iZi - Your Learning Companion

iZi is a community platform for bite-sized knowledge learning and sharing, enabled by gamification and AI.

Educational Satisfaction, which drives motivation, productivity and learning, fell by 25% between 2019 and 2020 in Southeast Asia, according to the World Bank [1]. This steep decline is due to decades of mismanagement coupled with huge disparity between urban and rural areas. The region is under-equipped and underprepared to deal with the growing epidemic of Educational Inequality.

iZi looks to overcome these challenges and offer passionate and intellectually curious learners a community-based knowledge platform that provides a safe, competitive, and collaborative destination in a gamified learning environment. At iZi, we leverage gamification along with Artificial Intelligence to enhance the learning experience with low-to-no data consumption. We provide learners and educational creators with a blend of gamified learning formats (quizzes, polls, fill-in, word-matching, simulations, etc.), social learning approach (learning with companions and teams), and incentivization. Our focus is not only on a high-quality learning experience but also towards Educational Equality. We target Gen-Z learners and aim to bridge the gap between urban and rural learners in Vietnam and other developing countries. Delivering affordable access to high-quality learning, we bring together content from top-notch STEM Institutes, Researchers, and Subject-Matter experts with a diverse cohort of passionate learners. 

We have the know-how and glocal representation to build curated content that aligns with the curriculum in each specific region. This capacity is evident with our organic traction of 44K users since the launch of our live prototype [2] 8 months ago, which has already secured its first round of investment.

A study by Tran (2017) showed that rural youth in Vietnam was “the most vulnerable cohort when transitioning to employment”, due to a mismatch between education and learners’ interest leading to early school drop-outs (nearly 90% did not receive any post-secondary education!), along with a lack of practical career guidance and emphasis on 21st-century skills. Wages received by this cohort were also significantly lower than their urban counterparts. 

A report by the World Bank (2014) described the root cause of such problems: the current Vietnamese curriculum focuses more on “teaching content and knowledge rather than [...] higher order cognitive and behavioral skills”. The Ministry of Education and Training also admitted that self-study skills, practical application of knowledge, and cognitive and behavioral skills had been underdeveloped. A shocking 80% of applicants to professional jobs were deemed by employers to lack the required skills (World Bank, 2013)! In such environment, learners often rely on passive reception of knowledge, and teachers lack motivation to innovate and improve their capacity.  

Furthermore, equitable education is far from the reality in Vietnam. The World Bank report revealed significant gaps in student performance between disadvantaged children and other groups. These problems affect an estimated 10 million K-12 students in rural Vietnam. Similarly, on a global scale, by 2030, an estimated 750 million young people in low- and middle-income countries will have failed to acquire basic secondary-level skills, creating a skill gap that could leave a quarter of the population in low-income countries in extreme poverty.

Our core group of users fall under the meta category of geeks. A geek is both intellectually curious and academically serious. The modern geek has a deep passion for learning, they are individuals who are self-starters and have strong intrinsic motivation to learn and grow.  

Our user-base is split into two categories: Learners and Creators. Many of the geeky learners belong to Generation Z, a demographic consisting of approximately 15 million and 163 million individuals in Vietnam and Southeast Asia respectively. Most of these Gen Z Geeky Learners are still currently within the K-12 Education System. Our Geeky Creators come from a more diverse background since our focus is on bringing together a strong community of Researchers, Scientists, STEM Institutes, Teachers, Experts, and Professionals. 

The demand among Gen-Z is for content and learning format to be instant, interactive, and creative in a shared learning environment, which directly increases learning motivation and productivity. However, K12 learners, especially geeky learners and learners in rural areas, are underserved as a result of an underwhelming, one-way curriculum, and the fact that current content platforms favor entertainment over education (TikTok and Youtube). Existing digital learning platforms are also discriminatory and only stand to widen the inequality in educational accessibility. And there isn’t a strong local presence with global standards in quality that offers a fun and engaging learning experience.

