[ad_1]
Prerna A. Jhunjhunwala and Nikhil Naik, Founders of Innovation Galileo
People who work with children know how difficult it can be to get them to engage with online learning content. Creator Galileo keeps kids hooked by adding in their favorite cartoon characters. Singapore-based edtech platform today announced $7.5 million in Series A funding from Calari.
Capital, East Ventures, Affirm Capital and Angel Investors.
The funding will be used to expand Innovation Galileo in Southeast Asia and hire local teams in Indonesia and Vietnam. The app is currently very active in India and claims to have seen nearly seven million downloads.
Creative Galileo’s new funding brings the company’s total revenue up to $10 million, including a pre-series round of $2.5 million in October 2021.
In the year Founded in 2020 by Prerna A Jhunjhunwala and Nikhil Naik, Innovation Galileo describes itself as “Southeast Asia’s first feature-based early learning platform for children aged three to 10.”
Junjuhunwala told TechCrunch that Innovation Galileo differs from other learning apps for kids by offering pre-proficiency tracking, so their learning content is personalized based on what they know. At the same time, it is aligned with the NEL (Nurturing Early Learners) curriculum developed by the Ministry of Education in Singapore. The learning concepts include STEM, animation and graphic design, social and emotional learning and financial literacy.
Innovative Galileo language dashboard
Jhunjhunwala said she grew up near jute mills, and wanted to found an edtech startup after seeing how educational disparity affects children. “At that time, when I met the children and the parents, I realized that there was a huge learning problem. There was a wide divide in access to education and many of the children I met could not read and write or do simple math.
This is still an issue today, as Jhunjhunwala found in a study that 70% of 10-year-olds cannot do basic subtraction and an additional 70% of 15-year-olds cannot read nine-year-old books.
“Essentially, these children were and still are set to enter adulthood without basic education,” she said. “I know from experience that my mission is to create opportunities for children to get an education that prepares them for life.”
After moving to Singapore, she realized that the curriculum being taught throughout Southeast Asia was also missing the mark.
“Children in the region are still following the age-old learning methods that their parents and grandparents experienced and are not learning skills that are relevant to today’s world. The education system is creating a cookie-cutter system, from 1 teacher to 30, even 40 students,” she added. “It’s fast food for the mind.”
At first, Junjuhunwala sought to remedy the problem by establishing his own curriculum of schools called Little Paddington. But while the schools were successful, she felt they fell short of her goal of promoting democracy. That’s why she decided to co-found Innovation Galileon with Nike, a small Paddington parent with experience building direct-to-consumer products and internet ecosystems in Asia.
Especially for languages and intellectual property, it is a big part of Creative Galileo’s strategy as it expands into new Southeast Asian markets. Jhunjuhunwala explained that the platform is modular so it can accommodate character changes and support cultural differences, local languages and curriculum.
“Each country in Southeast Asia is extremely diverse, so the product was built to be easily adaptable to ensure local relevance and support multiple languages, even within a single country,” she said.
She added that the startup is currently in talks to make some of the region’s most popular children’s cartoon characters safe for the stage. It has already signed deals with EBS Korea, a public broadcaster, and the largest early education content companies to bring its content to Creative Galileo.
Indonesia is one of Creative Galileo’s next markets because “the challenges that children there face are similar to what we face in India,” Jhunjhunwala said. Meanwhile, Vietnam has a strong focus on English-language education, which provides an opportunity to provide bilingual skills to the beginner’s children. “Furthermore, both countries already have strong infrastructure and smart device penetration rates, paving the way for easy adoption of our solution,” she added.
The app has started monetizing on a small scale, Jhunjhunwala said, but this time, it is focused on processing. Generate revenue using the freemium model.
“We were cost-effective and achieved this scale through a product- and content-driven approach,” she said. “Our consumer purchase price was two cents lower than the US, and as a result we have more capital and a longer runway for the next increase.”
Kalari Capital Managing Director Vani Kola said in a prepared statement, “In the last six months [Creative Galileo] They have achieved strong growth with low transaction costs. Creative Galileo has consistently ranked among the top 20 educational apps on the Indian Play Store—the only preschool app to achieve this distinction.
[ad_2]
Source link
