Technology is playing a major role in today’s times and it has touched every aspect of our lives. Areas or domains that were once untouched can now be explored with the power of technology. It has enhanced the overall experience of banking, communicating, shopping, learning, etc. and one sector that is currently witnessing the change is EducationE-learning or Ed-Tech have been the pioneers of change in the field of education. Long before ‘technology’ and ‘internet’ became mainstream, the only way to learn & gain knowledge was by learning from tutors, schools, and coaching institutes. But now, you can learn any skill or language from the internet and that too at your own convenience.

The online Education market In India is expected to touch $1.96 billion by 2021 and witness a 8x growth in the next 5 years according to a recent report by Google, KPMG. The reason for demand of online education has been the growth in Internet penetration and easy accessibility to affordable and quality education online. Though there are many ‘Educational Apps’ that are focussed towards the early-learning, handful of them only focus on improving your kid’s control over the English language. This is the problem that serial-entrepreneur Mr. Cristóbal Viedma wanted to solve after difficulties he faced while finding a good English teacher for his sister Marieta’s 2-year old daughter and thus Lingokids was born!

Lingokids is the best way to teach kids languages in a fun and natural way. It offers an adaptive language learning platform to teach English to children from 2 ~ 8 years of age, designed with Oxford University Press content. Lingokids is a complete language learning course, with activities that adapt to the child’s learning style. The curriculum includes exciting educational games and a recommended playlist of activities based on the child’s level in a 100% ad-free and safe environment. Today we have a chat with Mr. Cristóbal Viedma, a serial entrepreneur with a background in Computer Science. He is passionate about technology, education, & intercultural communication. Prior to launching Lingokids, Viedma worked as Head of Language-learning Platform at Viki, acquired by Rakuten in 2013 for $200M. He discussion revolves around Lingokids, plans for the Indian market, competition, etc. So, let’s get started with the Q&A…

[Note – ‘I’ in the Q&A refers to Mr. Cristóbal Viedma]

Can you walk us through the team behind Lingokids and how did your team come up with the idea ?

As a Spanish engineer and entrepreneur, I have been able to witness first hand the benefits of knowing English fluently, both in my personal & professional life. This is why there was no hesitation when my sister Marieta asked for my help to teach English to her 2-year old daughter. As an expert in early child development, Marieta understood the importance of acquiring language skills in the early stages of life to order to master it in the future.

However, after doing some research, the programs we found online were either unaffordable, not fully safe, or simply inadequate for early learners.  There was clearly a void in offering quality early childhood language education and my vision was that through technology we could offer a simple and attractive solution.

We moved to San Francisco and launched Monkimun Inc. with funding from early-stage venture 500 Startups and began experimenting with educational games released as individual apps only to realize that the best solution would be an all-encompassing platform that would group various games, songs and stories into one comprehensive English learning course targeted at early childhood learners. We returned to Spain to build our team and launched Lingokids in early 2016. Now we are already over 6 million registered families worldwide, and there is still a lot of ground to cover. We’re excited.

There are many reports that mention about kids [especially in the age group of 2~5] having issues with concentration, etc. when exposed to tablets/phones, how did your team convince the core USP of the app to the initial set of customers ?

This is completely understandable. We know there is a world outside screens and it’s important that parents set limits so that children are not exceeding the maximum screen time recommended for their age. Yet, if we assume that these limits are respected it then brings us to a more important question – Are we paying close enough attention to what contents these children are being exposed to? Our proposition is – Instead of using your child’s screen time on pure entertainment, why not combine that entertainment into something that has educational value? Embracing ICT affords infinite possibilities for the development of new teaching methods, which allow for engagement, interaction, and recreation in the learning process.

Starting from the age of 2, well-designed and age appropriate programs with educational goals can provide added value as a route for early language and literacy. With Lingokids we provide a platform that combines interactivity and gamification into a structured learning process allowing us to improve both motivation and engagement for the task at hand.

With technology learning outcomes are enhanced. That is, technology can help children acquire more information and at a faster rate. In a series of studies, we found that children who used Lingokids learned double the amount of vocabulary compared to those who used traditional methods. With technology, we can actually free up time for families to be more physically active or for other activities that do not require screens.

