Meet Swetha Tandri | Founder and Lead Director of Melodies for Math

We had the good fortune of connecting with Swetha Tandri and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Swetha, what is the most important factor behind your success?
The most important factor behind the success of my brand Melodies for Math is dedication. We have 66K followers on tiktok, but that only happened because I posted EVERY DAY in the summer, and currently as a college student.

Adding onto dedication, my team and I also have a lot of perseverance. Even though we are high schoolers/college students, we make sure to get videos uploaded to YouTube at least once a week while engaging with our online community of 1000+ students.

Can you give our readers an introduction to your business? Maybe you can share a bit about what you do and what sets you apart from others?
In March 2020, I launched Melodies for Math as a YouTube channel and upload one song explaining a calculus concept(along with accompanying visuals) each week. I also began establishing our presence on Instagram and started reaching out to our followers and asking what they needed help with so I could write custom songs for them. This initiative soon grew to help more than 17 students directly but still the impact wasn’t quite there. I knew we needed a team to scale. After a lot of trial and error, in July 2020, I assembled a team of high school students across the United States and Canada(although most were from my hometown and our target audience is still USA students). We also gained a mentor, Haley Hoffman Smith(who was a Forbes influential speaker), who helped us with our YouTube SEO and growth strategy. We began uploading much better quality songs to YouTube that started gaining even more traction, but we still could barely pass 500 subscribers.

In April of 2021, I read the Mathematician’s Lament by Paul Lockhart, which criticized how math was currently taught and asserted that math in itself was creative, and should be taught that way. That resonated with me a lot, as someone who saw math as a creative energy and I was determined to build an audience that could learn math through our songs, and other methods that I was still formulating.

Haley encouraged us to try posting on tiktok to build that audience, which I started in June 2021. Through consistent posting and providing valuable content(I repurposed our youtube videos and put my own spin on trends to fit my niche) I grew our tiktok to 66K followers to date and 2.5K subscribers on youtube. Now that we had a huge following, I decided to launch an online community where I can help students one on one with a “creative” teaching style. Because of tiktok, our online community also grew to 1100+ members. We host near daily office hours and are launching a tutoring campaign around our unique 5 step method to ace any math test, which is based on the fundamental idea that math is a game(inspired by the Super Mario Effect Ted Talk by Mark Rober). I am also coding math games based on our songs which involve a lot of visual elements, further connecting math, discovery, and creativity, all while continually updating our database of math songs.

We started off as strictly a YouTube channel showing Melodies for Math, and now we are actively helping students realize the melodies IN math through all our initiatives.

Let’s say your best friend was visiting the area and you wanted to show them the best time ever. Where would you take them? Give us a little itinerary – say it was a week long trip, where would you eat, drink, visit, hang out, etc.
Even though I’m from the DFW area, I barely go downtown. Here are all the places I would show my friend if they were to visirt.

My favorite place to hang out that’s close to my house would be The Sound (near Coppell, TX). There’s a super nice trail to walk on, as well as restaurants, areas to take aesthetic pictures, and a nice open space for local artists to perform and have concerts.

At downtown, a really interesting phenomenon is the Giant Eyeball (it’s quite literally a huge eyeball sculpture that is painted). It’s located on Main Street and I love walking downtown.

My favorite malls in/near the DFW metro are the Galleria Mall and North Park Mall.

Regarding restaurants, my favorite local business is Bread Zeppelin. I would also recommend Momo’s Pasta. They have the best Italian food that I’ve ever had.

Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?
I would like to thank my mentor Haley Hoffman Smith for helping me get over various mental blocks and encouraging me to try tiktok, which allowed Melodies for Math to grow exponentially.

I would also love to thank my team members for being super supportive and dedicated to the cause. I would especially love to give a shoutout to Roma Jani and Harper Schneider, as well as Hrishikes Tandri(my brother), Nilufer Kosar, and Rachel Lee
.

Melodies for Math is looking to partner with teachers to engage more students. If you are interesting in partnering, please email hello@melodiesformath.org.

Website: https://www.melodiesformath.org

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/melodiesformath/

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/melodies-for-math/?viewAsMember=true

Twitter: https://mobile.twitter.com/melodiesformath

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MelodiesForMath/

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCxAmqqOdFQKGlzPcMRH1NAg

Other: Tiktok: https://www.tiktok.com/@melodiesformath?lang=en Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/melodiesformath?fan_landing=true

Image Credits
Prerna Agarwal