Brainologi

Brainologi is a Personalised Learning System that enables the development of cognitive capacity in children under the age of 10 years. Research has established that 80% of cognitive capacity, the ability to reason and solve problems, is developed by the age of 5 years. By stimulating cognitive development in early childhood we aim to improve education attainment and thus enable children to thrive in a future world that will be radically reshaped by technology.

 Our product helps children learn, reason and apply knowledge to solve problems. It covers logic, reasoning, spatial skills and creativity.  It is meant to supplement the learning imparted in school. The product comprises a ‘gamified’ digital learning platform that is adaptive and offline physical learning tools. The combination of digital and offline module makes the experience immersive and engaging. The product design allows parents to be involved in the developmental journey of the child.   

India has over 230 million children under the age of 10 years. They will start joining the workforce in a decade. Outside of the elite schools that serve a small fraction of this number, majority do not have access to quality, early childhood education.

Outdated school curriculum emphasizes learning by rote. Role of early childhood development in enhancing capacity to learn is not widely appreciated. Education attainment remains low. This is a handicap today and will be debilitating in a future world that will be highly digitised and data-driven. In 2009, Indian students ranked 72 out of 74 countries in the Programme for International Student Assessment, an OECD benchmark test to determine students' ability to apply theoretical knowledge in problem-solving.  Yet some of the finest engineers and technologists at a global level are a product of the Indian education system, products almost entirely of elite schools. Raw talent exists but majority of the children are not getting the right start to maximise their potential. We aim to improve each child’s probability of leading a productive and fulfilling adult life by equipping her with the ability to reason, analyse and solve problems.   

The vast majority of 230 million Indian children below the age of 10 do not have access to programmes that can prepare them with skills needed to analyse information and solve problems. Parents struggle to support their children either due to lack of awareness of the role they can play or due to the rigidity of the education system.  Thus our starting point was to look at both parent & child as primary stakeholders. We believe for an early childhood development solution to have a deep impact on the child, the parent must be involved.

  We have conducted primary research to develop a deeper understanding of the needs of parents and the barriers to adoption. Beta version of the product has been tested with children to refine the user experience.  These tests also revealed to us the challenges posed by the inconsistent quality of mobile data connectivity. Our product is now designed to operate on 2G and 3G. We have conducted focus group studies with mothers to understand the challenges they faced. This has helped us develop a parenting module for mothers that will improve awareness of early childhood development.  

Our product delivers a learning curriculum through a combination of digital modules & offline components comprising worksheets and activity kits. The learning curriculum has been developed using the principles of Bloom's Taxonomy. This taxonomy helps define the levels of learning, from Remembering, Understanding, Analysing to Creativity

The digital module is adaptive in that it can automatically calibrate the pace and level of complexity depending on the need of the child.  It can be delivered remotely over 2G or 3G mobile data connection onto mobile devices that use Android OS. Children learn best when they have fun. The User Experience is  ‘gamified’  and designed to reward effort. In the digital module, we focus on core cognitive skills development by covering Logic, Reasoning, and Spatial awareness. 

At the back end of the digital module is a Learning Management System. As the child progresses, the programme moves the child to attempt problems of a higher level of complexity, building capability to analyse, understand differentiation in tasks. An on-screen animated character provides tips and encouragement to the child to encourage the child to apply effort and progress through the program. Progress reports are provided to parents along with an indication of areas of strength of the child and the areas that require further developmental inputs. The learning management system can develop benchmarks and from that develop a more refined understanding of a child’s progress as the number of children on the digital platform scales up.

In the activity kit, the child works with her hands to perform activities and play games that reinforce the learning that was initiated in the digital platform. The worksheets and game designs are conceptually integrated with the digital curriculum and provide children with new ways to look at a problem and apply themselves, learning alternate ways of problem-solving. Mobile data and smartphone penetration is still an issue in India. To make our product accessible to a vast majority of the 230 million under-served children, we have designed the activity kits and worksheets such that they can deliver a stand-alone cognitive development program albeit without the richness of the digital module.  Parents can buy the digital module and activity kits through Amazon or our App. We have entered into distribution alliances to make our worksheets and activity kits available to children who do not have access to digital connectivity or suitable mobile devices.

It has been said that innovation occurs at the intersection of invention and insight.  We have invented a product designed to develop cognitive capacity development in early childhood. The underlying curriculum incorporated in our product is based on the established learning framework of Bloom’s taxonomy. This is combined with the insights, that children learn while playing and having fun and each child learns best at her own pace, to create an adaptive learning management system with a ‘gamified’ user experience to impart a complete solution in an engaging format. Parents can understand the progress of their child and contribute to the development journey.  

