Kipin.id

Kipin turns schools digital in just 3 minutes, unlocking access to a full K-12 digital education, even where internet stops.

Since the pandemic, we have been forced to live 'online'. We work online, we socialize online, and many students today are expected to now learn online. But what do we do when most students neither have adequate internet access nor sufficient funds to participate in 'online learning'?  

At Kipin, we don't stop where internet does: we digitalize schools in just 3 minutes.Through our smart IoT device called Kipin Classroom, we enable teachers and students to access 60,000 curriculum books, videos, quizzes and administer digital tests in their classrooms...all without internet. Users  stand within 15 meters of our Kipin device to access its EduSpot wifi and download-and-go a full library of content to study at home, or take paperless tests in class with their own device. We also employ a B2B2C model to districts and schools to ensure that students can access this hybrid library for free.

The evidence supports this: 94% of Indonesian students consider distance learning costly, and 6 in 10 schools do not have adequate internet access to learn online. A recent 2020 survey actually states that 7 in 10 students today are learning through low-data apps like Whatsapp. Can you imagine doing 'school' everyday through a simple messaging app? 

Today, Kipin has already helped 200 schools bridge this gap, but we need your help to reach over 54 million students nationwide. Alongside our 1200 teacher ambassadors across all 34 provinces, our vision is to enable equal access to a quality education everywhere -- with or without internet.

The education problem faced in Indonesia is one of learning inequality. While we have made improvements in enrollment, depending on socioeconomic status and distance to urban areas, students receive vastly different access to quality education in their formative years. This problem is made worse for Indonesia which has poor infrastructure, 54 million students in 220,000 K-12 schools, spread across 17,000 islands nationwide. Morever, Indonesia has experienced significant learning loss as the pandemic exacerbated existing inequalities as students are forced to learn online.

There are multiple causes attributed to this learning inequality and numerous 'broken links' in the process we need to fix. 

Firstly, digital curriculum content is scattered & difficult to find, especially with a limited budget. 94% of students consider distance learning costly and inaccessible (SMRC, Aug 2020, 2.2k respondents), so a solution must be deeply localized and digitize curriculum in easy-to-access way.

Secondly, teachers play a crucial role - but digital literacy is low. MoEC estimates 70% of students are still learning remotely through Whatsapp, relying closely on their teachers. To be prioritized in the classroom, a solution must therefore meet teachers where they are at and address core teaching needs, not try to sidestep them. 

Thirdly, Internet access is unequal and of poor quality. The Indonesia Central Statistics Agency states that access is only 21% in lower income areas vs up to 93% in higher-income areas, with internet speeds consistently rank lowest across countries, inadequate for online learning. An effective solution must therefore also work without internet. 

Kipin is most impactful for K-12 schools, teachers and students in areas where there is inadequate internet access, especially in second and third tier cities in Indonesia. These are the key candidates who face the problems outlined above and current fully-online or fully-offline solutions are not working well to address their core needs.

A 2020 MoEC & UNICEF survey stated that while 4 out of 5 students were aware of leading online edtechs, none had ever used it themselves, largely due to affordability & internet access issues. Despite government's best efforts, for example with the deployment of USD $270Mn in 2021 for Chromebooks, many students do not have adequate connectivityto learn online. These devices require the right infrastructure and content to be well utilized. 

Due to many 'broken links', teachers and students and rural areas tend to still find themselves underserved. By providing a 3 in 1 solution that answers it all, Kipin connects the broken links of internet infrastructure (providing wifi access without internet), limited capacity of educators (creating quality videos taught by licensed teachers), availability of teaching materials (complete digital library)- all into one integrated simple solution.

We understand that teachers are key to success in education. Kipin actively engages with over 1000 Kipin teacher ambassadors covering 100% of provinces nationwide to understand core needs in creating and deploying an edtech solution that works in the market. We are also always engaging with a community of over 240,000 teachers through our educational webinars.

One core goal of the Challenge is to increase equitable access to quality learning opportunities especially for underserved learners in low connectivity environments -- and Kipin does just that.

Through our Kipin devices, we are able to provide access to a full digital library for schools that would otherwise be unable to afford them or lack connectivity to download these online. 

One key feature we have developed is the 'download-and-go' feature, which allows students and teachers to download the content by standing within 15m of our device -- no SIM card or internet needed. They can then 'go' and access all this content at home, again without any SIM card or internet needed. This enables the device to be a pure learning device, reducing risk factors such as exposure to unwanted online content or high expenditure on mobile data.