Since Lingokids is available for customers/parents across different countries, how do you make the experience tailor-made for different audience [especially for different countries] ?

Our customers are in over 180 countries so for now, our priority is to building a universal platform that can have both educational and entertainment value to families everywhere. We make some minor tweaks here and there to tailor to cultural differences where it can be sensitive, but we try to keep our content uniform across all markets. We are aware that this could change in the future and as we look to deepen our presence in specific markets the need to localize will increase.

Can you name some of the potential competitors of Lingokids and some of the core USP’s of Lingokids as compared to its closest competitors ?

ABCMouse and Yogome are among the most popular early childhood learning apps, although they tend encompass a broader spectrum of subjects and are probably not what you would go for if you want your child to learn English.  Duolingo, Babbel, and Busuu, and other language learning apps could also be seen as competition since they are specialized in language learning but with a focus on adults. Video streaming platforms such as YouTube Kids and Netflix Kids which also use up children’s screen times are seen as substitutes, however, their main focus is on entertainment and less interactive learning formats.

Lingokids is the only major player that specializes in English language learning and early childhood audiences which make us the best at what we do. Our customers really appreciate the quality and educational value of our contents which are designed by experts in early language acquisition. There are five distinguishing factors which work together to make our offer unbeatable

  1. Self-directed activities – The learner is in control.
  2. Adaptive technology – Contents and difficulty adjust to learning speed.
  3. Parental involvement – designed to help parents be a part of the child’s learning process.
  4. Structured – The activities are organized and shown in a specific order to allow for the most effective learning experience.

The Lingokids’ research-based program is repeatedly enhanced based on ongoing research.

What is the business model of Lingokids and you touch upon some of the plans for the app [in case if there is no flat pricing model] ?

Lingokids is subscription-based. We offer 2 plans – The Basic version, free of charge, with access to up to 3 learning activities per day and the Unlimited plan that includes access to all educational contents, offline usage, multiple profiles and additional learning materials for under 500 rupees per month.

Can you please comment on the association with Oxford University Press and the future plans of Oxford University Press with Lingokids [something further beyond Lingokids app] ?

We have two parts to our collaboration with Oxford University Press [OUP]. Firstly, OUP bundles access to Lingokids with its “Jump In!” and “Mouse and Me!” English course books for per-schoolers. We worked together to create a special selection of content within Lingokids that supports the needs of learners using these courses.

Secondly, we feature OUP digital content in the Lingokids app. We have a great relationship and are currently exploring different ways we could deepen our collaboration.

Apart from English, Lingokids is available for which all languages and how do you ensure that the content quality is very good for other languages [something on the lines of association with a notable brand like Oxford Press] ?

We have chosen to focus solely on teaching English language for now. English is the most widely spoken language in the world with figures estimating that by 2020 there will be over 500 million children aged under 7 learning the language. In addition, English proficiency is correlated with higher income, higher quality of life, greater ease of doing business, and more innovation.

We assure the quality of our contents thanks to a very dedicated and specialized in-house content team. In addition, our curriculum and methodology is guided by a world class Education Board made up of experts in literacy and ESL instruction, vocabulary development, educational technology and child psychology.

While using mobile/tablet, attention span is pretty less, what are some of the methodologies used by the Lingokids team to ensure that there is stickiness in the app, it’s content [for the parent as well as its students] ?

With Lingokids children are immersed in a virtual world with recurring characters and story-lines developed by experts in early childhood education and entertainment.  Our experts make sure our contents are fun, challenging and engaging to learners and some of the ways they do this is through guided learning elements [i.e. introduction and recap videos with real native teachers that guide students from one lesson to the next],  interactive formats, and by making sure the parent is involved through constant communication of the child’s progress [such as ‘number of words learned’, ‘activities completed’, etc].

Please comment on the overall EdTech Market for language learning [for pre-school students], especially in emerging economies like India, etc. ?

The EdTech market is thriving globally and according to a recent report by Google and KPMG, the online education industry in India is poised to grow 8x to a $1.96 billion industry by 2021.

With ~1bn kids worldwide in our target age groups, 9 out of 10 children suffering from language barriers globally and a ripening ELL market in the US where 25% of K12 will be ELL by 2025 with a strong concentration in the pre-k age group, there is a huge opportunity ahead of us to help democratize access to quality learning solutions. We estimate our total serviceable market to be $5.5bn with ~10% expected growth rates over next 5 years.

