iziBAC

In the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, the educational sector is less than 5% digitized. The world is in dire need of a socially inclusive solution that addresses both the challenges of a global pandemic and the overall growing gap between the traditional teaching methods and the mental structure of younger generations, modelled from an early age to enjoy video content and interactive / game-like applications. The solution that we propose, iziBAC, is a freemium game-based educational mobile app with strong built-in gamification methods based on the Octalysis framework, and an internal marketplace for engaging video content. Content-agnostic, our app can be used in any language and applied to almost any kind of educational content. This approach leads to anxiety-free studying, greatly improving the retention rate (by 90%) and the user’s involvement (by 70%). iziBAC’s game mechanics trigger psychological processes aimed at inducing the optimal learning experience - Flow

At iziBAC, our vision is that the educational process can be engaging and fun for the pupils, while going above and beyond the current educational metrics, such as knowledge retention, ability development and social skills. We believe that our product offers a solution to dire social challenges such as the COVID-19 pandemic, NEETS, disparities between rural and urban education, social anxiety in the context of traditional education and the overall growing gap between the traditional teaching methods and the mental structure of younger generations (which leads to suboptimal educational results and a general dissatisfaction towards schools). In Romania (our home market) the discrepancy between rural and urban education is staggering - PISA scoring in large cities is almost double, compared to the rural areas). We also have a huge drop-out issue, which stems from the obsolete teaching methods, that fail to engage newer generations - more than 15% of high-school pupils per year. Out of the total 361.000 pupils, around 70% have a smartphone compatible with iziBAC, which means the total core addressable market is 252.700 pupils per year. Additionally, by addressing personal development education, we address the needs of ~2.2 million young people (aged 14-25).

iziBAC is a game-based mobile application designed to help pupils with test prep for the Baccalaureat exam (and later on, with the SAT exam), that offers a complete learning experience, based on three pillars:

• Game-based microlearning experience, based on the Octalysis gamification framework

• Peer-to-peer learning functionalities to aggregate a social learning community

• Engaging video and audio lessons based on the edutainment concept, allowing the best teachers to reach hundreds of thousands of pupils

To develop the app, we used a cross-platform technology (React Native) that allowed us to develop both IOS and Android at a lower cost. The backend is based on node.JS and scalable cloud infrastructure, designed to be scalable across curricula and geographical borders and easily replicable for various types of exams.

iziBAC offers a holistic game-based learning experience - the user can acquire new knowledge through the video lessons, test and reinforce them in an entertaining game environment and solidify his mastery through engagement in a peer-to-peer learning community. As support features, he can have a custom-tailored educational pathway designed for them based on their psychometric analysis done by an AI solution and could export their educational progress in a readable track record.

Observing the behaviour of our users, we can observe that 70% of our users are within the intended target group (ages 17-19, corresponding to the 11th and 12th grade), but 30% (a significant percentage) of our users are in the target group 25-35, which means young adults use our app as a trivia app.

The latest data about target group demographics indicate that around 148.000 pupils graduate the 12th grade each year. To this, we add around 19.000 pupils that stem from past generations and roughly 150.000 pupils in the eleventh grade. As we aim to increase participation to Baccalaureat and to reduce school drop-out rates, to the resulting number (317.000) we add 44.700, representing the average number of pupils that drop out from school during the last two years (15% out of 298.000). Out of the total 361.000 pupils, around 70% have a smartphone compatible with iziBAC, which means the total core addressable market is 252.700 pupils per year.

Based on the perceived interest as a trivia game, we estimate an additional 63.000 (~¼) spill-over users in the target age 25-35 (also including curious older siblings, parents, teachers etc).

This means that yearly, a grand total of 315.700 potential users. The demographics should remain fairly constant, albeit with a small but steady decrease. In the target age groups, 13.5% demographic decrease is expected until 2030 (average 1.3% per year). Additionally, by addressing personal development (non-formal) education, we expect to address the needs of approximately 2.2 million young people (aged 14-25).

However, for the sake of revenue estimation, we will use only the core addressable market, rounded up at 250.000 potential users.

Persona research.

