UcloudNet

The main problem that we are trying to solve with the UcloudNet System is the lack of access to digital tools and connectivity that affects most underdeveloped nations and schools around the world. This problem is especially abundant in Peru, our home country, where 6 out of 10 Peruvians do not have access to a reliable source of internet. This translates to almost 20 million Peruvians disconnected from the digital age.

In terms of internet service, 60.6% of households in Lima, the capital city of Peru, have reliable internet, compared to 8.2% of households in rural peru. This shows how rural, remote communities are mainly affected by this problem. If we look at the rate of internet access in rural schools in Peru, the problem becomes more evident, where only 8.8% of schools have any sort of internet connection and just 7.6% of these schools have an internet cabin or booth in the location/community of the school. 

This problem repeats around the world, where only just over half of households (55%) have an internet connection, according to UNESCO. In the developed world, 87% are connected compared with 47% in developing nations, and just 19% in the least developed countries. This is  due to different reasons, such as poor infrastructure, elevated prices and poor management of resources by local governments.

A big factor that has made this problem even worse is the COVID 19 pandemic. In most underdeveloped countries, thousands of students have lost valuable in person class hours that they will not be able to make up. Just in Peru, according to figures from the National Household Survey (ENAHO) of the INEI, the percentage of students who continued to take classes in 2020 through any modality fell five percentage points compared to the attendance levels of 2019, going from 92% to 87%. This means that more than 400,000 students flatly stopped taking classes last year as a result of the pandemic.

Access problems have caused adolescents with lower incomes and rural areas of Peru to opt for other activities, reducing the time devoted to their education. This is evidenced, for example, in the notable increase in the number of workers between the ages of 14 and 18 in rural areas of the country, since the start of the state of emergency in 2020. The average number of adolescent workers in rural areas increased from 388 thousand in the first quarter of 2020, to 485 thousand in the first quarter of 2021.

The UcloudNet System is a low-cost, portable system that combines hardware and software to allow hundreds or even thousands of users to connect simultaneously and at high speed to a universe of digital tools, applications and educational content. Users are able to browse a library with more than 100,000 units of quality learning content, as well as have unlimited access to the Ministry of Education learning portal call “Aprendo en Casa'' and “Peru Educa'' as well as Wikipedia, thousands of books, educational videos, movies and digital apps all without assessing any fees for data consumption.

Uaiki delivers a local cloud solution that provides access to the digital world and all its tools. Through UcloudNet, all students and educators within a community are able to continue their study plans as they have everything needed from the national curriculum in “Aprendo en Casa”. They will also be able to find new topics to learn from and interact with educational apps to further increase their knowledge. Adults in the community can also benefit from access to apps such as “Uventas'' where they will be able to trade goods and services.

UcloudNet is a modular technology kit (varies storage capacity, users and coverage area) that is not dependent on having a live internet connection. Thus, it is possible to use the system no matter how remote the location. Once connected to any energy source, conventional or renewable, the UcloudNet Kit creates a wireless signal cloud of up to 1,000 meters in diameter using either sectorial or omnidirectional antennas that allows up to 1,000 users to connect simultaneously. It is important to note the system is extensible through the addition of storage capacity. The system needs only occasional internet access to keep the system updated, fix any issues, collect user and system data. 

Ucloudnet is especially useful in remote and disadvantaged communities. It guarantees autonomy because it is not dependent on a telecommunications company for ongoing operation. It is modular, versatile, and portable, and it is compatible with any cell phone that has been produced after 2008. Finally, the system protects users from unwanted and inappropriate content such as pornography and violence while ensuring a friendly and intuitive experience.