Do you have any plans of venturing into India [thru’ India specific languages like Hindi, Telugu, etc.], since the next level of disruption w.r.t content is happening with non-English speaking audience [and tier-2, tier-3 cities] ?

We are definitely planning on localizing our app to more languages than we have now. We currently support the app in 15 languages and for India specifically, next steps would be to add Hindi and eventually add Marathi and Telugu.

We are excited by the growth we’ve seen in families that are using Lingokids in the market which increased over 400% from 2016 to 2017. However, we are seeing similar growth figures in over 10 different markets.

Cristobal Viedma – Founder & CEO – Lingokids

Can you please talk about the Educator’s Program and the feedback that your team received from them that helped in shaping up the product ?

We launched our educators program just a few months ago. The idea stems from the fact that there is a need for quality resources for teaching English to young learners. On one side, teachers can use all our materials at no cost and through that we increase awareness of our product, but most importantly learn from their feedback which we find extremely valuable. We speak to educators every week to understand how our materials can be used on a day-to-day basis in classrooms.

A piece of feedback we received a lot at first was the need to make the product more compatible with smart/electronic boards, something we were very quick to solve and will be implementing in the next few weeks.

We also consider educators to be influential brand champions. One example of this is a teacher in Mexico who dedicated en entire classroom to learning with Lingokids.

Please share some metrics on how Lingokids has helped kids in improving their vocabulary, concentration levels, etc.

The key factor in the quick acquisition of vocabulary in children is fun. Videos and interactive games, in addition to being a means of entertaining learning, greatly increase  attention span, providing motivation and effectiveness in learning vocabulary through participation and interaction with the word.

We also run AB tests and focus groups regularly which allows us to test our new contents and quickly figure out what work better.

Is there any plan to cater to the ‘Special education market’ since there is shortage of apps as well as teachers in that category ?

The app tends to be well-suited for children with special needs. We have received tons of feedback from parents with children with autism, attention deficit and other learning disabilities who have found immense value in Lingokids some even commenting on improved social skills and improved ability in keeping up with their classmates.

The well-researched content, interactive nature of the app, and the adaptive technology that allows the child to learn at his or her own pace along with parental control makes it’s a very effective learning tool for any child.

Lingokids Team

Please comment on the India market/South Asia market and which are some of the cities/towns who have adopted Lingokids for learning ?

For us, the regions with the most opportunity are Latin America and South Asia, mainly emerging economies where the need for an economic solution to early English language learning is most valued. Within Asia; India, Philippines, China, Thailand and Malaysia are our focus. In India itself, we are serving over 400,000 families, with over 40% of them to be within Maharashtra, Delhi and Karnataka regions. Both Mumbai and Delhi are strong local markets for us.

We’re excited for what the future holds both for us and for families in India who are benefiting or could benefit from a service like Lingokids. In the mid-term we will begin looking at plans to deepen our activities within this very attractive market.

How has been the feedback about the app from the parents who have been associated with the platform for a long time ?

This is probably the driving force of our motivation here at Lingokids. Parents notice the progress of their child’s English and say things like “Now Bobby will have a better chance at life.” Sometimes we are talking about families who live in remote areas of the world with zero access to English academies and native teachers, other times we are talking about families who aren’t able to afford the $100 a month to sign their kids up to an academy or private classes.

Other times it is parents worried about the fact that their child cannot keep up with the rest of the kids in class and that Lingokids, through it’s adaptive methodology, has allowed them to improve and be at the level [sometimes it’s the opposite where kids are too advanced and Lingokids allows them to improve further]. Sometimes it is just feedback on how parents surprised in seeing how their kids enjoy themselves while learning.

On the other hand, we also take constructive criticism very seriously and are always ready to make changes and improvements to the product based on any comprehensive and substantial feedback from our customers.

Please share some metrics on how Lingokids has helped kids in improving their vocabulary, concentration levels, etc. ?