We partner and collaborate with partners and communities in universities, K12 teachers, student clubs, etc. to listen to their needs and continue to develop our solution.

Our user base is mostly K-12 learners, including those at the “bottom of the pyramid”. We provide value for these learners in the key dimension aligned with the Challenge: “strengthen delivery of STEM and 21st-century skills for learners to effectively build work readiness”. We work closely with STEM institutes and educators to develop science challenges in compelling formats that are 100% aligned with curriculum outcomes. These challenges were designed using inquiry-based learning, situated learning and BLOOM taxonomy to promote curiosity, real-world application, and creativity - skills that are essential to workforce readiness. We also develop workforce-essential skills for the future: self-confidence and self-management in studies (goal setting, planning, and managing individual learning pace for yourself), soft skills and communication skills (through learning companionship), and collaboration and teamwork (through online live team-play).

Additionally, we use technology to create interactive game formats and social learning elements in a mobile-first, low-to-no data-consuming environment that is easily and affordably accessible to learners of all conditions and levels. Through this approach, we also increase equitable access to quality learning as well as improving learning motivation through gamification, especially for underserved learners in low connectivity areas.

Finally, our pilot has shown that iZi can be used as an intuitive, accessible classroom engagement tool for teachers in the Covid-19 era, which increases their confidence in utilizing “tech to teach”.

Our Founder/CEO, Laura Phan, has 10+ years of experience as a capacity builder at national, regional and international programs including the World Bank.

Status-quo solutions for online learning are sub-optimal: MOOCs are rigid, one-way and time-consuming; Zoom lectures or livestreaming are unstable and non-interactive; whilst Kahoot or Quizizz do enable classroom interaction but in an instantaneous and tool-driven way. Thus, they tend to accelerate, rather than alleviate, inequality in education, as they pose notable barriers to entry for learners in underprivileged regions. For example, their fluctuating schedule makes it difficult to commit to a fixed study plan. Furthermore, low socioeconomic conditions prevent them from access to high-quality internet and required devices (e.g. tablets or laptops). Most importantly, these solutions cannot solve existing inequalities in access to high-quality content (urban students can get better materials) and learning companionship (urban students find learning peers or tutors more easily). This inequality in education leads to a cycle of socioeconomic decline. iZi is building an inclusive mobile-first learning platform that will disrupt incumbent models. We achieve this through a product that improves motivation rather than corrects behavior, with the following innovations: 

(i) Bite-sized content in gamified formats maximizing learning enjoyment.
(ii) Social learning experience including learning companionship (in-pair and in-group).
(iii) AI-powered personalization for meaningful suggestions and sequence of questions.
(iv) Incentivization mechanism to creators for economic empowerment. 

We source content from research institutions, STEM organizations, K12 teachers, scientists, and other geeky creators. With these foundations, we don’t just scratch the surface of education inequality but tackle its root causes with an accessible community-based platform containing network effects that could easily be scaled to SEA.

Within 8 months of prototyping, we have acquired a user-base of 44K organic users, 500+ creators, and 1000+ content. 

User acquisition was through two types of content creators: 

1. Teachers who created live games to engage their classroom.

2. Event organizers who created live games to engage their audiences in online and offline events. 

We acquired these creators by tapping into 4 main communities: 

1. Teacher Facebook groups in Vietnam. 

2. Universities’ competitions

3. Student Clubs and Student-led organizations in Vietnam. 

4. Enterprise, Startups, and NGOs that work in the Capacity Development Field such as Mathpresso (Korea) and Saigon Books (Vietnam) 

Our solution is an innovative business model built around gamification, personalization, affordable accessibility and incentivization. These values are enabled by cloud technologies such as Amazon Web Services, low-to-no data-consuming accessibility across all computing devices including smartphones (iOS/Android), computers and tablets via web browsers, and AI-powered personalization which is enhanced by the richness of data points that are gathered and encouraged by gamified mechanisms and micro-contents embedded throughout the product. We are also considering leveraging blockchain technology to create incentivization mechanisms for creators to earn by creating high-value educational content on our platform. We are combining new applications of existing technologies with user-centric and experience-driven product design to introduce an innovative edtech product to the market.

