AR learning for kids with disabilities

My name is Muhammad Waqas; the CEO and co-founder of WonderTree. Before being a part of this life changing startup, I was running my own digital marketing agency. An avid marketeer with focus on human centric experiences, my skills excelled most in challenging situations identifying market trends, understanding audiences for corporate products, and spearheading digital growth within organizations. With WonderTree, I have found joy in doing things that are greater than myself and involves challenges beyond conventional control. Failure has been my greatest teacher and perseverance is my greatest tool for achieving everything I have dreamed for my team and the cause which is devoted to bringing life changing experiences to a segment which is often neglected, stigmatized and above all challenged. I am curious about learning, and seeking challenges excite me. I pursue a better version of myself every day. I preach positivism, hope consistently and without doubts. 

There is a need for innovative technological solutions to make quality education accessible, specifically for children with disabilities. Children with disabilities are largely neglected from mainstream education. Therapy focusing on motor and cognitive development of these children are expensive and not affordable for marginalized populations, especially in low-middle income countries.

WonderTree aims to address this problem through easily accessible and affordable augmented reality games that focus on education and development of children with special needs. Our games provide an immersive learning experience for children, with an in-built reporting feature that makes it easier for parents and teachers to track the child’s progress.

Our project can elevate humanity through promoting inclusive quality education for children with special needs and making it accessible and affordable for underprivileged populations with limited access to education and resources. 

Children with special needs are largely neglected in mainstream education, especially in developing countries like Pakistan. Based on a report on disabilities by World Health Organization, the prevalence of disabilities in children, in low to middle income countries range from 0.4% to 12.7%. Around 15 percent of the global population live with a disability (WHO, 2011). Most of the children with disabilities are unidentified due to lack of diagnostic tools available that are culturally relevant or language specific (WHO, 2011). The British Council report on disabilities in Pakistan (2014) mentions that there is only 1 trained psychologist or psychiatrist for every 230,000 disabled people in Pakistan. Quality, inclusive education and therapy is expensive and leaves out a large segment of the country's population who cannot afford it.

Exclusion of children with disabilities from mainstream schools limits their access to quality education. Evidence based on reports from low-middle income countries have proved that this creates a snow-ball effect, negatively impacting their economic opportunities and overall well-being (International Centre for Evidence in Disability) . Promoting access to quality and inclusive education for children with special needs can have positive social and financial consequences, improving well-being and encouraging more tolerant and equitable societies.

We design augmented reality games using mirror therapy that focuses on motor, cognitive, social, language development of children with special needs. We are a team of clinical psychologists and game developers using augmented reality to revolutionize therapeutic care and education for kids. 

Our games provide an immersive learning experience, with an in-built reporting feature to track the progress of each child. Our target users are children on various spectrum of motor and cognitive disability which include autism, down syndrome, cerebral palsy, learning disability.

WonderGames only require a PC/Laptop with a Camera, which makes it affordable and easily accessible. This reduces the cost up to 70% when compared to the conventional methods of rehabilitation, education and development of children with disabilities. Our games can be easily downloaded through our website, and can be used in schools, hospitals, rehabilitation centers and homes. 

Our project has positively impacted the lives of children with disabilities from all levels of social strata. Since our games are affordable and accessible, they have especially benefited children from underprivileged communities.

Our games are deployed in rehabilitation centers, special education institutes, hospitals and schools in Pakistan, UAE and Nigeria. Since our games do not require an elaborate infrastructure, it has also been deployed in rural areas where access to education is limited.

Our games not only increases motivation to learn in students but also accelerates their overall development. These games target the motor, cognitive, social, language development of children with special needs with an in-built reporting feature which allows the progress to be measured through detailed quantitative reports.

They have been used to cater to the needs of children with learning disabilities and motor and cognitive disabilities including those with down syndrome, cerebral palsy, autism etc.

We are constantly working in collaboration with our in-house psychologists and research partners, to further improve our games so we can effectively address the needs of children. We receive regular feedback from remedial teachers, psychologists and parents who are using our games, which helps us in developing our games further. 

Our project aims at making education and therapy inclusive, accessible and affordable for children with special needs. Elevating educational opportunities for these children help in building more equitable and inclusive societies. Our games provides a multi-sensory learning platform, catering to all needs of differently abled children and accelerating their learning in a fun and engaging way.

Our project’s mission to create an inclusive learning environment so that all children have equal opportunities to quality education. This also helps in creating awareness for the need of inclusivity in education systems and how technology can be leveraged to provide affordable learning solutions. 