Our solution is designed to work in an environment where last-mile data connectivity is patchy. Therefore the product has an offline component that can work independently in a frugal operating environment.

There are products available today that look at language, math or coding skills with cognitive skills development being a by-product. The challenge we have taken is to deliver a comprehensive core capacity augmentation in children and through that improve their  education attainment in school.  All of the above make our product a unique solution that can solve a live problem and create an impact at scale. 

Brainologi’s technology platform is the core around which the  solution stands. It has a Learning  Management System which can publish learning modules through an Android app. The app provides age appropriate, adaptive, audio visual content that works on sub domains of cognitive skills. It recognizes patterns of error in a child's performance and provides targeted feedback.

For the firm, our LMS allows for easy expansion and publication of courses as we grow. This with minimal go-to-market time and maximum flexibility to configure course features. The flexibility of our technological interface, allows addition, alteration, amendment and incorporation of new content regularly, preventing stagnation and leading to innovative solutions in teaching.

The LMS also provides the basis for future innovation and improvement. It’s Analytics module provides insights to the internal team across various parameters, ranging from engagement to curriculum performance with high granularity.

Most policymakers and education providers ignore the impact of the environment. Our approach is to design a solution that works on a dual platform, as a complement to the child's school education and developmental environment present at home.  We have already spoken about our parental interventions.  In the context of school education, various studies show that core cognitive skills such as visual memory and reasoning ability are correlated with decoding, math, as well as academic achievement. It is this gap of core cognitive skills in academic achievement that we strive to fill. 

One of our long term goals is that Indian kids should be able to perform well on PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment, study by the OECD to determine children’s ability to apply knowledge.), not only on the math, reading and science parameters but also on creative thinking which has been planned as an assessment criteria for PISA in 2021.

Our Short Term goal is to build the cognitive skills that are the underlying key to success in academic performance such that they can improve their scores on our app as they progress along with the curriculum, via repetition and higher-order tasks. Early trends on our platform :

Age    Performance improvement over a 3-month pilot

5 Years    34.36%    41.62%    48%

6 Years    33%    36.66%    39%

7 Years    36.24%    40%    47%

8 Years    46.64    47%    48%

Brainologi has worked with 1000+ users including pilot and paid consumers. We have now moved out of the pilot phase and moved into a growth stage wherein we are retailing our product through Amazon.  Our growth rate is over 50% month on month on Amazon India.

However, to achieve large-scale growth and impact, Brainologi is inking 2 alliances. In these alliances, Brainologi will develop and design products and the alliance partner will manage production and distribution. The alliances are with large firms dealing in educational aids. Through these alliances, we plan to acquire 20,000-25,000 users in the coming  year. And beyond 100,000 users the next. These alliances will open physical distribution channels to us in the range of 10,000+ outlets in the country. 

With the above partnerships, and our market development efforts in place we expect to reach a million users in 5 years.  

We have 3 long term goals concerning performance and scale

 1.    India was ranked 72 out of 74 in the PISA assessment in 2009 and since then we have not participated. PISA is one of the measurable platforms with international benchmarks available. We would like to base our performance on that and use it to move Indian students into the top quartile.

2.    We should reach a scale of significance to make a real societal impact. Our goal is to reach a million users in India. And beyond that expand to international markets. We have set the ball rolling against this target by inking 2 alliances with large-scale manufacturers and distributors of educational products.

3.    The core of Brainologi is developing learning products, which address the needs of the future. We aim to set up a Research & Development unit, whose goal will be to develop superior learning products, for early age children, which are affordable and are in tune with the learning needs of the current and future generations. 

1. Centuries-old education system - Our biggest challenge. Bringing a transformation such that the policy makers and the education system are not only able to see where they are lagging but are willing to allocate resources behind the cause.

 2. Wider lack of understanding amongst parents.  While parents are concerned about their ward’s educational needs, there is a complete lack of understanding about what are 21st-century skills and how they will impact their child’s life.

1.    Breaking the barriers of the centuries-old education system in the country: We are engaging with various stakeholders on the subject including the local government and schools. We have ongoing pilots with various schools, wherein we allow teachers to experience our programme hands-on.

2.   Speaking to parents directly about the issue: We as a firm talk to parents about what critical thinking skills are and what it means for the child’s future. We believe that parent-led demand will lead the education system behemoth to make fundamental changes. Although we have a small team, we have been effectively using our products as well as parent seminars to talk to parents. Our parent seminars have seen attendance in hundreds, especially by middle-income groups with limited access to quality guidance. We will continue to build on using digital media as a platform to reach out and talk to parents.

