EdCaptain

While there is a lot of “WHAT TO TEACH” teach in the market, there is lack of knowledge about “HOW TO TEACH” among parents and caregivers. We are building a platform for parents and caregivers to get access to "How to's" of early childhood education and also they can share their working practices with others. The solution has potential to be local and global at the same time with various tips and variations available to cover all target segments. 

Life skills such as creativity, problem solving, emotional intelligence, communication, and collaboration have been recognized as the most important skills that we need to provide our children for a better future. And the seeds of these skills can be best sowed in early childhood. Unfortunately, the tools and know-how of teaching life skills to children are available to a limited few number of experts or educators. Thereby several children are missing out on the opportunity of learning life essential skills. There are three key missing components in the current education ecosystem for parent and teachers: (a) Limited access to high quality, relevant content; (b) Limited peer learning opportunities; and (c) Parents as a teaching resource are currently underutilized.

We will be serving parents, teachers and caregivers with children in the age group 1 year to 6 years. While our initial market would be India (Tier I/II cities), the solution has potential to be scaled across geographies and languages. We are building community champions to help encourage other parents and teachers use the content.

EdCaptain (https://edcaptain.com) is a 21st century platform to empower parents, teachers and caregivers to become better educators. The platform offers 3 critical services to parents and caregivers on Early Childhood Education: (1) Do-it-yourself (DIY), fun, experiential activities for life skills with videos and instructions that parents can do with children at home; (2) access to life skills related articles and other content from global educators and parents; and (3) an interactive community forum where parents and teachers can ask questions and share experiences related to life skills. EdCaptain also brings in best practices of early childhood across globe by encouraging teachers to share their teaching tips with other teachers and parents globally. While there is a lot of “WHAT TO TEACH” teacher in the market, EdCaptain brings in “HOW TO TEACH” knowledge readily available to everyone. 

In the current ecosystem, there is a need for a platform with globally curated content by parents and expert educators for all caregivers. Also, this platform will leverage data analytics and AI algorithms to support better content suggestions for teachers. This platform will make life skills tools and know-how accessible and available to every caregiver through interactive media. This hasn’t been achieved in the life skills space at all (as compared to several solutions available in the academic space).

The technology platform is being designed on the LAMP stack (Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP). The platform is being designed in a modular forms to cater to the needs of different stakeholders and will be supported by data analytics tools and AI algorithms. 

If we equip individual parents and caregivers with resources to educate children with techniques that are aligned with their own teaching style, then we can exponentially increase the delivery impact of 21st century skills in children.

The platform is currently in alpha stage and we are launching the platform in August 2019. It is expected to serve more than 10,000 parents and caregivers in the first year and reach over 5 millions parents and caregivers in 5 years.

Scale for the platform will have a three dimensional growth: (1) Availability of more content for caregivers (2) Multi-lingual translation of popular content (3) Increased number of parents joining the platform geographically and even outside India. ‘Pull’ mechanism will be used for this platform as the caregivers will seek more recognition globally for their innovative techniques.

Biggest challenge: Getting quality content and early community champions who start using the content.

By bringing onboard global education experts.

We currently have 3 full-time and 7 part-time staff.

A strong leadership team with both, technology and education experts, is already in place to deliver a solution of this nature. The startup has been founded by a life skills educator, Saurabh Agarwal, who is a Harvard and IIT alumni with more than 10 years of experience in social sector consulting with PricewaterhouseCoopers, Deloitte, and The World Bank.

We are in process of forming formal partnerships.

Since the goal is to reach all caregivers across income segment, the platform and the content will be free for all. There are some business models that are being employed for future sustainability, such as the freemium model with access to premium services such as expert advise and counseling, or creating a market place for 21st century education products and  solutions, or revenue from online advertisements, etc.  

There are some business models that are being employed for future sustainability, such as the freemium model with access to premium services such as expert advise and counseling, or creating a market place for 21st century education products and  solutions, or revenue from online advertisements, etc.