We measure effectiveness of our digital contents on all levels and we’re consistently AB testing different content types and formats to allow for further engagement and improved learning outcomes. We look at average session time, frequency of usage. Although the web is full of content that only focuses on entertainment, it is also true that there is pedagogical material for children to acquire all kinds of knowledge while playing. In addition to providing a fun learning, they are ideal to consult at any time and from anywhere via mobile.

Being a the global platform for learning English at an early age, Lingokids, shows that children retain twice as much vocabulary with the use of these applications as against the most common learning methods. The key factor in the quick acquisition of vocabulary in children is fun, since preschoolers do not have the impression or the burden of studying or receiving more material. Videos and interactive games, in addition to being a means of entertaining learning, greatly increase children’s attention span, providing motivation and effectiveness in learning vocabulary through participation and interaction with the word.

Can you please comment on some of the core features of the app & future expansion plans for Lingokids ?

We already are the world’s #1 digital solution for parents when it comes to early childhood English-language learning with over 6 million families around the world already trusting in Lingokids. Our focus over the short term is to continue building the home learning experience with more learning formats, more interactivity and more support to promote parent involvement.

Lingokids seeks to become the most trusted, effective and affordable home learning platform and is democratizing access to quality early childhood learning. The Lingokids platform would essentially help to bridge classroom learning and home learning with customized teacher playlists advanced reporting and parent-teacher communications. In terms of content creators, we aim at providing them with tools to upload and manage their videos, songs and games using our SDK which would be used by parents and teachers for their child’s learning.

[LingoKids for Android can be downloaded from here, LingoKids for iOS can be downloaded from here].

We thank Mr. Cristóbal Viedma for sharing his insights with our readers. If you have any questions for him about Lingokids, how it can help your child, EdTech in general, etc.; please email them here or share them via a comment to this article.

Interdisciplinary learning engages students and helps them to develop knowledge, problem-solving skills, critical thinking, and a passion for learning, suggests Pearson MyPedia study. With an aim to examine the success of intended learner outcomes, the study highlights that learners have shown an annual gain up to 8% in their scores on tests measuring target skills.

During the study, 2000 stakeholders including academic leaders, teachers, and parents highlighted that lack of minimal teaching and pedagogy skills among teachers is one of the key attributing factors to low learning level. To provide learners an engaging and enriched learning experience, Pearson India offers MyPedia that integrates all learning and teaching tools in a well-designed scientific manner to transform education delivery and enhance the way of ‘How Children Learn‘.

MyPedia, the only fully integrated learning programme is convenient, easy to use and delivers intended outcomes including improvement in learner’s engagement. The study indicates that the three key factors influencing the adoption of MyPedia include academic delivery support, assessment services, and professional development. 91% of the principals and teachers found MyPedia convenient and easy to use in classrooms. Interestingly, 91% of the principals and teachers strongly agree that MyPedia helps learners in interdisciplinary learning across different subjects. Additionally, 92% of principals and teachers believe that MyPedia promotes higher order thinking among students.

Ujjwal Singh, Vice President, Product & Innovation, Emerging Markets, Pearson Education, Pearson India said

We are committed to helping learners make measurable progress in their lives through learning and with MyPedia, we aim to improve the way teachers teach and students learn. We understand that different learners learn at a different pace, style, and time.  MyPedia leverages digital transformation and uses curricular approach by giving ownership of learning to digitally empowered 21st century learners through a variety of applications.

The specially crafted set of course books of MyPedia use an interdisciplinary learning approach and a robust pedagogy designed to provide a holistic learning experience to a learner and support learning even beyond the four walls of a classroom.

To make measurable progress in the thinking skills of learners by improving access to quality learning resources, MyPedia along with the regular textbooks offers multimedia objects for the teacher lesson plan. It uses a suite of assessments and the science of measurement to gauge gains in target academic skills. Based on the 5i model learning model, MyPedia enables teachers teach better through scientifically designed interactive teaching plans to develop higher order thinking skills among learners.

Lingokids, an English language-learning platform has reached over 5 million downloads worldwide with the most number of downloads from India with over 4,00,000 users followed by Brazil and Mexico since its launch in 2016.  The percentage downloads from Maharashtra are at 22.9% being highest in India, 16.4% in Delhi followed by 10.5% in Karnataka.