Our key activities include: 

(i) Building and distributing high-quality educational content to all groups of learners, with an emphasis on K12 Natural Science, Applied Sciences, Personal Finance, and other topics in the initial phase, via our tech product and partnership channels. 

(ii) Building and inspiring communities of creators and learners via capacity building programs. We recently hosted a successful bootcamp for 20+ student-led non-profits learning to create higher-engagement content and more impactful events for their communities. These organizations used learnings from the bootcamp and iZi’s digital toolset to build their own communities of learners (over 1000+ in total) around topics such as psychology and career preparation. 

(iii) Incentivizing communities via a utility token system that rewards their knowledge-sharing behavior.

These groups of activities result in outputs in the form of edtech product delivery (mobile application and web platform) and program delivery (capacity building program and incentivization program). 

In the short term, we seek to increase engagement and interactivity in different learning contexts, including classrooms, group learnings, and self-learning, through applying gamification and a variety of bite-sized content. Through our impact program, #Toi20, we partnered with nonprofit WiFEC to build a content inventory and delivered free digital lessons to children under special circumstances. The first class with 15 students had their engagement rate increased from 26% to 100% after just 3 sessions. 

In the mid-term, the self-confidence and social skills of learners are improved. We promote social learning and social skills through the “learning companionship” feature - helping anyone to connect and initiate a co-learning journey with a partner of similar interest. This is in alignment with our survey results of 150 university students, which showed that nearly 70% preferred learning in pairs or small groups (3-5) and 0% preferred learning in large classrooms (>10 people).

In the long-term, their pro-active learning behavior and creativity are strengthened, along with increasing specialization as a result of individualized progressive learning content powered by AI. 

Our overall mission is to delight and connect the world with active and creative learning.

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These are some of our key metrics which are already being measured: 

- number of learners/creators
- percentage of learners/creators from rural regions (identified by user geography registration)
- percentage of learners who gained confidence and creativity after using iZi
- total number of minutes learned
- percentage of minutes learned from rural regions
- number of contents created
- percentage of content created in rural regions
- total playthroughs
- percentage of playthroughs from rural regions.  

Later on, when the token economy is applied in full effect, we will also be measuring the economic impact generated in low-income learning communities through participating in iZi’s “knowledge economy”.

iZi is a product filled with fun to enhance learners’ motivation and attitude towards learning. We also help learners develop workforce-essential skills such as social skills via learning companionship with gamified competition and collaboration formats and creativity via participating in content creation. Our focus on STEM content enables learners to develop creativity while improving on fundamental educational outcomes, including acing school tests and exams. All of these work towards improving learners’ self-confidence in the mid-to-long term, which is something that underserved learners perhaps severely struggle with. 

Our north-star impact goal is measured in terms of the percentage of a total number of children from 6-16 living in rural areas who become more confident and creative after using iZi. These measures are applied in all countries that we are and will be operating in. Our goal in the next 5 years is to reach 1 million children out of 9.45 million in the rural areas of Vietnam. To achieve this goal, we aim to impact at least 30,000 children via community-based projects next year and about 550,000 children in the next 3 years via provincial government partnerships. Establishing long-term partnerships at the provincial government level continues to be our strategic method to reach the goal in the next 5 years. As described above, we will be expanding to another SEA country with a similar impact goal as well. 

With the support from Octava and MIT Solve, we believe we can reach these goals with far greater efficiency.

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Product & Tech: We want to build a global standard product with a delightful user experience. This is achieved through brilliant game design and strong technology that enables low-to-no connectivity, AI-powered personalization down to every minute of learning, and a fair incentivization mechanism to creators that could potentially apply blockchain technology (we have not had concrete ideas for this). Our tech capability is still humble for this goal. Therefore, we want to strengthen our resources to scale sustainably.