Importantly - Kipin also delivers through an all-you-can-eat model, which means that once installed, Kipin's devices can serve an unlimited number of users at no extra charge. In one of our case study schools, a security guard who worked at the school asked for permission to download curriculum videos and books for his son from the school's device and the school happily agreed. By doing this, Kipin uses technology to enable a larger community impact as well, especially in low connectivity areas where this is not usually possible.

Steffina Yuli, VP Business Development

Kipin uses a combination of content, software and hardware that meets the Indonesian teachers and students where they are at. 

Our content is curriculum focused instead of supplementary, as we recognize that non-urban teachers' main challenge is a lack of access to quality content that they can use on a daily basis. We use licensed teachers to teach  curriculum content and organize it topically in a way that is familiar to teachers and students. We use a simple Read-Watch-Assess framework by offering 60k+ curriculum books, videos, quizzes and 400+ literacy comics that address civic and moral education topics.

Our software app meets core needs: to teach and to assess. Our interface is  simple to use and features download-and-go, allowing users to download from our device and then access the content fully offline. Our upload-and-share feature also enables custom content upload especially for Madrasah schools with a strong religious focus.

Our hardware unlocks learning for students and teachers today, without waiting for internet. By standing within 15m of our device, users can access digital content or administer paperless quizzes with any affordable device. This unlocks a new era of digital learning unlike current solutions that exist in the market.

As Kipin helps with providing access, our long term goal is unlocking learning diversity by ensuring relevant content and features for schools. Kipin can catalyze content and LMS players to build on top of our platform through partnerships and open APIs, increasing educational content and analytics available in the education space.

Yes - we have done years of market validation with teachers and schools. Qualitatively, our solution has undergone many iterations since 2016 as we conducted hundreds teacher interviews, school visits, and product testing in the schools. Quantitatively as we have now scaled, Kipin devices are currently enabling hybrid learning in over 200 Indonesian schools nationwide (https://kipin.id/web/lokasi-ki...) with strongly positive reviews and thousands of teacher and student testimonies. We have also seen strong repurchase behavior from our customers due to postive feedback from schools and achieved a high Social ROI score from independant consultants. Kipin has over 400k app downloads (not including app downloads that are done offline through our devices), a 4.7 star rating with over 12k reviews in the PlayStore and are the second-highest subscribed edtech Youtube channel nationwide with 300k+ subscribers, mostly teachers. Our solution has also been chosen by Amazon EdStart as well as Intel.

Our technology combines 3 parts. The first is a focus on core curriculum, digitizing K12 content based on government curriculums to digital format and making it engaging, allowing users to download-and-go over 60k curriculum resources. The second one is software app, following a simple daily learning framework that makes content easy to access, learn and teach from, including digital library and paperless testing features. The third one is our ability to bridge to offline users today through our hardware device, Kipin Classroom, a smart IoT device functioning as a server that generates local wifi access callled EduSpot, allowing users to access the content above by just standing within 15 meters of our device. All three components work together to transform the classroom to a digital one in just 3 minutes, providing access to quality educational content even in areas without internet. All students need is an affordable device to simply tap into our device's wifi - they can even download our app without internet as well.

There are many 'broken links' in enabling equal access to quality education in Indonesia today. With our technology, Kipin helps connects the broken links of internet infrastructure (providing wifi access without internet), limited capacity of educators (by making accessible teaching videos of licensed and qualified teachers) and availability of teaching materials (via a complete digital library)- all into one integrated easy to use solution.

At its core, the key impact Kipin wants to achieve is for all schools across Indonesia to have access to quality educational content, regardless of their location, internet access, or financial resources.

We have 3 key pathways that describe how our some of our key actions lead to target outputs, outcomes and overall impact.

Content Affordability: World Bank states that "textbook provision is among the most cost effective means of improving test scores" but in Indonesia, curriculum content is difficult to access digitally. By creating our educational content (textbooks, videos, quizzes, comics), we increase coverage of curriculum content available digitally, which is more cost effective than printed materials. As this can be made freely available, students and teachers can access a larger number of daily learning resources and increase time spent on learning, eventually attaining basic literacy and improving learning outcomes in more schools.

Distribution & Connectivity: Even as content becomes freely available, access to reliable internet remains a major concern for students and teachers. As we distribute more Kipin devices as access points, we increase the geographical and school coverage which can now access educational content without internet, fixing that 'broken link'. In the short term, we will see more higher engagement with content and an increase in behavior of smartphones doubling as learning devices. In the long term, this will help reduce the difference in new content accessible in urban vs rural areas as content is easier to distribute digitally, hence increasing access to quality education nationwide.

