How UnMathX is turning everyday school spaces into hands-on maths lessons — and trying to reduce dependence on screen-based learning
A 12-year-old student walking through a school corridor stops suddenly. Instead of simply moving on to the next class, he points to a mathematics installation on the wall and begins explaining the concept to a classmate who had struggled with it in class.
It is an ordinary school corridor, but for UnMathX, this is what a mathematics lesson can look like when the classroom has no walls.
The idea behind its new Math Museum is simple: mathematics does not have to remain confined to textbooks, blackboards or screens. A staircase can become a geometry lesson, an art room can demonstrate ratios, and a sports ground can turn an abstract mathematical idea into something students can see, touch and experience.
UnMathX, the phygital mathematics experience ecosystem under UXOL Ventures Pvt. Ltd., is rolling out Math Museum across schools in India. The programme uses existing school infrastructure to create curriculum-linked, hands-on learning spaces rather than requiring schools to build separate mathematics laboratories.
When a corridor becomes a maths lesson
The concept is built around a simple question posed by UnMathX co-founder and Global Math Storyteller Divesh Bathija: where does mathematics already exist?
His answer is: almost everywhere.
The Math Museum seeks to make those connections visible in places students encounter every day. Corridors, staircases, art rooms, sports grounds and other familiar spaces are turned into what UnMathX calls “math hotspots”, mapped against the school curriculum.
The approach is based on four stages — Contextualise, Relate, Experience and Internalise (CREI).
The premise is that students first encounter a mathematical idea through something tangible in their surroundings, relate it to everyday experience, work with it physically and only then move towards more formal mathematical notation.
Bathija says the approach is particularly useful for concepts that students find difficult to visualise when they are presented only in an abstract form. According to him, observations from partner schools have shown stronger engagement and retention when mathematical concepts are connected to physical spaces students regularly encounter.
One example is ratio and proportion.
In an art room, students can mix colours using precise proportions of primary pigments. They can then alter the ratio and observe how the resulting colour changes. Instead of encountering ratio as numbers on a page, students see the relationship produce a physical result.
The 100-hour screen-time claim
One of the programme’s headline claims is that Math Museum can reduce screen-based instruction by 100 or more hours annually.
UnMathX says this figure is not based on measuring students’ overall screen time. Bathija describes it as a curriculum calculation.
According to his explanation, the academic team mapped Classes 1 to 10 and identified approximately 10 core syllabus topics at each grade level that schools commonly deliver through digital presentations, smartboards, animations or screen-based drills because there is no physical alternative. If those lessons are shifted into hands-on activities, with roughly an hour of instructional time for each topic, the calculation crosses 100 hours.
The distinction is important: the 100-plus hours is therefore a calculation of potential instructional activity moved away from screens, rather than an independently measured reduction in a child’s total annual screen exposure.
UnMathX is also integrating a technology layer alongside the physical installations. QR markers allow teachers to access curriculum-linked lesson guides and activity blueprints, while the company’s planned platform is intended to track how often installations are used and how teachers conduct the sessions.
The real challenge may be the teacher
Turning a school wall into a learning tool is one thing. Ensuring that teachers continue to use it is another.
Bathija acknowledges that teacher adoption has historically been one of the biggest challenges. Without regular facilitation, he says, a physical learning environment can eventually become little more than “wallpaper”.
That is where UnMathX says its digital layer is intended to play a supporting role. Each physical installation can be linked to a mobile platform, allowing schools to monitor usage and helping educators maintain regular engagement with the installations.
The system is designed to give teachers access to activities through QR-linked resources. UnMathX says its baseline expectation is that each class section will use the campus installations at least once a month, with some grade cohorts using them twice a month depending on the syllabus.
A corridor that students walk past every day
JBCN International School’s Borivali branch in Mumbai is currently the flagship implementation cited by UnMathX.
It was there, Bathija says, that school leadership observed students beginning peer-led discussions and showing curiosity around installations in spaces that had previously functioned simply as corridors.
The 12-year-old who stopped to explain a maths concept to a classmate is presented by Bathija as an example of what the programme is trying to create: a situation in which a student who has understood a concept becomes the one explaining it to another student.
For UnMathX, that everyday interaction is as important as the installation itself.
The company says the underlying pedagogy has been used in some form across more than 500 schools over 14 years, while the newer phygital Math Museum model is more recent. It currently cites JBCN as its flagship operational partner and says it has had more than 50 active conversations with school leadership across the country in the past two months.
From experiment to a national network
UnMathX plans to deploy Math Museum in more than 100 schools during the 2026-27 academic year, with a longer-term target of 1,500 schools by 2030. The programme is designed for Classes 1 to 10 and can be implemented independently or as part of the company’s three-year Phygital Xperience Ecosystem. Each implementation takes five days, followed by six months of teacher support.
The approach is positioned by the company as being aligned with the experiential and hands-on learning emphasis of the National Education Policy 2020 and CBSE’s Kaushal Bodh initiative.
The larger proposition, however, is less about building another specialised facility and more about changing how students encounter mathematics.
A corridor does not have to remain just a corridor. A staircase can become a geometry lesson. An art room can demonstrate proportion. A sports ground can provide a real-world context for numbers and measurement.
And if students begin noticing mathematics in the spaces they already inhabit, the classroom may no longer be the only place where a maths lesson begins.