The online Education market In India is expected to touch $1.96 billion by 2021 and witness a 8x growth in the next 5 years according to a recent report by Google, KPMG. The reason for demand of online education has been the growth in Internet penetration and easy accessibility to affordable and quality education online. Lingokids offers complete English courses with lots of activities for every learning style for kids from 2 to 8 years and offers well-researched, superior educational content through ELT, a division of the esteemed Oxford University Press and a global leader in multimedia English language teaching.

50% of the ability to learn is developed in the first years of life and Lingokids immersive program encourages early learning and development for children by constantly exposing children to various grammatical structures and more than 3,000 vocabulary words, the apps hits-and-errors algorithm adapts each lesson to the child’s learning speed and the curriculum follows a methodology guided by a prestigious Board of Educators from diverse backgrounds in the field of education with expertise in literacy instruction, vocabulary development, child psychology, ESL instruction, and educational technology.

Cristobal Viedma, CEO and Founder, Lingokids said

The response from India for has been very positive and Lingokids has reached a milestone of over 400000 users.  The English language opens doors to the world and prepares children to become global citizens and our mission is to take down language barriers and provide equal opportunities for children across cultures. Lingokids is a perfect platform to give children a headstart at learning in a 100% ad-free and safe environment.

About Lingokids

Lingokids is the best way to teach kids languages in a fun and natural way. Lingokids offers an adaptive language-learning platform to teach English to children from 2~8 years of age, designed with Oxford University Press content.

Lingokids is a complete language-learning course, with activities that adapt to your child’s learning style. Our curriculum includes exciting educational games and a recommended playlist of activities based on your child’s level in a 100% ad-free and safe environment.

Unacademy, India’s largest learning platform, announced the closing of its $21 million Series C funding round from Sequoia India, SAIF Partners, and Nexus Venture Partners. Blume Ventures also participated in this round. Unacademy has raised $38.6 million in total so far.  The funds raised will be utilized to onboard new educators on the platform, penetrate deeper in categories including pre-medical, GATE and CAT, and further strengthen the core product and technology team.

Image Source – UnAcademy

Commenting on the announcement, Gaurav Munjal, Co-Founder and CEO, Unacademy said

Right from the outset, we have focused on growing the platform by empowering the best educators. We have grown tremendously since our inception, and just last month, more than 3000 educators were active on the platform and lessons created by them were watched more than 40 million times by learners.

I am thankful to our existing investors for infusing Unacademy with growth capital and reaffirming their faith in us. We will utilize these funds to invest heavily in our product and technology to make Unacademy one of the best global internet products out of India. We remain committed to growing our platform with more educators, learners and categories.

Shailendra Singh, Managing Director, Sequoia Capital [India], Singapore said

Sequoia India is thrilled to lead the new round in Unacademy, which is already making a big impact in India’s online learning space.  Gaurav, Roman and Hemesh are driven founders with a very focused mission, and that is having a clear effect on the pace of production innovation, team building and overall growth.

Unacademy was founded by Gaurav Munjal, Roman Saini and Hemesh Singh in 2015. The platform empowers educators by making it easy for them to create high quality educational lessons on the Educator App, that learners access via the Learning App.

Alok Goel, Partner, SAIF Partners, said

Unacademy has demonstrated tremendous progress towards their goal of delivering personalized learning by connecting great quality educators and students on their platform. The company has diversified across several new domains and has achieved amazing word of mouth among learners. We are excited to continue supporting Gaurav and team in their journey.

Sameer Brij Verma, Managing Director at Nexus Venture Partners, said

We are super excited to support the Unacademy team on their mission to become India’s largest online learning platform. The team has done a great job in building market leadership in the government test preparation domain since we led their Series A round in early 2017, and they are aggressively expanding to new examination categories.

In October 2017, Unacademy also launched ‘Plus’ courses on its platform with a private discussion forum, live video classes, and a personalized classroom learning environment with its top educators. Currently, more than 30 educators take paid ‘Plus’ courses on the platform apart from the lessons that are also available for free. Since the launch of Plus courses, the company has achieved a 6x growth in its monthly revenue.