Teacher Capability: Studies have shown that teachers are fundamental to improving learning outcomes, but in Indonesia teachers do not have the digital skills required for online education and have received limited training. Through conducting train-the-trainer webinars and building Kipin teacher ambassador communities, we believe we can help increase teachers familiarity with digital. This increases their ability to teach students and measure their understanding using digital means, as well as upskill themselves using digital content. As they do this, the quality of their teaching improves. In the long term, this will contribute to access to quality education by improving teacher skills.

Our metrics come on many levels, but we have a few key indicators that are always key to our decision making and strategy. Here are some examples.

Access: Kipin devices to as many points as possible to allow offline digital interaction and access

• # of Kipin devices deployed
• % renewal of Kipin devices
• # of teachers reached 
• % schools and districts reached

Distribution: Engage teachers to become raving fans, working with them to increase digital access to education

• # of active Kipin teacher ambassadors
• % teacher ambassador district coverage
• # of teacher engagement activities (eg webinars) conducted

Core Content: Create complete and easy-to-navigate K-12 curriculum content for students / teachers by QC-ing, curating, digitizing and creating

• % coverage of K-12 curriculum content
• # downloads on core content
• time spent per core content (engagement)
• grade improvement (long term impact metric)

Content Expansion: Work with partners to create engaging extracurricular educational content (eg Disney, National Geographic, brands)

• # of extra-curricular educational content onboarded
• # of downloads of extracurricular content
• time spent per content (engagement)

Develop: Developing core features to help schools go digital

• NPS score on specific features
• time spent on specific features
• Ease of onboarding partners (long term)

In the next year, our key focus will be on Access & Distribution. 

• Access: Currently our Kipin devices are available in 200 schools with 400k+ app downloads. We aim to reach over 4000 schools within the next year. This will impact an estimated 60,000 teachers and over 1,000,000 students nationwide.
• Distribution: We have 1250+ teacher ambassadors which cover 100% of provinces and 82% of districts nationwide. In the next year we hope to grow this number to 2500 ambassadors with 100% district coverage, especially in white space areas.

In the next three years, continuing to rollout Access and Develop.

• Access: We are targeting for 20,000 schools in the next 3 years (~10% of estimated 220k K-12 schools) 
• Develop: Create more robust analytics for features, utilizing big-data to gather more learning insights. 

In the next five years, focusing on Develop and Content Expansion.

• Develop: Creating APIs and technologies to onboard content and LMS partners, in order to unlock learning diversity for students and provide robust/meaningful learning data to governments on regional level
• Content expansion: Onboarding partners to keep content relevant and engaging for teachers and students, while offering platform for partners to tap into education for rural users

Access to government. We are working closely with Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Religion on various projects, but we always need help to help make our solution known and accessible to more areas nationwide.

Financing: Indonesia has over 220,000 schools, of which we estimate about 137,000 need help with connectivity. As demand grows quickly from schools and governments, and our solution involves hardware purchase, we will need capital to meet this growing demand for our devices and scale our team. While our team is lean and effective, as we scale we will need to hire more specialized roles that become more important as we scale. We are raising funds through various sources including investors from impact funds as well as relevant grants in order to meet this. Given our projections and margins, this will help us bridge to our next milestone of reaching 3000 schools within the next year.

Access to talent: We recognize our need to gain more mentorship and expertise as we scale, especially in more specific roles such as educational content development, impact monitoring and evaluation (MONEV), education technology/gamification, as well as those who can advise us on scaling into a regional level in the future. 

Others (Government access): We are currently closely connected with district governments nationwide, but always welcome the help of our partners to open up new relationships so that Kipin's solution can have an impact on even more schools especially in our white space areas. 

Our co-founder & CEO, Santoso, grew up in a poor area called Palmerah in Jakarta and attended a small public school. His father, a farmer, onced asked him a question that changed the direction of his life forever: “Son, which is more important to you, education or food?” Given the difficult situation at the time, Santoso answered “food” right away. His father said, “That was the wrong answer son, that’s the reason why most people stay poor. I will spend as much money as I have to provide you with a good education, as it is the only living hope to break the generation of poverty in our family.”
 
His father was right, the early childhood investment in good education had compound benefits for Santoso as he grew up. He eventually became the successful owner of Apple and Kodak distributors in Indonesia employing over 600 staff with 1000 authorized retailers nationwide.
 