Market entry & Legal: Partnership is our main channel for market entry. We had years of experience establishing partnerships for our capacity-building programs. We value this resource and want to continue leveraging it to acquire more quality content and approach more communities. However, since partnerships and communities are often very localized, if we want to scale regionally and globally, it would require additional perspectives and networks. 

Furthermore, since such activities involve multiple stakeholders regionally and internationally, we would need best legal practices not only create a fair and sustainable foundation for our partnerships to thrive, but also a safe and equitable learning environment for our users. 

Talent: People are our greatest asset. We value talents with purpose, autonomy and innovation. We need to get access to a wider pool of talent globally to enhance our capacity and strengthen our culture continuously. We need a CTO, product designer, learning experience designer, community builder, content developer/editor, and AI/blockchain/impact/economics/legal advisors.

Our plan is to join a global edtech program to overcome this.

Our founder, Laura, grew up in a small village in the Mekong Delta. She was a highly curious bottom-of-the-pyramid (BOP) learner but could not access extra learning resources and opportunities outside of textbooks and school. Her parents worked hard to afford tuition, which motivated her to get accepted into a math-specialized class. Here, she could learn and even played games with the brightest minds in the province. Games are hated by adults, but they helped provoke Laura’s critical curiosity and imagination. 

To expand her horizons, Laura went to a big city for university. Through hard-work, she earned the opportunity to travel to many different countries to join international youth conferences. It was a transformational journey. She then wished other curious BOP kids like her could also access good education and pursue similar opportunities. 

That’s why Laura decided to become a capacity builder. During 10 years working with different communities and stakeholders, Laura noticed how knowledge consumption evolved throughout decades, from book to web search engine to videos - reduced learning time and increased interactivity. She envisioned the future of learning heading towards personalized bite-sized gamification that improves creativity and empowers dreams.

Along the way she met Cynthia and Heath, who shared a similar vision. With the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic, 1.6 billion students were out of schools globally and the situation was worsened by the digital and socioeconomic divide. The three decided to act on delivering sustainable educational solutions leveraging gamification and focused on making education accessible.

Total number:  23 people. We have 6 full-time staff (CEO, COO in content & growth, Tech Lead, Product Lead, Game Designer, Partnership Lead), 7 part-time junior staff (1 Site Reliability & Data Engineer, 4 Software Engineers, 2 Community Builders), 10 contractors (6 for Tech/Product, 2 for Program, 2 for Content).

• Laura, CEO: 10+ years of experience in capacity building & instructional design. Ex-World Bank trainer. Designed & led capacity-building programs in public, private & not-for-profit sectors. Founded a FoodTech & an L&D consulting firm.

• Heath, COO: Skilled in user growth & content development. Ex-regional manager of a series-C EdTech. Graduated Top 1% Aalto University. Co-founded a creative agency.

• Nathan, Tech & Data: Skilled in infrastructure & AI research. Google engineer, UK. Published technical research papers in top tech conferences.  

• Ed, Product: Full-spectrum entrepreneur. Focused on innovation & product development. Scaled teams from 0-120 in 6 months. Co-founded 2 D2C businesses.

• Son, Subject Matter Expert: Material Science Ph.D., UK. with 10+ years of research experience. Co-trained STEM for 10,000+ teachers & co-organized National STEM Festival. Published 30+ international scientific papers ISI. Founded a STEM center.

• Cynthia, Partnership: Skilled in partnership facilitation & community building for 3000-attendant events from >50 countries & public-private partnership projects in sustainability across Indochina. Co-founded a food business & an L&D consulting firm. 

• Surya, Game Design: Skilled in gamification & design thinking. Built a learning system for Solarify, India. Master in Psychology & studied design thinking at Stanford. Co-founded an L&D consulting firm.

We are proudly a female-led team diverse in background, skillset and geography. We all went through the inefficient K12 system, and have the drive to solve this problem through entrepreneurship. With great interest in games, strong empathy with BOP learners, and experiences in capacity building, edtech, and STEM, we are well-positioned for this mission.