The core user (we can call her Alina) is 18 years old and she is in the 12th grade at a good high school (63.6% of users are females), lives in Bucharest (75%+ of users are from urban areas) and uses iziBAC from an Android phone (64% of users are from Android, 36% from iOS) as a learning tool (as a opposed to a game-like experience). She plays throughout the week during breaks between classes and when she leaves school at 2PM, most likely on the way home or after she just arrived. (Monday is the busiest day of the week in terms of user activity). Alina is a performing student and is using multiple alternative tools to boost her learning experience. 

Main Goal:

• Passing the Baccalaureate exam with a very good grade (above 9)

Secondary emotional and social goals:

• Integrating in a community of clever, creative and high-aiming students

• Sharing her knowledge with a community of this kind (social status)

• Comparing herself to her colleagues

• Defining her hobbies and extracurricular passions (the target group age overlaps with key moments in defining one’s own identity as an individual).

• Proving to herself (and parents, friends, colleagues) that she is a performing pupil.

Demographics:

• Age - between 17 to 19 years-old

• Sex - mostly female

• Living area - mostly urban

Background:

• Middle-class parents

• Attends a medium to high ranked high school

• 11th or 12th grade

Her motivations in using iziBAC are (in the order of perceived importance):

• To verify her knowledge

• To gain additional knowledge through micro-learning

• To use an alternative and more engaging way of studying

• To have fun and/or compare herself to her colleagues

Her perceived pains are:

• The traditional learning system (school books/class teaching/prep books) is boring and non-engaging

• She feels a lack of motivation in studying for the exam as she perceives the exam as pointless in many ways and much of the curricula being outdated.

• She is being constantly distracted by social media, tv shows, game or other forms of entertainment.

• She feels like she is wasting a lot of time and money commuting to private lessons.

• She (and/or her family) consider that the private sessions are too expensive, which puts additional pressure for success.

• She is mostly limited to the quality of the education that her particular teacher can offer.

Fears:

• Not passing the BAC exam with a high grade 

• Not blending in with her peers

• The mockery of her parents

• Being made fun of by friends and family members

• Being labeled as a geek

• Cramming right before the exam

• Not having enough practical „real-world” knowledge

Challenges:

• Recalling crucial bits of information (specific dates, names, formulas or definitions)

• Being disciplined enough to learn in time and avoid cramming

• Testing acquired knowledge

• Trying to learn in a badly structured educational system

• Memorising difficult formulas & definitions

• Recalling general information from an exhaustive curricula

Psychographics:

1. Values

   1. Efficiency - seeks fast experiences that offer high reward / high value for low effort

      1. Realises the potential and importance of micro-learning and apps like iziBAC

   2. Consistency - values consistent work

   3. Education - believes in the real value of education and its importance in the modern society

   4. Enjoys freedom (thought - choice) - seeks experiences that make her feel the feeling of agency

2. Interests

   1. Technology

   2. Promoting high-school and attending a respected, well regarded college

   3. Finding out new information about the world on a daily basis

   4. Learning how the world works

   5. Informal learning

   6. Entrepreneurship 

In order to stay in close contact with the users' needs, we have made over 100 individual surveys, 20 focus groups and had more than 2000 survey answers and 1600 beta testers. By the time of this application, iziBAC was validated by 60k users, and we have thoroughly included their feedback in the app. We also have a learning community on Discord, with over 1000 users: https://discord.io/izibac where we can gather data directly from the users and learn more about their needs.

We plan to expand internationally with a version of iziBAC made specifically for the SAT exam, which will be called iziSAT. Annually, over 3 million pupils from around 170 countries take the SAT exam and we aim to provide for them a better, far cheaper digital learning experience.

Worldwide, access to education is biased in favour of urban areas, where traditional education corresponded with better-paid teachers. This led to a huge gap between rural and urban education.

This compounds the issue of traditional education not being suitable for the minds of new generations, modelled from an early age to enjoy video content and interactive/game-like applications. This mismatch can be seen in a decreased perceived pleasure and interest in the educational process for the pupils, leading to suboptimal educational results, an increase in drop-out rates which greatly stifles the future adult development and perspectives for a better life.

The MVP version of iziBAC was launched on 1st of June 2018 on Android and subsequently on iOS. With it, we managed to have 60,000 downloads, over 6k Monthly active users, trending #1 globally for 4 days in the educational apps category on the Play Store. We have also won many national and international prizes for social impact and innovation. We are proud to have obtained EC’s Seal of Excellence for our proposal no. 889758 at Horizon 2020’s SME instrument. We have been validated by private investors (currently evaluated at $2 mil. after closing a 160k EUR round at the end of 2020). We already have some modest revenue (in the tens-hundreds of euro per month), but most importantly, we managed to establish a powerful local brand and are already working to expand internationally with iziSAT.