Core Team (5) comprising

Founder & CEO (B.E, Computers, MBA, 20 years in new business development, marketing)

Head of Curriculum & Product Development (MSc, Child Development, 25+ years in early childhood curriculum development)

Head of Content Planning (Child Psychologist)

Market Development & Alliances

Operations & Customer Service.

Contract Staff (4)

Technology

Graphics & Toy Designers

We are a diverse team with over 85 years of experience across various fields. Our core team combines skills in early education, psychology, product development and consumer marketing.  

Our team has experience in working on large-scale educational deployments, early childhood curriculum design, teacher training, parent counselling, child counselling as well as working with special needs children. On the other side, we have deep experience in understanding consumers, consumer product development and business management. In addition to this, we have frequently collaborated with specialists (for example our UX was developed by a team of kids’ UX specialists from the Netherlands) to bring better solutions to the table.  

Our experience in working with retail consumers has meant that we have invested significant effort behind researching and understanding user need and behaviour. 

Brainologi was shortlisted for the Wharton Reimagine Education Awards 2018 at San Francisco. 

We are inking 2 alliances for our business. These alliances will give us scale and help us significantly improve our reach. The basis for these alliances is the know-how that Brainologi brings in learning products design. The experience in manufacturing and distribution is brought by the alliance partner.

1.  We are inking a partnership with India’s largest educational aids company. The firm manufactures various educational aids including stationery and paper products.  In this partnership, we will develop and an entire range of low cost early learning products in the 2-5 age group, which will be available for parents through retail stores across the country.

2.    We have signed an alliance with Faber-Castell, the German stationery and learning aids manufacturer's  India unit.  In our partnership with them, we are developing learning units for children in the 3-5 years age bracket. These learning units will focus on creativity development aided by multiple types of sensory stimuli.

In both alliances, Brainologi retains the IP and will earn a royalty on each unit sold. 

We are a for-profit firm. We are a direct to consumer business, our products are available online on sites like Amazon and Flipkart.  We have kits and books that users can buy which also gives them access to our tech platform. Users may also buy our workbooks separately.

We are poised at the early stage of growth and already generate revenue.

Our next stage of scale will come from distribution alliances that we have built.  These alliances will generate significant revenue for us through royalty payouts, and at the same time reduce our capital burden as manufacturing and distribution costs will be borne by alliance partners.  The royalty payouts will generate income for us to further plough into Brainologi’s market development efforts. We expect to be profitable by early 2021.

We are a direct-to-consumer company, and generate revenue through sales of our edu-tech solutions. Our sources of revenue 

1. Through our own sales. We are already generating revenue here.

2. Co-created products with alliance partners. Under this we have 2 types of revenue

            a) Royalty payouts. (To start Dec 2019/Q1 2020)

            b) Product development fee (estimated start Q4 2019)

Based on the above, by mid 2021 our P&L will be in black.

We believe that a new generation of learning products for early years will require continuous research and development. Across the world, curriculum, teaching methodologies and teaching tools are outdated and relics of a past era.  Brainologi aims to set up a R&D unit, with the aim to further our development work in amalgamated systems which harness the power of technology while working with play based learning tools.  We seek the support of MIT in 2 areas

1.     Making available to us further  pedagogical research/know-how on cognitive development that MIT may have on early years, specifically under 10 & 5 years.

2.     Help us establish a robust Research & Development programme, with the aim to develop further ready to use products for homes.

• We would like to partner with the following organisations

a.     MIT/ Academic research units in early childhood for setting up a research programme in India focussed on Cognitive development for children under 10 years of age.

b.     Open distribution opportunities for Brainologi’s learning products outside India, particularly US and Middle East.

     India currently has a shortage of 4,70,000 teachers in the primary school level itself. We see this challenge becoming more acute in the future, not only in India but outside as well. The ultimate challenge for education product designers will therefore be, not how best to publish and analyse curriculums but provide total learning solutions.

Based on our experience with our own learning platform, we aim to develop an AI based system that will

• Accurately identify patterns of error/areas of development  in individual child. Work in this area is already on.
• Then a Recommendation Engine will recommend learning modules to parents by delving into the success of its own past solutions. These solutions may be customised digital modules that will be published for an individual child, or it may be an offline tools that may be sent to parents or it may be a set of developmental action points recommended to parents/teachers or a combination of above. 

To design and develop our platform further along the above lines we seek the AI Innovation Prize.

We will utilise the fund for 2 action points

• Development of the Recommendation Engine. 
• Set up a live research base at a chosen school where the success probabilities of the Recommendation Engine will be tested.