Our target population are the thousands of disadvantaged and remote communities that lack both internet connectivity and access to quality educational resources. Most of these communities suffer from extreme poverty, low education rates, and childhood malnutrition. The Peruvian government struggles to meet the needs of these communities due to their small size and remote locations. This situation is compounded by the fact that these communities do not produce significant tax revenue for the state and are therefore, easily overlooked and underserved. Additional factors include inefficient use of resources and corruption. The private sector will not serve these communities as they have no monetary incentive to do so. The situation in these communities has been the most affected by the pandemic and the restrictions that the government imposed. The vast majority of people in rural Peru depend on daily wages to survive. Few were able to work during the extended lockdown.

The Uaiki system will provide access to quality digital resources for these forgotten communities and schools. They will be able to access educational as well as controlled entertainment content without consuming any data, meaning that there is very little cost associated with accessing the platform. Our system also helps to increase commerce within small communities and help entrepreneurs, as users can sell products and services on our Uventas app. Users will also be able to read news from our Unoticias app, learn about medicine from our Telesalud app and subscribe themselves in courses ranging from entrepreneurship to local languages (quechua). Children within these communities will have the opportunity to learn about the world, its history and hopefully with this information they will be able to have bigger dreams than before.

Uaiki is made up of diverse and committed employees. We are all Peruvian. We have first hand experience with the problem faced by remote communities. We are incredibly well positioned to help these communities and deliver our solution. I am Karim Rifai, the founder and CEO of Uaiki. I completed my studies in economics with a specialization in development economies. I have over 8 years of experience. Our team includes Esteban Lorted de Mola, a business major and leader of the commercial team, Derek Ricketts, an economist in charge of alliances and donations. We also have a full team of peruvian programmers and engineers in charge of developing and improving our software.

We are based in Lima, Peru in very close proximity to hundreds, even thousands of rural communities and schools that lack access to the quality learning resources and the internet.  Most of rural Peru is extremely poor so that even when the internet is accessible, it is beyond the means of the majority. Many on our team come from humble backgrounds. This is particularly true of our programming team who managed to educate themselves and progress in their careers due in large measure to the opportunities provided by the internet.
Peru is an extremely diverse country, with a total of 84 out of 103 ecosystems and 28 out of 32 climates on the planet. This means that Peru is a great starting point for our journey, since we can implement it in many different places within the country and be sure that our solution will work in most places around the world. The good thing is that we have already installed our system in the Amazon, the Andes and the desert coast of Peru and it works perfectly.

We have already implemented our system in a number of remote schools and communities in Peru. We have spent many days and weeks living in these communities, helping to rebuild schools while equipping them with UcoudNet. We have experienced what they live in their day to day lives in order to fully understand their needs and struggles. We are now confident enough after all these experiences to say that we know how they feel and how our system could help them change their lives. 

We are applying to Solve in order to get our solution out there for people to notice its potential and the impact it can have in millions of remote schools and communities around the world. We hope to find partners and reach as many people as possible.

We are facing a few important barriers, some of them more complicated than others. First of all is the technical barrier. Given the complicated geography of Peru, it can be a challenge to install in some locations, especially in the jungle. We already have a team of experts that have acquired a lot of knowledge and experience in this field, but we welcome any institution or individual to help us improve technique.

We also face a financial challenge. Given that the schools we are trying to help are in the most remote areas of Peru, it can be hard for them to find any help. We have made many donations to disadvantaged schools, but given the amount of these kinds of communities in Peru and in the world, it can be quite complicated to help as many people as we can without any financial help. We are currently working with the private sector to reach more schools. We are also working with the government and have made a few programs with the ministry of education, but the level of bureaucracy makes it really complicated for us to keep growing and reach all the regions of peru.

Peru needs this technology and our help. The country has more than 90,000 populated centers (towns), most of them are located in rural areas with no access to internet, some of them even without any access to mobile internet due to their geographical location, such as the Amazon and the high Andes.

The UcloudNet System is a completely new solution combining two main elements; hardware and software. We have been working on developing our innovative software for the last 7 years and we keep looking for ways to improve it and make it more efficient. We have a whole team of Peruvian programmers working day and night to bring the best possible experience to the user. 