Our core team has all founded businesses with both success and failure. We are “programmed” with the skills of fast learning, validating, iterating, and are comfortable with fast-paced change. This mentality is rooted deeply in our company culture, mostly inspired by our Team Lead. 

Laura is a well-recognized program designer in the Vietnam innovation and entrepreneurship ecosystem. She is good at observing and synthesizing similar patterns. Most of the new concepts of our product including bite-sized learning, exploratory learning, learning companionship, and play-to-learn have been conceptualized by her ability and executed with her leadership. 

One example is her observation of how K-12 students passively learned and chose their field of study for university, only to then change their career direction after graduation with lots of mental struggles and waste of resources. Laura believed these learners were not empowered to explore enough learning opportunities, career choices, career paths, and understanding of success.

After a lot of research, she introduced the concept of “exploratory learning" which uses simulated environments with bite-sized information to help students maximize their opportunity to explore the future of work in breadth. After many experiments in 6 months, we came up with the concept of iZi today.

To name a few:

• S3 Academy For Creation: As a key member of the Vietnam STEM Alliance, S3 has co-trained about 10,000 countrywide teachers on STEM education. iZi and S3 have partnered to promote STEM by building a pool of 1,000 natural science content targeting middle-school audiences.

• BecauseForHope: a US non-government organization focused on facility improvement for educational centers at the most remote areas in Vietnam. In a joint mission to improve the education quality of remote communities, iZi plays the role of content provider for all facilities sponsored by BecauseForHope. The content is diverse from academic subjects to capability building and is workable for no-internet communities. 

• WiFEC: an NGO providing international learning opportunities to underprivileged students via online classes. Covid-19 brings WiFEC and iZi together to transform WiFEC’s current teaching format to be more interactive and fun by applying gamification. No more silent and off-webcam classes.   

• LIN Center: a Vietnamese nonprofit organization helping 190+ local communities leveraging local resources to build a sustainable future of Vietnam. iZi partnered with LIN to gamify a series of content promoting the UN Sustainable Development Goals and their Narrow The Gap program to be used in training for their partnered corporates’ employees.

Refine, measure, and communicate impact throughout the product: Our mission contributes to the “learning for all" mission aligned with SDG4. We want to initiate a collective effort to measure the impact scientifically and meaningfully, then implement it onto our product. 

Refine business model and scaling: We want to scale to SEA and beyond. We believe in every country, urban learning resources can be distributed to rural areas. We want to learn how to design a fair, innovative, and scalable business model with good legal and financial practice.

Access to talent: World-class talents in technology, product and content help us achieve our vision.

Enrich content resources and distribution channels: We need to collect as much quality content as possible from prestigious organizations and educational institutions. We will work with them to break content into bite-sized chunks in Q&A format and arrange them in an intentional order for the learning outcome of learners. For content distribution, we need to collaborate with partners who are serving or in touch with the communities, especially in rural and mountainous areas. We want to play an add-on value role to their main activities.

Access to a continuous learning network and resources: As an important part of our culture, we need our team to connect to a continuous quality source of learning and like-minded people. Only so can we continuously provide a quality source of learning to others in need.

We are honest to select many areas we need partners and support. We understand the requirements of this mission and are eager to learn to fulfill it. We would appreciate receiving mentorship for our key people in Product, Technology, Growth, Community, Impact, Legal & Hiring. In addition, we need a network of quality partnerships in content and community to develop and distribute our solution further. We appreciate MIT’s strong expertise in science and technology, which we hope could be leveraged to build strong differentiation for our platform. On the community side, we have come to understand the depth and breadth of Octava’s networks of underserved communities, especially of children, on a global scale, which we seek to serve with our solution.

Most importantly, access to a pool of global talents would help us to find the right stars for our team to build a long-lasting culture and impact-driven products at scale. We also hope to be able to participate in a series of intensive training and access to available resources for learning. Last but not least, we would like to get to know more about other available financial resources for EdTech and Impact which can be grants, debt, or equity.