and Mukesh Bansal, co-founder of Myntra, on January 23 launched Fermi.ai, an AI-first edtech startup focused on high-school STEM education in India and the United States.
The startup, which has emerged from the Meraki Labs ecosystem, is headquartered in Singapore and operates through subsidiaries in India and the US. Fermi.ai is available free on the cloud, as the company remains in a pilot and product-discovery phase, Ranjan told Moneycontrol.
The launch comes at a time when the edtech sector is recalibrating after a funding boom-and-bust cycle, even as generative AI tools such as ChatGPT become deeply embedded in how students study. Ranjan said the company was built to address growing concerns that AI is increasingly being used as a shortcut rather than a learning aid.
“Students are getting answers faster than ever but their understanding is getting weaker,” Ranjan said. “Learning happens through productive struggle. What we’ve tried to build is an AI tutor that supports that struggle instead of replacing it.”
Designed to guide, not give answers
Unlike most AI-powered learning tools that surface solutions quickly, Fermi.ai is designed to withhold final answers, guiding students through problems step by step instead. The platform uses a stylus-first, canvas-based interface, allowing students to write equations, draw diagrams and work through reasoning in a format closer to pen-and-paper problem solving.
The product currently covers maths, physics and chemistry and is built around four core components: an adaptive real-time tutor, a handwriting-first canvas, a curriculum-linked concept graph with an exam-aligned question bank (including AP, IB and JEE), and diagnostic tools that show students and teachers where reasoning breaks down.
Bansal said the platform is meant to surface gaps in thinking rather than mask them. “AI can solve any equation but it can’t yet explain why a student’s logic failed at step three,” he said. “Fermi.ai is meant to show students how they think and give teachers visibility into silent struggles.”
The platform uses multiple large language models, including OpenAI and Google models, benchmarking each for different tasks and integrating them into a single system. Ranjan said the company does not train on school-owned data, with teacher-uploaded content remaining with institutions.
Pilot results and measured rollout
Before the rollout, Fermi.ai ran a three-month pilot with 79 students, covering more than 15,000 concept tests. According to data shared by the company, students who initially scored two out of ten or lower improved by an average of 4.68 points by their final attempts, while overall mastery scores rose by 2.6 points between early and later practice attempts.
The company is running pilots in Bengaluru, north India and Silicon Valley, with discussions underway to expand pilots to additional regions. While the platform is now accessible globally, Ranjan said the company will remain hands-on over the next few months rather than pursue aggressive scale.
“We want to be sure we’re landing with a great product before we start scaling hard,” he said.
Monetisation, funding and next steps
Despite the launch, monetisation has not yet been finalised. Fermi.ai is currently free and pricing discussions are expected once product capabilities and customer segments are clearer. The likely model is per-student, per-seat pricing, with teachers accessing the platform at no cost.
The platform is positioned as a supplemental learning tool, acting as a teacher’s assistant in classrooms and as a standalone tutor outside school. It is designed to work on devices with a Chrome browser and stylus support, including Chromebooks and tablets, without requiring dedicated hardware investments.
Fermi.ai is fully funded by Meraki Labs and has not raised external capital. Ranjan said the company is not actively fundraising and will consider raising a dedicated round after finalising the product and pricing strategy.
The launch adds to the growing influence of the so-called “Flipkart mafia ”— former Flipkart founders and senior executives who have gone on to build and back startups across sectors. With Fermi.ai, Ranjan and Bansal are extending that operating experience into AI-driven education, even as many founders tread cautiously around mass-market K–12 plays.
For now, the founders say the focus is on refining the product and validating the model before scaling, as AI continues to reshape how students learn and how teachers respond.
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