Related to hardware, we combine different elements such as hard drives, switches, SD Cards, antennas, network stabilizers and more in order to create a wifi cloud for all the users to connect and navigate through our software.

Through our system we bring access to the best of the digital era to places where the internet cannot access, such as the high Andes or the amazon. Our technology enables remote learning for students of these remote areas. Once our technology kit is installed in the community, students can access the cloud and download classes from “Aprendo en Casa” to their phones as well as books and educational videos, take them home and continue their studies. This was something unthinkable just a few years ago for most of these people, but now thanks to Uaiki they are able to navigate through our portal of contents, download anything they want, upload new stuff and interact with the community online.

Our system also facilitates the in class learning experience for both students and teachers. As part of our solution, we have constant training for teachers and settlers. Our goal is for the community to make the most out of this tool and learn how to use it extensively. Teachers can upload new content to the cloud and then share with the class.  We include a projector, where the kit can be connected and students can watch educational videos together guided by the teacher. We upload new content every week, and given the modular characteristics of our system we have no problems with storage capacity since we can just install a second 6TB hard drive and so on.

Our technology also helps to lift administrative burdens on educators, given that teachers can track student progress, set goals, develop polls and make use of many more digital tools. There are many apps within the ecosystem, such as Moodle, Wikipedia, Ucloud, Aprendo En Casa and even our own ecommerce platform (Uanuncios y Ventas) for users to trade goods and services, and many more that can be used in order to improve both teacher and student experience inside the classroom as well as outside of it. 

Uaiki’s plan is to delivery UcloudNet in the next 2 years to all departments(states) of Peru and Guatemala. In the next 5 years we plan to reach Bolivia, Equator, Colombia, El Salvador and Mexico. In the next 5 years we plan to connect more than 1 million users that benefit weekly with UcloudNet and its different digital services. 

To allow this expansion we plan to position Uaiki regionally through our partnership with Open Learning Exchange and the United Nation, with whom we have just been granted an IOM/USAID budget to combat migration through the use of our system in the Guatemalan highlands. Moreover, we have a team of more than 25 members that are continuously opening new doors though our B2B and B2C models, both of these, plan to serve as well the public sector and private sector to help deliver low cost reliable connectivity and quality education, while also positioning the image of this allied institutions though our ecosystem’s digital channels. 

When we work directly with schools and communities, their main objective is to bring connectivity, improve their methods for education and have the best tools of the digital age.

Our system is capable of satisfying all these objectives. We offer the possibility of accessing thousands of books, movies, music, Wikipedia and other help to enhance the education of all children within the communities. Previously, many of them had no way of accessing new quality information and many students had to spend money on cell phone data just to keep up with remote classes and programs such as “Aprendo en Casa”. Using Ucloudnet they will be able to access all these classes completely free and without data consumption.

In this way, children are motivated to continue studying, parents spend less on data packages for their children to watch classes, and teachers themselves can take advantage of the platform to improve their teaching methods.

In the same way, our solution achieves an increase in the community's digital literacy rate, an improvement in the reading rate, an increase in commercial transactions and becomes a very valuable tool for teachers to bring a much more educational experience. where students can browse and explore the more than 100,000 high-quality digital contents that UcloudNet has.

We also provide training and user reports for all the schools and communities that we implement in. We have developed specific materials in order to make the training easier. We have manuals with specific steps in order for teachers and students to be able to register an account, create new categories in the Ucloud app, upload content to the cloud, approve content uploaded by students, follow users, create new playlists within the Umultimedia app, and many more.

Once the training is done, as part of our UcloudNet subscription, we provide constant technical support, whether it is by phone, zoom or if necessary in person. Uaiki constantly uploads new content to the cloud, and we are always creating new apps to implement to our system so students and teachers can make the most out of this tool.

