Kibo - Inclusive Education for Blind

6.7 Million visually-impaired individuals worldwide (aged 5-18 years), lack equal education as they cannot access printed, handwritten and digital content on their own.

ACCESS:

While they are heavily reliant on Braille and Audiobooks, both Braille literacy and Braille content availability is less than 1% and it takes 4-6 weeks to audio-record a 300-page book. Late Blind students often don’t learn Braille. Regional language content is again inaccessible.

EXPERIENCE:

Imagine how you read a book - open its index, choose a chapter, start reading, move back and forth across pages. If you don’t know the meaning of a word, you look for it on Google, YouTube. While preparing for exams, you underline things, make notes, even borrow handwritten notes from your friends.

But, for visually-impaired students - They get a book, wait for weeks to get it audio-recorded or converted to Braille; read or listen to the same braille/audiobook multiple times before their exams - No notes, No content-interactive-ness, No peer-learning.

The need was to build a solution that gives them the freedom to choose what they want to read and learn (academic books, reference books, even novels, story books, comics - anything) and not be dependent on what the world wants to make accessible for them through Braille or Audiobooks.

Our solution suite, Kibo, enables the blind and visually-impaired students to listen, translate, digitize and audiotize any kind of printed, handwritten or digital content, in the language of their choice, anytime, anywhere - be it on phone or computer, at home or school or college.

Kibo comprises 3 products:

1. Kibo mobile app ( | https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.trestle.labs.kibo):

For on-the-go audio-based access to any printed, handwritten and digital content across 60 languages with support for 12 File-formats (Images, Documents, Audio) while offering access to a repository of 1 million+ accessible ebooks to download and listen, with immersive reading features - like audio-notes, content-summarization etc.; empowering visually-impaired users to access any day-to-day content like anyone else.

2. Kibo XS Device (https://youtu.be/UaEYFfok6Lk):

A talking table-lamp like device to scan and Listen to hard copy printed and handwritten documents (across 60 languages), Translate (across 100+ languages), Digitize (into doc, docx, txt), Save them to Kibo cloud (for multi-device access), as well as Download the file in MP3 Audio (Audiotize).

3. Kibo Desk web software ( | https://kibodesk.trestlelabs.com/

):

What Kibo XS Device does for hard copy printed and handwritten documents, Kibo Desk does for softcopy digital documents - images and scanned image-based PDFs - Listen, Translate, Digitize, Save and Audiotize (Download in Audio). 

Our solution serves to ensure that no school denies or discontinues education for a blind or visually-impaired student - especially when the student was capable, but the school was not.

With our dumbbell approach towards achieving inclusive education, on one side, we make educational institutions inclusive and on the other side, we empower the blind and visually-impaired students to independently access any content anytime anywhere, thereby, being better prepared for mainstream education, skilling and employment.

Communities that we serve and their current challenges:

1. Visually-impaired students: lack of access to equal education resulting from inability to access printed, handwritten and digital content independently

2. Blind Schools / Special Schools / NGOs: Technology, Resources and volunteer-availability related delays in providing E-books / Braille books / Audiobooks for their students as well as lack of Teaching Learning tools and methods to train prepare their students for mainstream education

3. Mainstream Schools and Colleges: Inability to provide inclusive education resulting from lack of accessible content (Braille / Ebooks / Audiobooks) and unavailability of Assistive Technology tools required to provide real-time access to inaccessible (printed / handwritten) academic and reference content.

Our Value-proposition and Impact:

1. For Visually-impaired students

a) Access digital documents/notes from school/college

b) Access printed/handwritten academic-content

c) Better prepared for mainstream education

2. For Special Schools / Blind Schools / NGOs

a) Assistance in Braille / E-book / Audiobook production

b) Train students on accessing printed, handwritten, digital content

c) Digitize and Translate documents for academic use

3. For Mainstream Schools and Colleges

a) Accessible libraries (Government mandate)

b) Inclusive Education for visually-impaired students

c) Recognition for promoting and supporting inclusive education

d) Audio-based learning for sighted students too!

