Smart Madarsa is a program started by ZMQ to mainstream Madarsa education in India and build a model to refine Madarsa education using ICTs and Gaming and then scale it up to as many Madarsas as possible across India. In India alone there are over 40,000 Madarsas where almost 2.2 to 2.4 million children, mainly from Muslim Backward Communities, BoP Muslim, and poor migrant workers children, attend these Madrasas.

The key problem that the project addresses is the absence of contemporary courses like English & Hindi reading and writing skills, elementary Maths & Sciences in early grade Madarsa. Due to the absence of conventional courses the Madarsas have become factories for producing unskilled, unemployed and frustrated youth. The project also addresses the lack of preparedness of children to be able to switch to conventional schooling system during any period of the Madarsa Education. The project also looks at the problem of inaccessibility of Madarsas to girls.