Every month we provide the school with a user report. In this report we present data obtained from the UcloudKit installed in a specific school. Thanks to our technology, we are able to read the data and provide valuable information for teachers and students. We can see how many people hable logged in and registered to the system. We are able to report how many people have accessed a specific app, what content has been the most watched and downloaded. 

Thanks to UcloudNet, 100% of the students can continue their classes using the program “Aprendo en Casa" without cost or mobile data consumption. This means weekly savings for parents of between 5 and 8 soles. Due to the pandemic, access to programs such as “Aprendo en Casa'' became very important, since students could not attend classes. This means that Uaiki has managed to keep all its users who are currently in high school up to date with their classes, providing a large number of tools to improve their educational experience.

In the same way, our system helps boost local economies thanks to applications such as Ununcios and Uventas, where there is a huge increase in commercial exchanges carried out in the community.

Therefore, at Uaiki we are convinced that it is the most appropriate and robust solution to combat the problem of connectivity in rural areas. Thanks to the adaptability to the needs of each population, a design with the target audience in mind, easy replication and a motivation and use plan for the program, we can say that we have all the necessary elements to improve education within a specific community.

Uaiki has evolved a theory of change that is community focused and centered on improving access to both quality learning opportunities and information. 

1. We believe that education is a community undertaking that requires the input of state and local resources to affect change;

2. We believe that for external support to be truly effective, inputs must be harmonized and aligned in order to realize outputs that are meaningful and sustainable;

3. We believe that change in classroom practice and learning starts with access to quality resources coupled with enhanced teacher training and professional development;

4. We are deeply concerned with the significant technology and information gaps between rural and urban and between wealth and poor communities and we feel strongly that strategies to address these gaps are central to educational equity;

6. We believe that improving teacher access to quality learning content is a key input that will have a positive impact on retention of students and closing the gender gap. 

Our technology uses hardware and software simultaneously to provide access to a broad range of resources and tools so that children and educators can access the best of the digital age without the need of internet or even mobile data consumption. Our hardware is composed of our UcloudNet Central Server, a network adapter, a stabilizer, some patch cords, a gigabit switch, a cabinet for storage and different antennas as well as towers if necessary. The server does need electricity, but the load demands are very low making it possible to run the system off of a simple solar panel. We consider this an essential component needed to make it extremely accessible for most remote locations around Peru and the world.

It is important to note that we offer different levels of installation depending on the needs of the school or community. Our basic model comes with an access point antenna and no structure, allowing us to create a wifi cloud of 200 meters in diameter and up to 300 users connected simultaneously. Our plus model comes with an access point antenna, one omnidirectional antenna and a metallic tower of 9 meters long, allowing us to create a bigger wifi cloud of 500 meters in diameter and up to 600 users connected simultaneously. And finally, our pro model comes with one access point antenna, three sectorial antennas and a 18 meter tower, creating a wifi cloud of 1km and up to 1000 users connected simultaneously.

We have also developed software in order to provide access to more than 100,000 digital learning resources related to education, technology, higher and basic education, entertainment and more. Our system includes many useful applications such as Ucloud, where students can browse for educational content, Uanuncios y Uventas where they will be able to sell goods and services and Umultimedia where they can access a range of educational movies. We also include a Kiwix app so students can have access to all the content of Wikipedia without any data consumption. Apart from those apps, we have a team of software developers working constantly on new apps and ideas. In the coming months we'll be seeing new apps such as Unews, Ugames and many more.

Uaiki’s team is composed of Peruvians from many different regions of the country. Some of our software developers are from the jungle, a few people from our commercial team are from the capital as well as the andes. We have people from different backgrounds, some from rural communities that managed to excel in life due to the opportunities brought by the internet. We also have a few members with international experience working and studying in the US and Australia. 

We continue to recruit Peruvians from all different backgrounds that want to have a positive impact in the country and their communities. Uaiki is always recruiting new talent and looking for motivated people that want to improve their skills and push themselves to a better life. We believe in hard work and competence, that is why every member of our team knows that they are extremely valuable to the organization and we compensate them accordingly for their effort. We are looking for leaders in each area and we try to always give new opportunities and responsibilities to every member of our organization so they can keep growing with us.