Education changed him, and it can change everyone. And that change begins with access. To give back to society and pay it forward, in 2015 Santoso dedicated to bringing his enterprise skill to impact in education started the idea of Kipin (kios pintar = smart kiosk). His sole mission was to build the best and the most customer focused edtech solution for Indonesia. The vision for Kipin is to reach and touch the hearts of tens of millions of students with KIPIN, to bring a living hope and future out of poverty for the next generation.

Our full time staff is about 40 people, of which only 15% are in sales and marketing. The rest are engineers, content developers and designers. We have also worked with over 200 teachers, experts and artists over the years to create our content: over 60k+ videos, books, quizzes and comics.

The founders have worked in the education and technology space for over 8 years now, bridging their enterprise skills with the needs of schools and teachers in the Indonesian market. They also bring in over 20 years of previous experience from Apple and Kodak in enterprise technology, distribution and managing large operations in Indonesia effectively, with distinct local knowledge. The technical team has been together from the beginning and are trained in full stack development and data infrastructure, as well as content development together with teachers and experts. What unites everyone is a deep passion to help solve educational access and equality for Indonesia, and we are highly motivated towards serving the underprivileged. 

Our team lead has worked closely with the co-founders to help conceptualize and implement the idea of Kipin, a new idea in the edtech space. How do you deliver a new idea that has not been done before? Our key principle is this: we listen to what the users are saying without forcing our thoughts, we make a simple prototype, prove it in real life and continue improving it endlessly.

Case in point, our first to third generation of Kipin Classroom used a standard off-the-shelf PC and Windows 10 operating system, with server, software and contents. But we received feedback that installation was complex and separate parts got lost or stolen -- so we improved it.

Our fourth generation upgraded to Intel NUC PC with Android operating systems, improved hardware and a native mobile app. But we continued to ask what else could be improved. Can we serve more students through one device? Can we make it cheaper, faster, more efficient? 

For our most recent generation, we upgraded and customized all the hardware so that more users could access it, more content could be hosted, added a crucial assessment feature --and were able to deliver it at a cheaper price. 

We partner with numerous organizations, several are listed below:

• Ministry of Education: 
  • Official partner on MoE's website
  • Collaborate on educational webinars, including inviting key speakers  & creating e-certification program for thousands of teachers nationwide
  • Creating content for MoE's national TV education segment for preschoolers
• Tanoto Foundation - leading foundation with focus on education:
  • Creating MONEV study in key schools to more deeply understand of Kipin on teachers and schools

• Amazon EdStart: 
  • Helps Kipin build out our online learning, analytics and best in class data cloud-management system. Our goal is to one day harvest the big data we are collecting towards meaningful insights and AWS provides technical training and support as well as access to EdTech experts to help us with this
• Intel Partner Alliance:
  
  • Best-in-class guidance on hardware and technology for our Kipin devices, including technical support on design, development and sourcing

One of the biggest feedbacks we receive when speaking with governments, foundations and schools is that "this Kipin solution is great - I'm surprised I didn't know about it before!" 

Kipin's values align well with Octava and MIT Solve. We put the schools we serve first and are encouraged by the positive feedback we have received on our products. As a startup, we have relied mostly on building grassroots, organic, raving fans with the teacher community -- but we will need lots of help from strategic partners to help solve the huge educational access problem for Indonesia's 54 million+ learners.

In particular, several areas we believe we will be growing even more in the next few years are expanding our distribution of devices into more government schools, building more robust monitoring and evaluation, adding new revenue streams (eg content) to build onto our platform and using AI to find meaningful learning insights from the data we are collecting.

We believe the partnership with Octava and MIT Solve will mobilize global support and connect us with experts in these key areas. This will be key in helping us scale our impact in a sustainable and meaningful way, reaching our goal of providing access to quality education for all Indonesian children.

Financial: Pitching to investors for a solution that not only targets the bottom-of-the-pyramid, but is also new technological innovation is always challenging. We always welcome any support, introductions or mentorship on how to find the right partners and also speak their language, in order to help us as we grow and scale.

Network + Product/Service Distribution: We are a B2B solution that serves schools, of which many are funded by governments, foundations or large corporate CSRs. As we have a strong internal capacity for technology development, we rely on partners for our distribution network, without which it would be impossible for us to achieve our impact goals.

Public Relations: We learned that raving fans are our best growth strategy!  We need help in lifting Kipin's brand name so that it is well-known and well-loved by teachers and students nationwide.

Monitoring + Evaluation: We are deeply customer-centric, and it matters to us that our solution make an impact for underserved teachers and students. Identifying the right metrics, impact framework and measurement methods as our business transforms will not only help us ensure we are crystal clear about our direction, but also help sway decision makers who want to create educational impact.