Exambites

I am a Computer Engineer with two Master's Degree in Data Sciences from the University of California, San Diego and Information Technology University, Pakistan. have 5+ Years of working experience with leading educational chain of Pakistan. 2 year working experience with Microsoft, Pakistan. Won several national and international Awards for work my in field of education. 

We are solving the problem of access and quality of education using bite-sized animations in local languages and English. 

We are using, award-wining, machine learning algorithms to recommend specially curated animation content and improve learning.

Our solution has direct measurable impact on increasing school enrollment, improving grades and attendance, reducing dropout rate and teaching cost. 

Currently, Pakistan has the world's second-highest number of out-of-school children (OOSC), with an estimated 22.8 million children aged 5-16 not attending school, representing 44 % of the total population in this age group. Nearly 10.7 million boys and 8.6 million girls are enrolled at the primary level, and this drops to 3.6 million boys and 2.8 million girls at the lower secondary level. These numbers decrease further, especially for girls, as we move from secondary to higher level.This is because we lack infrastructure and access to quality education. Moreover, there are social and cultural barriers to the mobility of girls that further deprive them of access to educational opportunities.

In addition to the disparity in enrollment levels and drop-out rates, we also see significant gender-wise gaps in learning levels. According to the 2019 ASER Report, only 38% of all surveyed girls between the ages of 5 and 16 could read sentences in the local languages in comparison to 46% of surveyed boys in the same age bracket.  In addition to signifying an overall crisis of learning, these statistics indicate that girls are at a greater disadvantage in terms of learning than their male counterparts.

Our Project is proven, effective and has the potential to go global. 

Exambites offers two solutions, both of which can either be incorporated within classroom settings or be used by self-learners to advance their learning at home:

1. Offline Solution: For areas with no or limited network coverage (2G, 2G Edge), we provide our carefully designed, year-long curriculum in a secured USB dongle that provides access to quality learning resources. This curriculum can be incorporated within schools to support classroom learning or be used by independent learners to learn at their own pace from their own comfort zone.
   

   
   

   
   

   

2. Online Solution: Our Mobile app is embedded with bite-sized animated content with language options. Videos are accompanied by quizzes that reinforce student learning as well as help us monitor it. The app uses student assessments data to recommend personalized content suited to individual students’ learning needs. It learns from you to help you learn better! 
   
   

   

Starting from Pakistan, we piloted with content that served 9th-10th grade students and are working to expand to the rest of the K-12 grades.

We are focused on students from  the bottom of the Pyramid. With constant feedback and student assessment system, we get to know both:

1. The reception and popularity levels of different kinds of content, and
2. student performance and progress in different content areas

By offering culturally relevant content that incorporates the use of local languages, our solution ensures student engagement and interest in the learning process. They like coming to schools now.  For many girls, who are deprived of schooling and other formal learning opportunities, our mobile app and offline solution offers an excellent learning alternative. Not only that, our solution is qualitatively far better, in terms of both content and pedagogy, than what most schools have to offer. 

Our solution is tested and vetted by UKAID, and Government of Punjab, Pakistan, we have conducted model classes in some schools to test our solution. Following were some of the key results of these classes:

For this work, out startup was hailed as the best ed-tech startup of Pakistan for 2019. 

The typical schooling model has lower outreach and limited accessibility, especially for girls that cannot go to school after a certain age. These girls are traditionally left behind. 

With more education, girls and young women will earn more and will be able to support their families and become active members to build a sustainable society. 

We use award-winning algorithms in our app to identify the pain points of every student and help them overcome the shortcomings without depending much on the teacher.

7 Years ago, when i was preparing for my university entrance test, I couldn't afford going to a entry test preparation center because my parents couldn't afford it. 

I tried to prepare online but there wasn't much help available. I ended up at 4th university on my wish list and wasn't happy with my performance. There was no guidance available for me and i went into depression. 

Instead of getting that failure on my nerves, I decided to keep myself busy and work to solve this problem for the 70% population living under the poverty line. 

This is how Exambites started. After conducting research and talking to focus groups, i came to realize that girls suffer most from this and majority of students fail entrance test because they don't understand what is being taught at school and colleges. 

I started animating complex topics for students to help them in learning and now we are working to animate content k-12 grades and improve learning experience using A.I

The problem of access to quality education is near my heart because i have faced the problem myself and couldn't find any help at that time.

I am working to be someone who I needed when I was younger. Started from the bottom and now we are 13,000 users strong and solving the problem, one lesson at a time. 