Link to testimonials: https://youtu.be/KaLuy9Ppez4 (1 minute)

We are a 10-member team passionate to empower the blind and visually-impaired community. Hailing and pursuing our education from two different cities, my Co-founder, Bonny and I, got exposed to the challenges faced by visually-impaired students, during our college days, which made us start full-time in this domain, right out-of-college. 

During the penultimate-year of my engineering in Computer Science, I worked on a college project, a reading and mobility glove for the blind. While testing it at a Blind school nearby, a little kid, after using the device, was excited enough to call his Dad and say he could now read and travel on his own. He then turned back asking when he could get it. While I didn’t have any answer to his question back then, his question acted as a pivotal point in my life motivating me to turn-down the job offers I had to apply to Digital Impact Square (DISQ) - a Tata Consultancy Services Foundation social entrepreneurship centre to gather team, mentorship and resources for my path ahead.

I met my Co-founder, Bonny Dave, at DISQ, who was equally motivated to work in the Assistive Technology domain. While volunteering at Blind People’s Association (BPA), during the second-year of his Mechanical-Engineering, Bonny was intrigued by the size and cost of creating Braille-books and taught himself to code just enough to build a Refreshable Braille display. That moment of witnessing the use of technology as an enabler to empower lives while playing ‘Guess the Braille character’ game with students, changed his life completely.

Our serendipitous encounter dovetailed with our shared vision to make Education inclusive for the visually-impaired community, to lay the foundation for Trestle Labs in Nov 2017.

During Jan-Apr 2017, while at DISQ, we interacted with 150+ users across 5 cities, to understand first-hand challenges before building our solutions. This journey introduced us to the challenge of content inaccessibility resulting in bigger challenges in education and employment for the blind. So, we quickly prototyped ideas during the initial phases of product development and got validated from the students at National Federation of the Blind and National Association for the Blind. Now that we have 65,000+ beneficiaries using our products, we have more people who provide us feedback as we continue to develop and release new updates for our products. User-centric design and constant feedback mechanism helps us ensure that we always provide relevant solutions to our users.

Moreover, two of our team members are also blind. One of them leads Accessibility and Customer Success and the other one manages marketing efforts. All our product upgrades and new products pass through their approvals first. On top of it, they also bring us community perspectives and feedback which helps us enhance our offerings.

This year we plan to empower 100,000 visually-impaired students with inclusive education by enhancing their academic performance through real-time access to educational content. We believe MIT Solve will help us achieve this goal faster. To achieve this goal, we seek guidance, connections and resources across:

1. Team growth for scale-up: We acknowledge that we will need to grow our technology team for product enhancements and our sales, marketing and business development team to reach more customers and beneficiaries. We seek guidance in team-building and team-growth practices around hiring (what roles, what experience level), onboarding, employee happiness and retention.

2. Product Positioning, Marketing and Branding: As we expand to newer geographies, we seek mentorship in understanding the market and positioning our products in the most customer-centric way as tools for inclusion and accessibility; and enhancing the efficiency and effectiveness of our marketing and branding campaigns.

3. Sales Strategy and Strategic Partnerships: We seek support in understanding the key strategic partnerships that we should have to help us reach our customer segments faster in a more top-down way and in refining our sales strategy towards higher efficiency.

4. International Expansion: As we expand to newer geographies through partnerships, we seek help in planning our product, pricing and business strategy for these new markets. We also seek connections that can help us scale our impact exponentially to a larger customer/user base.

Further, the financial support provided by Solve will help us:

1. Grow our Technology team for product enhancements (Technology)

2. Grow our Sales, Marketing and Business Development team (Team)

3. Build Strategic Partnerships to expand to newer geographies (Expansion)

Innovativeness of our solution-

1. Inclusive approach: While all existing solutions primarily focus on Braille (which is exclusive as only blind people understand it, not sighted individuals) as a medium for education for the blind, Kibo uses audio as a medium which is inclusive in nature for both blind as well as sighted students. 