The most common feedback about how the users learn through our app was “I got lost in the game mechanics and at the end of the playing session, I realised I knew more than when I started playing”. We aim to implement technologies and gamification mechanics that provide seamless and effortless learning experiences. 

• Instant feedback loops provide instant gratification for the learning process, greatly increasing the engagement of the users and the retention rate of the knowledge.

• Each user can go through the learning process at his own pace, leading to a decrease in social anxiety among secondary school pupils.

• By using rich imagery and animated images, we complement the written knowledge with powerful visual support, greatly increasing the information retention rate and cross-disciplinary contextualization of information.

• Our AI-based psychometric analysis functionality offers not only an objective evaluation of the pupil’s ability development and acquisition of knowledge, but can provide tailored education and fully-customizable learning pathways.

• The edutainment videos offer a fun, engaging micro-learning experience adapted for short attention spans.

• Our community and the multiplayer feature create stronger ties between pupils through both cooperation and constructive competition, leveraging the positive social benefits in a digital environment.

• By providing a learning experience in a mobile app, we aim to become an alternative to private tutoring, reducing educational costs and time inefficiencies with time lost in transit.

Our solution is also computational light, so it doesn’t require any high-level hardware equipment. As such, it promotes social inclusion to access to education.

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The OKR what we measure are:

total number of users, monthly active users, app ratings on store, referrals (to gauge virality), Day 1 and day 30 retention (to gauge retention), Avg. sessions per user (to gauge usage), social media followings (TikTok, Instagram, Facebook) to gauge organic reach and word of mouth and obviously revenue to reach self-sustainability (ARPPU, ARPU, conversion rates).

Currently, we are 4 cofounders, one vested associate and 4 full time employees/contractors. We also have a part-time paid intern. In total we are a team of 10 people.

Raluca Stratulat, our founder and CEO is a teacher and architect and the educational core of the team. Teacher with over 8 years of experience in working with pupils of all ages, Raluca is very passionate when it comes to education. Having extensively studied entrepreneurship in education, psychopedagogy and education sciences she learned from alternative and highly successful educational models to build one that is open to technological innovation, focusing on spontaneous engagement and the natural desire for growth of the individual.

Adrian Stratulat, co-founder and COO, is an experienced social entrepreneur and blockchain expert with over 7 years of project management, business development and digital marketing experience.

Adrian-Eduard Lache is the CTO of iziBAC, acting as the architect of the software infrastructure, chief of design and UX.  Eduard is a graduate of the  Polytechnic University of Bucharest and has over 5 years experience in Java Script: Vue, Angular, NodeJs and 4 years IT project management.

Laurentiu Pantelimon acts as the Head of Mobile development. He is an expert in Java Script, Android and React Native and has written his thesis on Machine Learning.

Alexandru Oprea is a full-stack specialist and senior React Native developer with over 5 years of experience in software development.

Ovidiu Deliu is a front-end developer, specialist in React Native

Adrian Miu is the gamification expert and game-design master, having previously designed various games and gamification systems.

Marius Dogaru is our Social media specialist, helping coordinate the community and testing groups.

Our team is led by a woman, Raluca Stratulat, who is also one of top 100 women in tech in Europe - https://euclidnetwork.eu/2021/...

She is also one of the leading young leaders in social change in Romania, and aspire mentor, TedX speaker and more

 https://www.dor.ro/raluca-baci...

We are looking for an acceleration/mentorship program that will help us with the launching of our international product - iziSAT. Obviously, we are also interested in future funding for the same purpose, but it doesn't represent the main focus of our application. We are more interested to validate our business model, reach product-market fit and scale social impact.

We are looking for both edtech and non-education partners to share the risks of our international expansion. 

We consider that our solution is offering equitable education.

We are building peer-to-peer learning communities.

Our Founder is a woman in tech and we wish to promote women entrepreneurship.

We are using AI to develop our game-based app.

To further develop our AI-based solution.

We consider that our solution is offering equitable education.