The initiative began with my Co-founder and CTO Usman. He got inspired after seeing his older brother (who is intellectually disabled) play his Xbox. Usman noticed how engaged and motivated his brother was while he was playing games and decided to use the power of games to teach his brother skills that would develop him. I am Usman's neighbor and friend he approached me for helping him out with his initiative. Together we talked to parents, teachers, schools and hospitals about the feasibility of our idea. The response was overwhelmingly positive and shockingly sad. We found that there are very few facilities for development and education for children and a sever lack of professionals in this field. Parents of these children have either given up hope or are searching anxiously for a solution. We felt an obligation to solve this challenge. In Nov 2015 we got incubated at the Nest IO and WonderTree was officially born.

Fast forward to 2020, we are a team of 17 diversified, passionate and talented people. We have impacted more than 8000 lives. And now we are gearing to scale our product to the masses both inside and outside of Pakistan.  

Usman (my co-founder and CTO) is motivated to work on this cause because of his brother has experienced first had the pain and challenge of raising a child with special needs in Pakistan because of the lack of solutions and avenues for their development.

I am motivated to work on this cause because of two reasons. 1) It is my life's purpose to work on something that helps mankind. 2) Very little work has been done in Pakistan for the development and education of children with disabilities. Someone needs to do something about this, might as well be us. 

We are lucky that our team also shares the same passion and vision me and Usman. Collectively as a team we want to work on this cause to so we can leave a mark in this world and because it provides us with a big challenge that we need to solve as a team. 

We have also decided that WonderTree is going to be a for profit company because we want to prove to ourselves and to others working in Pakistan that there is such a thing as "good business" where a company can earn profits while having a social impact. 

We have a talented and passionate team combined with the passion to solve this challenge. This makes us well positioned to deliver this project. 

Our team brings forward experience in psychology, graphics, game development, art, Artificial Intelligence and business. This gives us the expertise we need to develop our solution.

We also have a network of organizations that are helping us with technology, research, funding, deployments and mentoring, enabling us to grow WonderTree. Some of the organizations are as follow: 

Google for Startup, UNICEF, SPRING Accelerator, Government of Sindh, Open IDEO, The Nest IO, Hatch Colab.

We also have a medical advisory board consisting of experienced medical professionals from renowned institutions who guide us on our games so of the names are as follow: 

• Denise Hashim 
• Dr. Zainab Zadeh 
• Muhammad Ashfaq 
• Dr Qamar Mahmood

With the arrival of a global pandemic (Covid 19) we are also hit hard like the rest of the world. Our entire user base was comprised of special schools and physiotherapy clinics & hospitals. We were down to 15% active users and had to evolve on urgent basis. Having no clear indication as to when the lock-down will end and we will be able to resume our sales our company's future was uncertain. I spearheaded a program to introduce WonderTree games to the parents who are confined at their homes. Just in 3 months our team optmized the technology, we changed our UX, we redirected our marketing strategy and we have secured 100 active users and the number is growing day by day. This has also allowed us to target international customers and now we are gearing to launch our product in Qatar and South Africa. The future of our company is secure now. And we have made a new vertical for our sales and expansion in this process. 

During the early stages of WonderTree (2016). We ran out of money. Our product was still incomplete and we had yet to find potential buyers for the product. 3 months passed and we still did not have any clear hope of closing a sale or securing more funds. As an alternative I applied for Shell Tameer Awards a local entrepreneurship competition. In order to keep the morale of the team intact I used to conduct weekly meetings telling them that we are getting closer to our goal, encouraging them to keep working. And mentoring them, supporting them wherever they needed help. We ended up winning Shell Tameer Awards' finals which gave us enough money to pull through for another 3 months. Towards the end of 3 months I was able to bring in our first sale and the money allowed us to survive. Furthermore the pilot with a renowned medical institution opened other doors for us and allowed us to sell our pilot further. Through constantly telling my team that we will make it, we actually did end up making it.

This project is innovative because it uses augmented reality, artificial intelligence and machine learning as core technologies to cater to a global problem i.e. unequal access to quality education for children with disabilities. Expensive therapies and education for children with special needs can be substituted by a cheaper and more accessible technological solution of WonderGames.

The use of augmented reality to facilitate education and therapy creates an immersive and engaging experience for children and helps in accelerating their development. It is also a multi-sensory learning method that caters to needs of all kinds of learners. It is not only affordable but also ensures that children are motivated to learn.