For this, I applied for a government back technology incubator, Plan9, and upon rejection for the first time and getting selected for the second time, I moved to an unknown city with no friends and started working on this and formed a diverse, hard working team. 

We use to sleep at the incubator to save travelling cost and realized that startups are really hard. 

Muhammad Mamoon Sharif: Product Manager:
5+ Years of working experience with leading educational chain of Pakistan.
2 Masters degrees in Data Sciences. 2 year working experience with Microsoft, Pakistan. Won several national and international Awards for work my in field of education. 

Muhammad Umair Khan: Lead curriculum designer: 
Graduate of Harvard University as a Fulbright scholar in August 2018, graduating with a Master’s degree in International Education Policy. Since his return, Umair has been working with Idara-e-Taleem-o-Aagahi (ITA) from designing training programs for teachers in undeserved schools to conducting play-based learning workshops for school-going kids. He is also the cofounder of a standardized test preparation company named Quva and has helped hundreds of prospective graduate students fulfill their academic goals. His dream is to transform K-12 education in Pakistan through evidence-based interventions in the learning and teaching space.

Subject Matter Experts:
15+ Years of teaching experience in leading educational institutes. They help us in producing the right educational content and also help us in improving the quality of educational content.  

Motion Graphics Artists:
Graduates of best art colleges of Pakistan. Make aesthetically beautiful and amazing animations.

Initially, while working on the offline solution, the biggest challenge was to keep the content secure from the pirates. 

This was something that kept me up at night and our development team spent a lot of time at building a secure, encrypted media compression algorithm to make sure that the content cannot be copied to other devices unless authorized. 

After trying different solutions we decided to put up a watermark on our content and release it, some of those videos got downloaded and shared a lot of time, that was blessing in disguise as we saw a big spike in our daily site visits and that saved us a lot of money on marketing. 

When I got selected for the technology incubator, i moved to an unknown new city. Made some friends and to keep my self fresh and active, I decided to join a swimming club and had a bike accident while coming back.

This bike accident deformed one of my vertebral column bone and I wasn't able to walk, stand or sit properly.

Despite of that, I use to go to office, everyday, and spend time in building a team so that the mission of providing quality education to masses continues. 

In less than 2 months, I was able to formulate a self sustainable team and took 1 week off to get myself properly checked and have physiotherapy. This is me with my amazing team of animators, content writers and developers. 

And i am the only one sitting here because of the one reason, but that never stopped me from getting the work done. 

The traditional schooling model has lower outreach and limited accessibility, especially for girls that cannot go to school after a certain age.

We use award-winning algorithms in our app to identify the pain points of every student and help them overcome the shortcomings without depending much on the teacher.

Our solution uses an advanced compression algorithm to compress a 1-minute 1080p HD video to 3MB. This is 50 times less than a 1080p 1-minute Youtube video. This small size makes it easily transferable to areas with limited network coverage.

Most of the existing solutions either depend on an active internet connection or are not multilingual like us. We provide offline as well as online solution that cater to the wider audience who might not always be comfortable with the English language.

Activities: Out-of-school children and school-going students (especially girls, who lag behind boys both in terms of enrollment and learning achievement) access our engaging learning resources through either our offline curriculum or our intelligent online solution, to begin (in the case of out-of-school children) or enhance (in the case of school-going children with low learning achievement levels) their learning journey.

Outputs: Students (especially girls) who are out-of-school and cannot begin or resume schooling, due to any reason, become self-learners through the use of this app. Students who had dropped out because of the low quality of education offered in schools return as the process of learning becomes more engaging and rewarding (as evidenced by the increase in attendance and enrollment in our test school). Students exhibit better learning outcomes in all subjects (as evidenced by the increase in median score in our test school).

Short-Term Outcomes: Drop-out rates decrease, and school enrollment levels increase country-wide. Similarly, learning levels of students improve significantly as more and more students catch up on the basic grade-level learning benchmarks specified by the national and provincial curricular guidelines. 

Long-Term Outcomes: The gender gap in enrollment and learning levels is bridged over time. Girls exhibit the same levels of academic proficiency in all subjects and at all levels of the educational ladder as do their male counterparts. Increased academic achievement leads to better employment opportunities for many women, who become role-models and inspiration for other girls to follow. A culture of academic and professional achievement is cultivated among a significant segment of the female population, which grows in its magnitude and its breadth over time.