2. Supported Languages: While all existing solutions available globally only focus on English and other Latin-based languages, Kibo supports 60 Global languages including 13 Indian languages

2. Handwritten Content Support: While all existing Global AT products only offer printed content support, Kibo supports handwritten content as well

3. Offline as well as Online mode: While most solutions, either offer offline or online mode, Kibo offers both

4. File-format Support: While all OCR/Reading apps only support 2-3 file formats, Kibo app supports 12 file formats (ePub, Daisy, Txt, Docx, PDF, MP3, OGG, OPUS, WAV, JPG, PNG, JPEG)

5. Web and Mobile compatibility: Our solutions are available across mobile and web, thereby offering wider reach and multi-device access with Kibo-cloud

6. Content-repository: 1 million+ accessible books in collaboration with online digital libraries

7. Immersive reading and learning: with spelling-mode, bookmarks, audio-notes, content-summarization etc.

8. Availability: Digital nature of our products makes them accessible from any location across the globe

Innovation areas: 

a. Cost: Before Kibo came, OCR-based assistive technology devices were imported from the US. Not only were the tools extremely expensive (~$2,000-$2,700), they only catered to English and other Latin-based languages. Kibo, not only offered support for Indian languages, but offered it at 20-25% price as compared to all global competitors, making it affordable and accessible, not just for institutions, but also for visually-impaired individuals.

b. Time: Before Kibo came in, it would take 4-6 weeks for volunteers to record a 300-page book. With Kibo, it just takes 2 seconds to make a page accessible and read out in audio. Not just that, it just takes half-an-hour to create an MP3 audiobook version of a 300-page printed-book. Saving millions of precious hours which visually-impaired students can utilize for their studies, visually-impaired working professionals can use to enhance their workplace productivity, NGOs can use to teach and train more students efficiently and Academic Institutions and Workplaces can use towards building the right ecosystem and getting the right resources for Inclusive Education and Employment.

c. User-Experience:

With Kibo, visually-impaired community not just gets access to content in minutes, they also receive support for both printed and handwritten content across 60+ languages and 12 file formats, both in offline and online mode, across mobile and web, removing the barriers of accessibility, languages, internet as well as platform (mobile/laptop). On top of it, Kibo offers them a content-repository of 1 million+ accessible books in collaboration with online digital libraries to search, download and listen to. Our digital products can be accessed from anywhere across the globe and provide an immersive reading and learning experience at par with sighted individuals to our growing visually-impaired user-community.

Impact goals for the next year:

1. Empower 100,000 visually-impaired individuals directly

2. Scale our impact across 4 countries

3. Make 500+ institutions inclusive

4. Make 50 million+ pages worth of inaccessible content accessible

5. Achieve 60 million+ minutes of engagement on Kibo platform 

6. Add 5 new team members (including 2 Visually-impaired employees)

Impact goals for next five years:

1. Empower 1,000,000 visually-impaired individuals directly (impact-stories behind this number is what really counts!)

2. Scale our impact across 50 countries

3. Make 5000+ institutions inclusive

4. Make 500 million+ pages worth of inaccessible content accessible

5. Achieve 1000 million+ minutes of engagement on Kibo platform 

Impact Framework:

Over the next year, we plan to grow our Technology team for Product Enhancements and grow our Business Development Team to scale our impact through direct Outreach and Partnerships. Direct Outreach to Schools, Colleges, NGOs and Workplaces will help build inclusive institutions while preparing the Visually-impaired for mainstream Education, Skilling and Employment. Partnering with Distributors will help scale our impact footprint across geographies, while ensuring grassroot impact through Govt. and Philanthropic partnerships.

