Hope Corporation

In Latin America there is a lack of interest in STEM education, after 8th grade, a lot of students are not interested in science anymore. This lead to a huge demotivation not only in learning science, but also in learning engineering and technology.

The way we solve this problem is inspiring kids through immersive technologies. We transform the learning process to stimulate the creativity and spatial intelligence of children using augmented reality. Our lessons include biology, astronomy, paleontology and natural science in general (and we are developing a lot more!).

If we scaled this solution globally, definitely will change the life of children because they will be inspired to learn science in a spectacular way.

In Peru, 60% of students consider science as an entertain course, but only 30% of them enjoy learning it at school. The consequence of this is that 47% of students have a low-medium score in science lessons and after 8th grade, they are not interested in science anymore. This lead to a demotivation not only in science, but also in engineering and in technology. 

Students prefer, the few of them who like STEM topics, to learn science, technology and engineering through Wikipedia, YouTube or Google, and in more than 70% of the cases, they consider the teacher doesn’t have the tools for keeping engage the class with these STEM topics. This directly has an impact of over 2.5 peruvian children.

Also, our Latin-American society doesn’t encourage STEM learning as important. This situation is similar in a lot of parts in Latin-America, including Colombia, Bolivia, Ecuador or even Chile. We estimate that there are more than 50 million children in Latin America are in same situation as Peru. 

We solve the problem in two approaches: Students and teachers. For students, we provide apps and a gameboard to learn science and for teachers, we provide a platform for teaching in an effective way.

Our first solution (for students) consists of two products: Qbox, a set of 8 flashcards, and Qcolor, a coloring book, both work with an app. These products are the first approach for kids to the augmented reality world and both teach about animals, dinosaurs, astronomy and anatomy. The current users are fascinated by how they learn and thus want more lessons.

Our second solution is a software for teachers and schools. The teachers access our different lessons and even they could build their own lessons in augmented and virtual reality. This product, Cademy for schools, was a subscription plan per month, but due to the Covid-19 pandemic, we had to re-structure it to the new needs of online classes. We are currently working on a new version and plan to launch again in November 2021.

Our primary goal is to develop the curiosity of children towards science, technology and engineering (STEM). Our beneficiaries are kids between 5 to 12 years old curious by nature. They find STEM fantastic, and love to research about those topics, but are not guided adequately to learn more about them. In school, at least 60% of kids find STEM courses fascinating, but only 30% of them enjoy learning these courses at school, and the result is that after 8th grade (between 9 to 10 years old), the kids find STEM courses boring and are not interested in STEM anymore. This situation is not isolated in Peru, we found similar cases in Colombia, Chile and Mexico. 

The way we engage these kids with STEM is through our platform to teach science, technology and engineering in a fantastic way using augmented reality, we provide them with these courses and constantly we are updating our topics. Once per month, we love to hear from them, we send surveys to know how to improve our current platform and get ideas to develop new topics. Until know, we have impacted in the lives of more than 15,000 kids across Latin America improving their knowledge about STEM topics.

In 2019 we launched Cademy, our first product that consisted of platform to teach science in school. This platform helped teachers to enhance the learning of students using iPads. We supported the pedagogy and facilitated the instruction of biology and anatomy courses in a fantastic way. We worked with 5 schools at the beginning to test the product.

After the 2020 pandemic and due to the new needs of online classes, we re-structured Cademy and launched Qbox AR, a solution that helped students, instead of teachers, to develop their curiosity to learn science in their homes.

Because with Qbox we had found our product market fit. Now we have the customer profile and exactly know what is her needs. Since the launch of Qbox in November 2020, our sales have been growing at 10% per month and with Hope AR (the free version of Qbox), our customer profile is consistent -parents between 28 and 45 years old who have between 5 to 12 years old- and increasing at 7% per month. Also, this customer profile is remarkably similar in Peru, Mexico, Colombia and Chile; but since our current capacity of operations is limited, we are only covering Peru. Since we have found our customer profile, we are launching our second product in June 2021, Qcolor, a coloring book that will bring to live the creativity of children using augmented reality too. With this product, we expect to increase our Customer LifeTime Value (LTV)

We strongly believe that the engagement of courses in the learning process of children must be addressed through gaming techniques, such as rewards, challenges, different levels, etc., because through that process, the topics seem easy to kids. Based on these reasons, is why we create Hope. The value proposition of our products is center in how to create the best experience for kids, and despite there are a lot of techniques, methodologies or strategies that teachers apply to enhance the learning of kids, our current customers (parents) say that our solution is an excellent approach on how to engage the kids with STEM topics. Augmented reality is a new approach that is increasing worldwide, and we believe its impact in education will be huge, as we have demonstrated.

Also, using augmented reality is a new way to learn things, because it uses visual space and let the kids to start thinking in 3D, involving their physical environment (class) with their pears and lead them into discussion. For example, in one class we have with Nuestra Señora del Consuelo (one school in Lima we worked with), the teacher was explaining about dinosaurs, then he used his tablet and use a projector to show the dinosaur in class. Immediately, all the classroom started to participate and create a story about the dinosaur. All of this event happen in just minutes. Imaging if we could replicate this experience through the schools in Latin America.