Uaiki has policies that prohibit descrimiation on the basis of race, gender, ability, or sexual orientaiton. We are committed to promoting an inclusive environment for all. 

Uaiki operates under a mixed use social benefit model. We believe that access to quality learning should be available to all equally. However, we live in a world driven by inequality. In order to carry out our mission we believe that those who can pay should subsidize access for those who can not. Ideally, this would be a function of the state whereby taxes would be collected and used to level the playing field for all citizens. However, that is clearly not the case. 

Our clients include private schools and public schools (working together with the Peruvian government and the Ministry of Education), mining and agricultural companies that want to help the communities where they have ongoing operations, local/regional governments and seaport companies. We charge these clients market rates in order to cover our costs and to subsidize communities that lack the resources and access to quality education. 

We provide our clients with a full package that includes the UcloudNet System, UcloudNet subscription, ongoing training, and high speed internet. We are responsible for the installation of the system anywhere in the country as well as the support, which can be via telephone, zoom or if necessary in person,  during the length of the program.

Our system is a very low cost option in order to improve connectivity in schools that are in remote communities where ADSL and optic fiber internet are either not available or prohibitively expensive. People within these communities want access to the digital age but it is too expensive for them. They are looking for better opportunities to educate themselves, find new interests and ultimately have a better and more fulfilled life. 

Our main source of revenue comes from sales of the UcloudNet system to other businesses, such as the ones mentioned above. Selling our subscription on a month to month basis is another way we make money. We also receive donations to our foundation, the Uaiki Global Initiative. For example, in 2020 we received a donation from the Ministry of Education in order to implement our system in  a school in the region of Apurimac. We have also received donations from Goldman Sachs and Nearsure. On the other hand, our cost structure is composed of the manufacturing costs of the system, the rent of our office, legal expenses (such as patents, contracts and more), marketing and sales expenses and employee salaries. 

As mentioned above, our main source of revenue comes from the sales of our UcloudNet system together with the subscriptions for ongoing content and support. We have managed to implement our solution in many regions of Peru but we feel that there is still a lot to be done. We also receive donations to our foundation in order to implement in specific areas of Peru where there is a lot of poverty and need of connectivity to help improve the school systems and education quality. We have managed to work on some programs with the government and we believe this would be the best way to try and get to all the schools in need in Peru. The issue we struggle with is the fact that some elements within the Peruvian government can be complicated due to bureaucracy and corruption. We know that it will take a few years in order to be working hand in hand with the peruvian government but we are convinced that an alliance between each other would be the best way to address the lack of connectivity in schools and communities in Peru.

Uaiki funds operations through a combination of individual donations, grant funding, and technology licensing. Our system was implemented at 5 schools in Puno by a partner nonprofit partner organization called “Practical Action” who paid a small licensing fee to Uaiki. In addition, we sold a number of kits to private companies such as Repsol, Cementos Pacasmayo, and several mining companies, Buenaventura and La Poderosa. These companies were all looking to help improve connectivity in communities near their operations. These  installations were done in local schools as well as central plazas and at hospitals. 

We are currently working on a program with the United Nations and Open Learning Exchange in Guatemala. The aim of the program is to provide our system along with specific courses to a small impoverished and marginalized community in Guatemala. We hope to replicate this program in most of Central America. We hope that Guatemala is the first of many programs to come once we prove the success of the pilot. The final piece of our finding puzzle comes from private companies. We have received donations from several companies including Goldman Sachs and Nearsure. 

Finally, we are also exploring the possibility of working in partnership with the Peruvian Ministry of Education. We have already worked with them in a program made in Apurimac. We are hoping now to replicate the success of this program in many schools in the Andes and Amazon regions where the lack of internet is the main problem for a better education.