Timeline:

0-6 months:

1. Team: Add 3 new team members - Marketing, Digital Marketing, iOS Development

2. Technology: Launch iOS Version of Kibo mobile app, Add 'convert and download as Audio/MP3' feature in Kibo Desk and Kibo XS Device

3. Go-to-market: State-wise outreach campaigns for NGOs, colleges and schools across 3 states in India for deployment of Kibo under NAAC and UGC guidelines for accessible libraries, while launching Kibo iOS App, which will help us reach an additional 20 million visually impaired iOS users

7-12 months:

1. Team: Add 3 new team members - Marketing, Sales, Operations 

2. Technology: Support for Double-column content and Tabular data, Add support for txt and audio in iOS app

3. Go-to-market: Partner with National-level bodies like UGC, NAAC, NIEPVD, Bookshare, Daisy Forum of India for nation-wide outreach campaigns

13-19 months:

1. Team: Add 2 new team members - Full Stack Development, Customer Success

2. Technology: Add save, share and download in multiple format option in iOS app

3. Go-to-market: Partner with local distributors to scale Kibo in India 

19-24 months:

1. Team: Add 3 new team members - Copywriting, Content-moderation, Audio-master

2. Technology: Launch Audio-based content sharing platform for collaborative learning

3. Go-to-market: Partner with global assistive technology distributors to scale Kibo globally 

Micro-level Impact Indicators:

Quantitative indicators:

1. Number of Visually-impaired individuals empowered to access content independently

2. Number of institutions (Academic, NGOs, Offices) made inclusive

3. Number of Daily/Weekly/Monthly Active Users

4. Number of geographies covered 

Qualitative indicators:

We enable ecosystems to achieve holistic outcomes of enhanced educational and employment opportunities for persons with visual-impairment(VI).

1. Learning: Our efforts start from Educational institutions (NGOs as well as inclusive organizations) where our products enable independent content access to students as well as visually-impaired teachers and trainers to enhance their teaching outcomes. Eg. Mr.Joseph (VI-teacher) is able to teach his students independently from reference books

2. Earning: We work with Employers who make our products available to their visually-impaired employees which in turn enhances their workplace productivity. Eg. Mr.Jitendra (VI-employee) got promoted from a tele-calling job to digitizing documents for his department at Indian Railways

3. Lifestyle: Our products are enabling 50,000+ users access day-to-day content independently and make informed decisions. Eg. Ms.Pinky (VI-professor) is able to assess handwritten answer-sheets of her students with Kibo

Macro-level Impact Indicators:

Our commitment towards the three UN Sustainable Development Goals:

SDG 4: Quality Education

SDG 8: Decent Work and Economic Growth

SDG 10: Reduced Inequalities

M&E Framework: Theory of Change / Logical Framework

M&E Data Sources/Processes and frequency:

1. Signed Employment Agreements (one-time)

2. Link to iOS application (one-time)

3. Market research report on potential partners in respective target geographies (one-time)

4. Distribution/Dealership Agreements with Partners (one-time)

5. User-analytics report (quarterly)

6. Video testimonials by beneficiaries (one-time)

7. Impact report (one-time)

8. Surveys - Field Visits, Call-based surveys, Digital-form based surveys (quarterly)

9. Records of Customer Feedback and Support (daily)

M&E Data Quality Assurance Mechanisms:

1. Signatures validating the authenticity of Data Source

2. Public/Live links to Software 

3. Raw/unaltered user responses from digital surveys

4. Real-time cloud analytics 

5. Customer feedback and support data monitoring

M&E Analysis:

1. Engagement-time: Total time spent on the platform

2. Usage-patterns: Features most used by users

3. Demographics: Languages most read by users

M&E Results Framework:

1. Lives impacted

2. Team-members added 

3. Partners onboarded

4. Content made accessible

5. Geographical presence

M&E Activities undertaken:

1. Baseline Creation: at the start of project

2. Data Collection: both Quantitative and Qualitative metrics through data sources      

3. Quality Assurance/Due-diligence

4. Analysis: The impact statement, outcomes, outputs and inputs are evaluated based on indicators and baseline.

5. Endline Creation: at the end of project

6. Results and Course-correction: as per results generated

7. M&E Report Generation 

Solution Stack (mobile app, hardware imaging device, web app):

1. Kibo mobile app (

For on-the-go audio-based access to any printed, handwritten and digital content across 60 languages with support for 12 File-formats (Images, Documents, Audio) while offering access to a repository of 1 million+ accessible ebooks to download and listen, with immersive reading features - like audio-notes, content-summarization etc.; empowering visually-impaired users to access any day-to-day content like anyone else.

