Creative Galileo co-founders Nikhil Naik and Prerna Jhunjhunwala (R)
Creative Galileo, a Singapore-based edutech startup focussing on children in the three to ten age bracket, has raised US$2.5 million in a round led by Indian VC firm Kalaari Capital.
Harish Bahl (Smile Group), Shashin Shah (Think Investments), Jinesh Patel (Integra Partners), Atul Nishar (Hexaware Technologies), Ashwin Puri (Facebook), and Giridhar Malpani, also co-invested.
The capital will be used for scaling, product development and enhancement, creating new engaging content, forging partnerships with leading animation houses, and hiring.
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Founded in July 2020 by Prerna Jhunjhunwala and Nikhil Naik, Creative Galileo aims to transform early learning globally. It focuses on the six learning domains — numeracy, language, arts and aesthetics, social and emotional learning, motor skills, and world discovery.
Its Kids Early Learning App is a character-based app that leverages technology to emphasise personalised needs, inquiry-based learning methods, and experiential activities via narrative videos, gamification, and personalised learning journeys.
According to the startup, this results in a fun, interactive curriculum for children and their parents. Parents can also keep track of their children’s performance via success rates and graphs to provide individualised and customised experiences.
Since its launch, the app claims to have clocked over four million downloads and over 500,000 monthly active users.
Apart from the Indian subcontinent, the app is also gaining traction in international markets, with 10 per cent downloads recorded from Nepal, Bangladesh, UAE, the US and other countries.
Creative Galileo’s immediate expansion plans will focus on scaling up in emerging markets within Southeast Asia. It will integrate local languages from the region, such as Bahasa Indonesia and Bahasa Malaysia, into the app.
Over the next 12-14 months, Creative Galileo aims to achieve ten million downloads across all markets.
The company has also partnered with leading industry players and studios for kids’ content such as Big Animation, Toonz Animation, Amar Chitra Katha, Shemaroo and Periwinkle to continue providing quality content, gamification, and interactive learning journeys.
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Jhunjhunwala said: “Early childhood learning lies at the heart of kids’ future and greatly determines their long-term success. We envision providing millions of children in emerging markets in Southeast Asia with access to high-quality content for learning in their early years to provide a robust educational foundation while also keeping the process fun. Alongside enhancing our app by adding more kids’ characters and region-specific languages, the funding helps us onboard talent and enter new markets. This will propel our efforts to create more personalised, inclusive and relatable content that helps with the early development of children.”
Southeast Asia is home to 700 million people, of which 26 per cent fall within the school-attending age group. However, access to quality education is still often limited and unevenly spread across the region, a gap primarily attributed to the region’s large rural population, often inadequate infrastructure, and a lack of trained educators and funding.
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Image Credit: Creative Galileo
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