Our Story

Genie Academy (formerly Math Genie) was founded in 2008 by Mohit S. Jain and his wife, Naina Jain.

Mohit, who was born in Bhopal, India, was not a strong student and was never engaged in his studies. He still attended college, but he graduated at the bottom of his class. When he came to the United States, he realized that the high-paying jobs were in technology, and he had neither an engineering degree nor a background in computer science. Determined to break into the field, he began researching learning methods that produced rapid results.

What he found was that everyone learns differently. Once he identified his own learning style, he taught himself programming in three months. He soon landed a job as an IT consultant at Goldman Sachs, where the environment was intensely competitive. He had to hold his own against his boss, an MIT graduate, and coworkers who had graduated from elite universities in the U.S. and abroad.

On a trip back to India, Mohit watched local students solving math problems on the abacus, an ancient calculating tool. He recognized at once how effective it was for teaching children math, and he decided to bring the concept back to the United States. But he knew the program would need to be adapted to be fun and engaging for American children. He asked his wife, Naina, to leave her real estate career and write the Genie Academy curriculum, which she spent the next few years developing.

They opened their first after-school math program in a small storefront on Route 18 in East Brunswick, New Jersey. Their first class had three students.

The first few months were difficult. They were unsure whether the program would work or whether they had the skills to build it. But their first success story came quickly. A local parent, Keith S., brought in his son, Michael, who was struggling in school and had been written off by his teachers. Within a few weeks, Michael was showing improvement. In nine weeks, his father said, Michael had learned more at Genie Academy than he had during the entire school year.

Word spread. Other parents began to take notice, and some traveled as far as 30 miles to bring their children to class. The company grew and opened a second location on Hadley Place in South Plainfield, not far from East Brunswick.

Today, Genie Academy has more than 28 teachers across 7 locations and has helped over 7,000 students.

Our philosophy is simple: every child is born with the potential to be a genius. All that’s needed is the right challenge in an engaging environment. That is our mission, to help parents discover the genius their child was born to be.