2. Kibo XS Device (

A talking table-lamp like device to scan and Listen to hard copy printed and handwritten documents (across 60 languages), Translate (across 100+ languages), Digitize (into doc, docx, txt), Save them to Kibo cloud (for multi-device access), as well as Download the file in MP3 Audio (Audiotize).

3. Kibo Desk web software (

What Kibo XS Device does for hard copy printed and handwritten documents, Kibo Desk does for softcopy digital documents - images and scanned image-based PDFs - Listen, Translate, Digitize, Save and Audiotize (Download in Audio). 

Technologies used: Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Image Processing, Computer Vision, Natural Language Processing, Regex, Graph Technology

High-level tech-stack overview:

1. Image Processing: For Skew Correction and Noise Reduction

2. Computer Vision: For Page Layout Analysis, Language Detection, Orientation Detection and Correction and Text Extraction via Optical Character Recognition

3. Natural Language Processing: For Text Translation, Text-to-speech conversation and Audiobook creation via direct Text-to-MP3 conversion

4. Regex: For Text-segmentation and Audio-highlighting

5. Graph Technology: Pagerank Algorithm for content-summarization and Rake Extractor for Multimedia Overlays

Patent:

Application number: 201921006144

Title: ''SYSTEM AND METHOD TO GENERATE SPEECH BASED ON TEXT FORMING PART OF A RECEIVED IMAGE''

Status: Published, Approval Pending

Technology Architecture:

In order to build a solution that offers real-time audio-based access to printed, handwritten and digital content across multiple languages, we realized that the underlying technology for our solution will be Optical Character Recognition (OCR) and Text-to-Speech. As we dug deeper, we realized that the existing OCR solutions, primarily cater to English and Latin-based printed content with ~70% accuracy levels that didn’t suit our Education and Employment use-case. So, to offer support for both printed and handwritten content in Indian languages to start with, instead of reinventing the wheel and achieving sub-optimal accuracy levels, we built our proprietary algorithms on top of existing technologies, to achieve 95%+ accuracy in OCR for both printed and handwritten content across 60+ Global languages. As we expanded our product offering to address the challenge of language-barriers, we added Translation and Text-to-speech and Text-to-MP3 modules as well.

Platforms: Android (Java), Swift, ReactJS, Redux, Firebase, Cloud functions

At Trestle Labs, all our work and initiatives both within our organization and in the society highly value and incorporate diversity, equity and inclusion. Our team composition: Female:Male = 4:6 & Blind:Sighted = 2:8 - duly reflects our commitment towards that.

Visually-impaired team-members:

1. Ranganath B | Customer Success and Accessibility Lead | 2.5+ years in Customer Engagement, Technical Training and Support | MBA Finance | Full-time

2. Nithyananda | Marketing Intern | Experience in running YouTube channel | BSW (Bachelor of Social Work) | Full-time

I can recollect the day when Ranganath said - “If I get a full-time role, my mother will not have to work in the factory.”

Women team-members:

1. Akshita Sachdeva | Co-founder |  6+ years experience in Assistive Technology | B.Tech Computer Science and Engineering | Full-time

2. Shivani Trivedi | Business Development | 2+ years in Business Development, Sales and Marketing | B.Tech Civil Engineering | Full-time

3. Ishika Poddar | Digital Marketing | Built community of 6,500+ women influencers | B.Com | Full-time

4. Vidhi Joshi | Sales and Operations | 6 months experience in Administration and Career Counseling | B.Tech IT | Full-time

Impact in their lives:

1. Financial Independence: empowers them to become self-reliant and support their family

2. Social Upliftment: by improving their confidence, living-standard and social status

3. Leading-by-example: for their peers of the various roles they perform in a professional setup

Beneficiary and Customer Segments:

