Indian Startup Cognitii Wins $100K Unlock Her Future Prize 2025

By: WE Staff | Monday, 24 November 2025

• Cognitii, an Indian startup focused on AI-driven public special education, was the recipient of the $100,000 Unlock Her Future Prize 2025
• More than 2,900 applications from over 40 South Asian countries were received in this competition

Indian startup Cognitii, based in Bengaluru, works on developing an AI-powered system for public special education and was announced as a winner of the $100,000 Unlock Her Future Prize 2025.

The prize, coming from The Bicester Collection, has received more than 2,900 applications across over 40 countries in South Asia. Ultimately, eleven founders were chosen to pitch during the final pitch event in London where Cognitii was selected as one of six winners.

Set up by Gurugram's Jhillika Trisal, Raipur's Falguni Shrivastava, and Kolkata's Souvik Ghosh, Cognitii aims to develop the first AI-plus-human infrastructure layer for special education in India.

The three, influenced by personal experiences with autism and ADHD, created the startup to enhance early identification and intervention for kids to eradicate a gap that follows individuals well into adulthood.

The team believes over 80 percent of children born with disabilities in India are not identified before the age of eight and are hence, unable to fully benefit from education and support services provided at school.

Its platform includes early screening tools, a mobile-first learning system, an educator co-pilot, and policy-oriented dashboards for state agencies.

It also integrates with public data platforms like UDISE+ and Samagra Shiksha to enable governments to track disability prevalence, inclusion outcomes, and budget utilisation. This is a solution for low-resource classrooms, and it has offline access with support for multilingual capabilities.

Cognitii is piloting in Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, Kerala, and other school systems. With the prize funding, Cognitii plans to build government partnerships that increase outreach to rural areas and develop what it calls India’s first disability data layer to assist policy-making and resource allocation.

In a joint statement the founders noted that the prize will assist in scale with government and low-income schools to further strengthen early screening and inclusion efforts.

Unlock Her Future Prize is providing funding, leadership development, mentorship, and access to networks of investors and policy-makers for winners. Cognitii stated that this impact will further increase the scope of its work in the special education ecosystem in India to be expansive across the Global South.