There are quite limited number of organizations that use augmented reality to cater to the needs of children with disabilities. The games we develop are focused on the holistic development of children with special needs through augmented reality, while also ensuring that they are easily affordable. This is what makes our project unique

Currently we have over 6000 active users. We plan to serve 10,000 children with disabilities in one year and in the next five years, we plan to have 800,000 monthly active users. 

1 year plan:

• Building our online user base and product awareness through collaboration with local and international bodies promoting inclusive education.
• Scale operations in UAE, South Africa and USA
• Conduct and publish research on the efficacy of our games in local and international journals
• Have up to 10,000 monthly active users on our platform
• Initiate and expand our early childhood education project, for schools in Pakistan

5 year plan:

• Expand operations in markets of Europe and US
• Implement WonderTree's ECD curriculum to all of Pakistan
• Have 800,000 monthly active users for WonderTree
• Have 2,000,000 monthly active users for ECD games

Currently, we are facing financial barriers and are looking for funding to develop our technological infrastructure, invest in digital marketing and increase our reach.

There are some technical barriers that we are trying to overcome, and for which Google has extended their support. We are trying to make our games compatible for not only Laptops/Pc but also mobile phones and tablets, which will make them even more accessible. Currently, our platform only works on Windows but we are working on making it compatible with Mac as well. 

• Google For Startups SDG Accelerator
  • We are one of 11 startups to be selected from a pool of 1200 startups globally.
  • Google is helping us optimize the technology of our product. 
  • Helping us with global marketing strategy 
  • Helping us become investor ready and then introduce us to investors 
• UNICEF - UNICEF Innovation Funds
  • Disbursement of grant 
  • Access to UNICEF network for future projects 
  • Mentoring 
  • Access to potential investors 
  • Training and development for completing UNICEF project allotted to us
• SPRING Accelerator 
  • Workshop and capacity development for Human Centered Design 
  • Access to network for potential clients 
  • Mentorship 
  • Grant disbursement
• Government of Sindh - Department of Empowerment of Persons with Disabilities
  • Piloting our product in Sindh special schools 
  • Customers 
  • Opening doors in the government for support and adaption of WonderTree 
• Ignite
  • Disbursement of grant
  • Access to network for deployments 

We have the following business models in place: 

1) Subscription: 

We sell monthly licenses to schools, hospitals and individual parents. The packages vary depending on the number of licenses. 

2) CSR:

We have a list of schools that can't afford the hardware or the cost of our licenses. We ask corporate organizations if they are interested in paying the cost for the infrastructure for the school or licenses for the children or both or a time duration. 

3) External Services: 

Since our team specializes in AR/VR and image processing technologies. We also lend our expertise to clients who would want something made in this domain and charge them for the development and services. 

We are already cash flow positive through selling our WonderTree product and external services. 

By year end 2021 we plan on becoming fully cash flow positive through just selling our WonderTree product. 

Funding Raised: 

• Ignite National ICT R&D Funds
  • Funding Raised: $270,000
  • Date: Dec 2017
  • Duration: 18 months
• SPRING Accelerator
  • Funding Raised: $55,000
  • Date: Oct 2018
  • Duration: 12 months

Revenue for selling WonderTree Fiscal Year 2019 (July 2019 - June 2020):

• $48,873

Revenue from providing external services Fiscal Year 2019 (July 2019 - June 2020):

• $114,039

We are looking to raise equity investment of $450,000 for 1) expansion to other countries 2) conduct research 3) develop ECE games for normal education market. 

Our estimated expense for 2020 is going to be $189,239

• For seeking the prize funding 
• For a change to collaborate with MIT ideally for research and further development and enhancement of our games
• For gaining access to the US market for validating our product over there and then selling our product 
• For making new network connections and partnerships that will enable us to grow our business 
• For getting advice and guidance on growing our business. 

• Funding and revenue model
  • Since this is the first time that we are going to be raising funds we need help with how to raise funds and how to pitch to investors. We are also looking to partner-up with the right investors who understand our mission and provide network, marketing and access to foreign markets. 
  • We also need help with refining our revenue model specially for foreign markets and for our new vertical of B2C that we have recently started. 
• Legal or regulatory matters
  • When we will start selling outside of Pakistan we would like to make sure that we are complying with all regulatory matters. And thus we require help in this sector as well. 
• Marketing, media and exposure
  • We know the Pakistani market and we are growing here. But we need help with expanding our reach to foreign markets. We also require help with digital marketing and strategies.