1. For Kibo App (Lifestyle): B2C (95%), B2B (5%)

a) Visually-impaired students & working professionals aged 15-50

b) Blind schools/NGOs

2. For Kibo XS device (Learning): B2B (75%) & B2C (25%) | For Kibo Desk (Earning): B2B (50%) & B2C (50%)

a) Academic Institutions: Schools, Colleges, Universities

b) Special Schools / Blind Schools / NGOs: For Education. Skill training & Rehabilitation

c) Visually-impaired students & working professionals aged 15-50

Type of Intervention:

1. Mobile app (Kibo mobile app)

2. Hardware product / Imaging Device (Kibo XS Device)

3. Web app (Kibo Desk - SaaS)

Value Proposition:

1. For Visually-impaired students

a) Access digital documents/notes from school/college

b) Access printed/handwritten academic-content

c) Better prepared for mainstream education

2. For Special Schools / Blind Schools / NGOs

a) Assistance in Braille / E-book / Audiobook production

b) Train students on accessing printed, handwritten, digital content

c) Digitize and Translate documents for academic use

3. For Mainstream Schools and Colleges

a) Accessible libraries (Government mandate)

b) Inclusive Education for visually-impaired students

c) Recognition for promoting and supporting inclusive education

d) Audio-based learning for sighted students too!

Channels:

1. Distribution partners

2. Direct sales: Online and Offline

3. Radio, Social Media

4. Online training sessions and webinars

Key Activities:

1. Training & Outreach

2. Sales and Marketing

3. Technology and Product development

4. Operations and Customer support

5. Impact Measurement

Partners / Key Stakeholders:

1. Distribution partners

2. E-content partners

3. Incubation/Acceleration partners

4. Funding Partners

Key Resources:

1. Human capital

2. Intellectual Property

3. Co-working space

4. E-content repository

5. User engagement data

Revenue Sources:

1. Kibo Mobile-app: Monthly and Yearly Subscription 

2. Kibo XS device:

Pricing model - I: One-time direct sales + additional yearly recurring

Kibo XS Device with One-year Software Subscription + Yearly Recurring Subscription

Pricing model - II: One-time direct sales

Kibo XS Device with Perpetual Software License

3. Kibo Desk Web-SaaS: Monthly and Yearly Subscription

a) Small Box (Listen + Digitize) - Monthly and Yearly subscription

b) Large Box (Listen + Digitize + Translate + Cloud Storage + Audio download): Monthly and Yearly subscription

Cost Structure:

1. Salaries

2. Inventory

3. IT Services

4. Rent

5. Marketing

Surplus:

1. Technology Enhancement

2. Team-building

3. Training and Outreach

4. Partnerships

5. Subsidies

We have bootstrapped Trestle Labs since 2017 through sales revenues along with the support of Awards & Grants from Govt. & Philanthropic organizations for Prototype Development, Team-building, Design for Manufacturing, Product Subsidies and Geographical Expansion.

Our revenues are split into Sales Revenues (60%) and Awards & Grants (40%).

While our revenues help us sustain our current operations, grant funding will help us grow our team, build partnerships and scale our impact to newer geographies, which in turn, will help us generate the revenues to grow further. The goal is to reduce our dependence on grants and make our impact self-sustainable through sales revenues.

Revenue streams, Pricing and Margins:

1. Kibo Mobile-app:

a) Monthly Subscription- Price: $1.20 | Cost: $0.33 | Gross Margin: 73>#/p###

b) Yearly Subscription- Price: $12.90 | Cost: $3.55 | Gross Margin: 72>#/p###

2. Kibo XS device: 

a) Pricing model - I: One-time direct sales + additional yearly recurring

One-time sale with One-year Subscription - Price: $350 | Cost: $85 | Gross Margin: 76>#/p###

Yearly Recurring Subscription - Price: $30 | Cost: $7 | Gross Margin: 77>#/p###

b) Pricing model - II: One-time direct sales

One-time sale with Perpetual Software License - Price: $620 | Cost: $150 | Gross Margin: 76>#/p###

