

Beyond the chatbot: The tech duo building an anti-ChatGPT for classrooms
Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. Peeyush Ranjan, a former senior executive at Google and Airbnb and ex-chief technology officer of Flipkart, has teamed up with former Cure.fit co-founder Mukesh Bansal to bet that the next wave of AI use in edtech will be built not as an “answer machine" like ChatGPT, but as a coach that pushes students to solve problems on their own.
Fermi, the startup founded by tech duo, is positioning itself not just as a place for students to use AI for learning and test preparation, but also as a tool for teachers to track where a student’s reasoning breaks down, flag weak areas, and step in earlier. For now, the startup's focus is the Joint Entrance Examination (JEE) that selects students for top engineering schools in India.
Ranjan’s pitch to schools and teachers is straightforward: as GenAI tools spread in classrooms, students may appear to be doing better, submitting complete homework, but may actually be learning less. He argues the problem is the chatbot interface that dominates AI, where a student can paste a question and get an answer instantly, removing the struggle that helps build understanding.
“Every kid is now turning in 100% completed homework with no errors…because the minute they run into any kind of struggle, there is ChatGPT to give the answer," Ranjan said. “So, they can ask a question, but the AI within Fermi will never give you the answer.
It will actually make you think." Unlike the subscription and course-led test-prep products in the market, including PhysicsWallah, Unacademy and Allen, Fermi is pitching itself as a tool for students inclined towards self-learning and practice-led study, rather than video-first learning and instructor-led classes. The platform comes with
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