Served so far: 13,000

Currently Serving: 514,000

Serving in 1 year: +3 Million

Serving in 5 Years: +84 Million

According to Alif Ailaan, the most frequently reported reason for girls not attending school was that their parents were unwilling to send them to school. Its report on OOSCs, titled 25 Million Broken Promises, goes on to cite other reasons such as the cost of schooling, distance of school from home and unwillingness on the part of the child to attend. Of these problems, there are some, such as distance, that we directly solve with our product that makes high quality learning resources available at home. Others, such as societal and cultural barriers, for instance the unwillingness of parents themselves to let their daughters study, are barriers that can limit the impact of our solution, especially in more conservative areas. Similarly, economic reasons that prevent parents from enrolling their daughters in schools will also hinder their ability to buy our product. This is another challenge that we have to find a way around if we are to expand the service to as wide a segment of our learning-deprived population as possible.

As far as societal and cultural barriers are concerned, Exambites can collaborate with other educational initiatives that are already working to change perceptions around girls’ education and trying to raise awareness about the crucial role of educated girls in building more prosperous and harmonious societies. To address the economic barrier, exambites can offer differentiated price models and merit- and need-based scholarships to deserving candidates who can’t afford to pay some or all of the price of our learning solution.

1. Microsoft Bizspark Program
   1. Grant of $120,000 in Azure credits to test and deploy our solution
2. Amazon Web Services (AWS)
   1. Grant of $18,000 in AWS credits.
3. Plan9, Incubation of Government of Punjab, Pakistan
   1. Grant of $5000 as equity free seed funding to kick start our project.
   2. Providing us with office space and audience of public schools.
4. Ukaid, Ilm ideas 2, Ilm Association
   1. Grant of $4000 for our performance.
   2. Access to mentors and resources to expand.

We have B2C business model. 

Our offline USB dongle is retailed at $10. This contains enough content of all subjects of a grade. Traditional schooling cost $800. Our solutions cost 80 times less. 

Our online app consist of free content access for 1 first month followed up by 1$/month. Annual subscription of App is $10 with free future updates. 

Our solution does require sufficient funding to start, but its one time investment. The content can be easily reproduced and sold to millions at affordable rates over years to achieve financial sustainability. We plan to break even in 2.3 years with our current financial projections. Moreover our bite-sized animations can be easily translated into other languages and we will scale it to different markets of the world.

We have won several grants: 

1. Microsoft
   1. Bizspark program offered $120,000 azure credits
2. KPK IT Board
   1. $1000 seed money to kick start the idea
3. Code for Pakistan
   1. $500 seed money for winning an education hackathon 
4. Plan9, Government Technology incubator
   1. $5000 for winning incubation
5. UKAID. Ilm ideas 2
   1. $4000 for winning best education startup award.

We need $64,500 for 18 months. We are looking for grants, and have applied for few. We are also looking to raise seed investment from a VC or angel investor with 10-20% Equity. We are In talks with two at the moment. 

We need $21,500 for the next 6 months of 2020. We have invested around $9300 so far and have run way for 4 months. 

We have been working hard for the last two years to address the problem of bad quality and inaccessibility of education. With MIT Solve network, we will get fast track access to mentorship and advice that will help us scale and distribute our solution to masses. Connection with community of peers, like-minded people and experts will come super handy to advance our work. 

MIT Solve will help us in increasing capability of our startup to move toward sustainability. This will empower disadvantaged women through education to live the life they choose and deserve.

Solution Technology: The solution that we offer has already been validated by positive responses from our prior and current users. However, we wish to leverage the amazing resources at MIT to further refine and augment our solution technology.

Product/Service Distribution: Our partnership goals include partnering with local Ed-tech solutions to help us reach wider audiences.

Funding: We need support in both securing funding to scale and also technical advice in how to make our solution more attractive to potential funders.

Board Members or Advisors: We have started strong but we have a long way to go and a lot more to learn. Experienced advisors will us perfect our product faster and expand to new markets.

Marketing: With our solution, marketing is not just about increasing our sales. It has a higher and nobler purpose to it: breaking gender stereotypes and increasing awareness about the importance of girls' education.

We would like to partner with the MIT Playful Journey Lab and learn from their ongoing initiatives to better understand how we can make learning more engaging through digital and non-digital modes of play. Our solution is predicated on the idea of making learning meaningful and engaging. Of the many factors that contribute to the problem of educational access and learning achievement, the most significant ones have to do with a lack of quality teaching and learning environment. Creating such environments requires designing research-based solutions that are learner-centric and pedagogically sound. At the MIT Playful Lab, we will have the opportunity to learn from some of the leading educational researchers and designers and see firsthand the solutions that result from collaboration between the two. This experience will greatly enhance our own ability to refine and augment our solution to make learning fun for our students!