3. Kibo Desk:

a) Monthly Small Box (Listen + Digitize)- Price: $1.70 | Cost: $0.59 | Gross Margin: 65>#/p###

b) Monthly Large Box (Listen + Digitize + Translate + Cloud Storage)- Price: $3.90 | Cost: $1.97 | Gross Margin: 50>#/p###

c) Yearly Small Box (Listen + Digitize)- Price: $20.40 | Cost: $7.10 | Gross Margin: 65>#/p###

d) Yearly Large Box (Listen + Digitize + Translate + Cloud Storage)- Price: $47.30 | Cost: $23.65 | Gross Margin: 50>#/p###

Our work has been supported by Govt. and Private Grants. In total, we have raised $210,000 in Grants across Prototype Development, Team-building, Design for Manufacturing, Product Subsidies and Geographical Expansion.

Grants:

1. DBS Foundation Social Enterprise Grant | $110,457 | Jan 2022 | Growth capital for Asia expansion - Received first tranche ($22,000) in Feb 2022

2. Prosus Social Impact Challenge for Accessibility | $32,655 | Nov 2021 | Growth capital for India expansion - Received entire amount in Jan 2022

3. Tata Social Enterprise Challenge | $3,266 | Jan 2020 | Award

4. Rashtriya Swayamsiddh Samman - JSPL Foundation | $1,306 | Dec 2019 | Award

5. Quest for Assistive Technologies - BIRAC, Mphasis, Social Alpha | $39,186 | Oct 2019 |  Product subsidies for low-income settings ($26,124) + Design for Manufacturing ($13,062) 

6. CIIE - IIM Ahmedabad | $2,612 | Aug 2019 | Award

7. WEE Foundation and SINE@IIT Bombay | $6,531 | Mar 2019 | Team-building

8. Nidhi Prayas Prototyping Grant - DST, GOI | $13,062 | Nov 2018 | Prototyping

9. Social Innovator Award - Pune International Centre | $653 | Nov 2018 | Award

We have been cash-flow positive since July 2019 through a combination of sales revenues and grants.

FY 19-20: $49,000 - 100% Revenues from Kibo XS Device

FY 20-21: $54,000 - 100% Revenues from Kibo XS Device

FY 21-22: $110,000 - 76% Revenues from Kibo XS Device + 17% Revenues from Kibo mobile app (launched in June 2021) + 7% Revenues from Kibo Desk Saas Portal (launched in Jan 2022)

We have seen a 104% Year-on-Year Growth from FY 20-21 to FY 21-22.

Sales Revenues and Current Traction:

1. Kibo mobile application:

- Launched in July 2019 (Free) | Subscriptions introduced in May 2021 (Freemium) 

- 50,000+ downloads across India (77%), Pakistan (5%), Indonesia (4%), US (2%), Bangladesh (1.5%), Nigeria (1.5%), Nepal (1%) and other 186 countries (8%)

- No. of Subscriptions purchased (since May 2021): 2,000+ [Yearly (35%) | Monthly (65%)]

- Visually-impaired individuals in the age-group 18-44 mostly pay for the app.

- Monthly subscription charges are $1.20 and Yearly Subscription charges are $12.90.

2. Kibo XS Device:

- Launched in July 2019.

- 350+ devices sold - B2B 75% (Colleges and NGOs) and B2C 25% (visually-impaired individuals) across 7 countries (primarily India; also across Kenya, Ghana, Singapore, Nepal, UK & US).

- Unit price of Kibo XS Device with annual software subscription is $350 (with an annual recurring subscription of $30). Unit Price of Kibo XS Device with Perpetual software license is $620.  

3. Kibo Desk SaaS:

- Launched in Jan 2022.

- 92 Sign-ups | 68 Paid subscribers in India in first 2-months of launch

- Visually-impaired individuals in the age-group 18-44 mostly buy Kibo Desk subscription boxes.

- For Small Box (Listen and Digitize), Monthly subscription charges are $1.70 and Yearly Subscription charges are $20.40.

- For Large Box (Listen, Digitize, Translate, Cloud-storage and Download in Audio), Monthly subscription charges are $3.90 and Yearly Subscription charges are $47.30.