We have three products on the market: Qbox, Qcolor and Hope AR. For Qbox and Qcolor, our current clients are parents with kids between 5 to 12 years old. In Peru, we have sold more than 400 Qboxes since November 2020 and 90 Qcolor Books since May 2021 in fifteen peruvian cities. The potential market for both products in one year is 5,000 people and 50,000 in 5 years. In the long term, we expect to reach more than 2.5 million parents in Peru, and up to 50 million in Latin America.

Hope AR already have impacted 15,000 people since its launch in May 2020. We expect to reach 45,000 users by May 2022 and 250,000 by 2026.

Qbox and Qcolor are physical products, so the first key indicator is the quantity of sales units both products have. For Qbox is 410 units and for Qcolor is 90 units in total. Our retention rate is 27% for Qbox and 40% for Qcolor in the first month. Also, the users spend 15 minutes and 10 minutes per day approximately. With Qbox we have a growth rate of 10% per month (the last month we sold near 100 Qboxes).

Our Customer Acquisition Costs are $4.50 and the customer Lifetime Value is $25.00. Finally, we have a free app, Hope AR Realidad Aumentada, that has more than 15,000 downloads, 23% of retention and a quality rate of 4.20 of 5.00 in Google PlayStore.

For Cademy for schools, we had more than 500 users in 10 different schools. The satisfaction rate for teachers was 82% with only 2 lessons (biology and anatomy), but didn’t had any revenue from them because it was an early MVP.

Full time staff: Two co-founders, two 3D/2D designers.

Part time staff: Two marketing analysts and one programmer.

Both cofunders are two passionate engineers who want to give better education to the world. Bruno, industrial engineer with over 5 years of experience in business consultancy, has education background experience through a diverse of educational projects: Co-founded an NGO at his 22 years old, at the age of 26 he created the first network of libraries in public schools in Lima, and now he is the Chief Market Officer of Hope and responsible for content of the lessons, product development and market strategy.

Anthony, system engineer, developed a lot of apps and coding for the last 5 years. Besides, he has experience in 3D modelling and rendering. He has 4 years of experience in educational projects also, in which he developed an app that focused on teaching biology and astronomy. Now, he is the Chief Executive Officer of Hope and responsible for the design, front end and back end, coding and app integrations.

Since September 2018, both work exclusively at Hope, learning from their mistakes and success in the market. Now, the five people that work with us work hard and with one purpose, to enhance the creativity of kids through immersive technologies.

As for our results, our apps have received enormous support of the users (more than 15,000 downloads and 82% of customer satisfaction). Finally, regardless of our background, we strongly believe that the creativity and learning process of children can be enhanced with immersive technologies. With this approach and our variety of skills, we make Hope unique.

We strive to transform the learning process globally by enhancing enate abilities and developing creativity of children. When Anthony and Bruno created hope, their share the values of Hope to all the people that got involved with us:

1.- Innovation: Deliver the best pedagogical strategies to provide low-cost quality learning

2.- Passion: Dedication to generating impact

3.- Community Integrity: Create supportive ecosystem for parents, teachers and children by providing a valuable learning experience.

Of course, Innovation and Passion are what drives us everyday when we work, when we share ideas with the team and even when we request a feedback from them. And recently we have been working a lot with Community Integrity, because we do not want to create a product with the purpose of sales, we want to co-create a product with the purpose of co-create, that’s why we constantly make follow up on customers, send surveys, analyze seriously each word they tell us to improve our work, because we simply love to stay in touch with the people that support us and to know that are work is impacting their lives.

To be honest, we didn’t know about the program until we receive the email from Amanda Saeli six days ago. Then we started to search and know about the program, and we got a really big surprise to know that a Peruvian organization has been selected in the past (Laboratoria). Then we started to research about MIT Solve and simply got in love with the program.

As entrepreneurs, we always love to be close to the entrepreneurship community, to know about success stories, and to get involve because we think that this kind of opportunity help to enhance the abilities of the entrepreneur. As we have research, we are completely sure that you could give us strong mentoring towards the future of Hope. Also, according to our weaknesses, strategy, competitors and financial, are the ones that we think we have to address first, and with your help we strongly believe we could strengthen those weaknesses.

Finally, we know that you have a lot of mentors with a variety of backgrounds, and we think experience is one of the most important thing in business. Also, the involvement MIT Solve make on the program with entrepreneurs demonstrate how compromise you are with the startup ecosystem. With your knowledge, we could reach our goals to expand more rapidly through Latin America

Basically we want to enhance these areas in our startups:

Business model, Financial, Public Relations, and Product design

We are open to initiate a partnership with the organization you think would be the best fit to us.

Definitely will help us to expand our business quickly. We need strong partnerships, mentorships,  business connections and exposure, and that’s why GSR Award could be so important to us, because we target the same market (STEM education).

Also, the situation in the local communities in Peru is remarkably similar to that in Chile, Colombia and Mexico, definitely would have an impact through the region. Also, augmented reality is an innovative technology that is already transforming different industries, such as architecture, engineering and games, and what we propose is to transform education.

Also, while our business to customer products represent the majority of our sales, we know that the funding of GSR could help Hope to improve our business to business platform (Cademy), that will lead us to launch this product before the expected date and give funding the marketing and publicity we need.