About Unacademy

Unacademy is an education technology platform founded by Gaurav Munjal, Roman Saini and Hemesh Singh in 2015. It was started as a YouTube channel by Gaurav Munjal in 2010. Headquartered in Bengaluru, Unacademy is India’s largest learning platform that brings expert educators together with millions of students in need of quality education. With a growing network of 10,000 registered educators and 3 million learners, Unacademy is changing the way India learns. The company has raised $38.6 million so far from prominent investors such as Sequoia India, SAIF Partners, Nexus Venture Partners and Blume Ventures. To know more, download the Unacademy Learning App from Play Store or Unacademy Learning App from the iOS Store

Education has become one of the basic necessities of mankind. It is education which shapes the advancement of a society by making living easier, simpler and smoother. The education sector has been through various reforms in the past to make learning more effective. The traditional education system has had several constraints and so, technology has been slowly entering the education sector to make learning more engaging, effective & student-friendly. With technology-integrated education, students can learn in a better way.

Image Source – EdTech

Among the various benefits that technology has on the learning process, some of the top ones are given below.

Information Accessibility

With the advent of technology, information is now easily accessible from any corner of the world and by anyone with just a few clicks. Technology has made the whole world of knowledge accessible from the comfort of one’s own place and style. With the help of technology, if a student has a doubt about a certain topic like Rutherford Atomic Model, he/she can easily use their electronic device and clear their doubts instantly.

Personalized Learning

One of the major advantages of technology is that it has made personalized learning possible. In the traditional education system, understanding the unique requirements of the students was impossible. With adaptive technology, students can now learn at their own pace and style and get personalized performance report which can help to analyze the preparation level.

Online Learning

With the advent of the internet and digital devices, online learning is now possible. Now, any individual from any corner of the world can access globalized learning courses at very low costs. This way, distance learning is possible, and any individual can easily learn anything from the internet.

Engagement

Technology tools like 3D animations, educational games and simulations are now being used by many ed-tech companies to increase engagement of the students. With video lessons, students can also learn the concepts better and retain the concepts for longer. For example, learning topics like Kinematics, Bohr’s Atomic theory, Homologous Series, calculus, etc. becomes a lot easier if the concepts are visualized.

These were a few advantages that technology has on the learning process. At present, several educational institutes are also using technology tools in the classrooms to make the learning process more efficient. Some of the technology tools that are being used in classrooms and have potential to be widely used are

  • Reality learning tools like augmented reality [AR], virtual reality [VR] and mixed reality [MR] are making learning more practical and engaging.
  • Educational apps are extremely useful to supplement the learning experience of the students.
  • 3D printing is also used by some institutes to make the learning process more engaging and practical. 3D printing also helps to boost the imagination of the students and can help students to understand some concepts in a better way.

There are several other technology tools that can enhance the learning process of the students. At present, educational apps are being widely accepted and used by the students. One of the educational apps which have been attracting huge attention from the students is BYJU’S- The Learning App.

BYJU’S app uses several technology tools like 3D animations, games, adaptive technology, etc. to make learning more effective for the students. To know more about BYJU’S app, subscribe to BYJU’s YouTube channel and download the app from the play store or the app store.

To celebrate 20 years in India and a legacy cutting across learner segments, Pearson, the world’s learning company, announced the launch of its new brand campaign #WeArePearson. Aimed at making learning more accessible, fun and experiential for everyone, the campaign personifies the over 20 years Indian legacy of Pearson, and takes us back to an era where legends like Albert Einstein started inspiring the world and changing the face of education.

Image Source – Pearson

The campaign will engage people through contests, videos and live interactions to get them to think about their own innovative and fun ways of learning in today’s digital age. Pearson will bring exclusive experiences for customers as part of the celebration which will be revealed soon on the Pearson’s website.

In a journey that started in 1997 in India, Pearson has set benchmarks by finding the new ways to recognise teachers’ extraordinary contribution & inspire students by combining world class content and finest authors. The brand has harnessed the power of technology in bringing newer ways of learning and delivering on its core philosophy of ‘Always Learning‘.

Vikas Singh, Managing Director, Pearson India, said

We are extremely excited and proud as we celebrate 20th anniversary in India. In the last two decades, we have come a long way in becoming the preferred partner for educators and learners alike, by bringing our global learning platforms and practices to India. We have a formidable presence across all segments of education and now we are looking at the next generation of courseware and digital solutions which aims to transform the face of the Indian education system.

We continue to strive towards our goal to help students make measurable progress in their lives through learning. With our new campaign, we aim to spread the joy of learning and empower the next generation with the resources they need to be future ready.

As a future-facing organisation, Pearson offers solutions across the spectrum that leverage technology for better education. The company has continually improved, thoroughly researched and expertly developed world-class products to India across three core verticals of K-12, Higher Education and Vocational [and Professional] education.

Kings Learning, a technology-driven spoken English learning startup, has raised USD 2.5 million in funding from Michael & Susan Dell Foundation, together with other US based tech investors. The organization aims to address the employability issue in India amongst underserved youth owing to poor English language and communication skills, through offline, online and blended delivery channels.

Image Source – 1, 2

Enguru, Kings Learning’s mobile-based spoken English app, allows users to self-learn both general spoken English and employability-focused conversational English.  It also allows users to learn English in their native language and currently supports 28 different languages. The app has been downloaded about 2 million times till date, and is currently being used to improve spoken English skills by more than 120,000 active users monthly. The app’s platform is adaptive & gamified with real time assessments, which makes it easier for not just individuals but also corporates to use it for their employee training modules.

Arshan Vakil, Co-Founder and CEO, Kings Learning, said

Our goal is to leverage innovative technology and creative content to deliver high quality and engaging English education to all. We are excited to partner with our investors as we move into the next phase of our growth which will primarily be focused on scaling up our offerings like Enguru, strengthening our technology and analytics engine and expanding the Kings Learning team.

Prachi Windlass, Education Director, India, Michael & Susan Dell Foundation, said

English has become a ticket to enter the booming knowledge-driven job economy of India, however, few have access to quality English language training. Almost half of the graduates in India, primarily from underprivileged backgrounds, are considered unemployable in most of the sectors due to lack of spoken English skills. Thankfully, mobile internet explosion, supplemented by exemplary work undertaken by technology-driven organizations like Kings Learning, is helping address this problem. We are excited to support Kings Learning’s efforts in their journey ahead.

About Kings Learning

Founded in 2014, Kings Learning is an ed-tech startup aimed at providing employability focused English language & communication skills training through technology products. For more information, please visit Kings Learning and EnGuru App Website

Michael & Susan Dell Foundation funded Oliveboard achieved a major milestone crossing 1 million registered users on its platform. Very few edtech companies manage a reach of over 1 million users and Oliveboard has managed this within just few years of its launch.

Image Source – OliveBoard

The company offers courses in both English & Hindi and has a majority of its users coming from Tier 2 & 3 cities of India. The company delivers its courses on both PC & Mobile and its Android mobile app for over 20 exams across MBA, Banking & Government Job exam categories.

Abhishek Patil, Founder – Oliveboard added

We are probably one of the few e-learning companies in India, with a heavy focus on government job and banking exam related curriculum. We believe that our various initiatives such as introduction of vernacular, gamification of courseware, study planners, analytics for feedback and our thrust on smaller cities of India have immensely helped us achieve this milestone within a short period of time.

Founded in 2012 by ex-Inmobi colleagues, Abhishek Patil & Satish Kumar, Oliveboard has received Pre-series A funding from India Educational Investment Fund [IEIF], an early-stage impact investment fund established by the Michael & Susan Dell Foundation. The company began with a focus on MBA exams before expanding to the Bank & Government job exam segment in early 2014. Since then, it has established itself as one of the most recognized names in the field of Bank & Government Job exam preparation. The company provides its users with complete preparation with Video lectures, online study material, All India test series along with various other practice tests.

Most of its users are 21~30 year old, with a majority [around 70%] of them from Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities of India. Oliveboard users span across 1000+ cities & towns of India spread over all 29 states & 7 union territories of India making it one of the most geographically penetrated online services in India. The 1 million users have attempted over 100 million questions on the platform.

About Oliveboard

Oliveboard is an online test preparation platform for MBA, Banking & Government Job exams. Students are prepped for success using Video lectures, Up to date comprehensive course material, Live Group Practice Sessions, Customized Study Planners, All India Test Series, Practice Tests and Analytics for instant feedback. Users can access Oliveboard’s courses on their computers, laptops or an app on their smartphones. For more information, please visit OliveBoard