Octava Social Innovation Challenge
Galaxy Kids - English & Chinese for kids
One-line solution summary
Provide every child an affordable access to learn English and Chinese speaking through AI and speech recognition technologies on mobile
Pitch your solution
Galaxy Kids is an educational mobile app with AI characters that understand and teach children English and Chinese speaking using actual human voices and personalities. The app would solve the problem of inaccessibility for children to learn English and Chinese speaking because they will always have a friend to practice conversations with and learn to speak correctly with our app.
Globalization that many people spoke about in the early 20s has become the contemporary world. Yet, many parents and children in Thailand are far behind on this ever-changing phenomenon. It becomes clear from the English proficiency of Thai people that there is a need for English literacy. Not to mention the movement of the global economy that suggests Chinese as the thriving language.
We are confident in making mass impacts on language learning for young children in South-East Asia. We believe that every child should have access to learning and speaking a second language in today’s world with modern technologies. Our team developed this app using modern 3D animated graphics, unique AI characters that can interact with the children. The characters can also provide scores and feedback for improvement.
As a result, more people in South-East Asia, starting with Thailand, can catch up with the ever-changing world and improve the overall economic, financial, and cultural globalization.
Film your elevator pitch.
Which dimension of the Challenge does your solution most closely address?
Increase equitable access to quality learning opportunities through open sourced, offline, or virtual models, especially for underserved learners in low connectivity environments
Where our solution team is headquartered or located:
Bangkok, ThailandIs your solution working in Vietnam, Indonesia, Philippines, Thailand, and/or Malaysia?
What specific problem are you solving in Vietnam, Indonesia, Philippines, Thailand, and/or Malaysia?
We are solving two main issues for English and Chinese language education in Thailand. First, the inequality of language education quality between international and public schools. Second, the lack of native-speaking friends for children to practice the languages regularly.
Even though English is the official second language of Thailand, the country is ranked 89 out of 100 countries in English proficiency according to Education First. Additionally, the Chinese language is the third most learned language in Thailand; however, only a handful of people can speak the language. The root cause is the accessibility to get a good language education and the opportunity to practice regularly.
The National Statistic Office of Thailand reports that the average income for a Thai person is about US$433.50 per month. Nonetheless, international schools’ tuition fee is almost double the average national income. As reported by the Ministry of Education Thailand in 2018, only 0.4% of Thai students enrolled in international schools. Thus, 99.6% of Thai students were either in a private or public school where English literacy is poor, and many do not have the Chinese language in the curriculum.
For that reason, we are working to increase equitable access to quality language learning opportunities through AI characters with high-quality 3D animation for children that most parents can afford. Consequently, children can always enjoy speaking English and Chinese with a native-speaking friend to improve their second language literacy.
Who does your solution serve, and in what ways will the solution impact their lives?
Our target population is the parents living in Thailand who do not have access to quality English and Chinese speaking education. They do not have the resources, or the resources are not within their physical reach. They want to let their child try adopting and speaking a second language.
We are working relentlessly to locate and reach out to parents by creating a community on social media that parents can join to discuss topics related to teaching their child the second language. We also occasionally provide video or Live sessions with native-speaking teachers, activities, and knowledge. Additionally, we conduct surveys with parents to understand the current challenges they are facing in today's world. Based on the survey results, our team develops the app features as well as content to meet their needs.
Galaxy Kids language speaking and learning app would answer the demand of parents who would like their children to develop second language speaking. Most of the lessons and activities on our application motivate children to speak out words and sentences, listen to their speech, and improve on incorrect sounds based on the score they received and recommendations.
How does the problem you are addressing, the solution you have designed, and the population you are serving align with the Challenge?
More than 1.5 billion people are studying English as a second language to increase career opportunities. Although most of these people are from developing countries, they have limited resources to obtain a good English education. Additionally, China has become the primary partner in trade with South-East Asia. Therefore, English and Chinese speaking are critical for young children to thrive in a developing country like Thailand.
Our vision is to equip every Thai child with a second language for better career opportunities and success in economic, financial, and cultural globalization. We create first-rate edutaining content and curriculum for children to indulge in the 3D production, authentic lessons, as well as conversations with adorable AI characters. Moreover, our monthly subscription plan costs less than 2% of the average parents’ income. The plan is also 37 times more affordable than studying with a private native-speaking tutor in Thailand.
What is your solution’s stage of development?
Growth: An initiative, venture, or organization with an established product, service, or business model rolled out in one or, ideally, several contexts or communities, which is poised for further growthWho is the Team Lead for your solution?
Jerry Yiu- CEO and Founder
Which of the following categories best describes your solution?
A new application of an existing technologyWhat makes your solution innovative?
Our solution provides tremendous improvement to traditional language learning with two innovations 1) the AI characters capable of teaching language speaking and pronunciation, and 2) top-notch 3D production learning experience.
There are many challenges that children face in learning a second language traditionally. First, most native-speaking teachers are available only in a learning center or an international school; and often are very expensive. Second, children do not have enough opportunities to practice speaking the language. Third, children do not realize and understand the correctness of their pronunciation.
For that reason, we consider our learning approach as contemporary language learning that would create a positive impact on the second language learning industry. First, there aren't many language learning apps for kids with exceptional 3D quality production and AI characters that use actual human voice and personality to teach language speaking. Second, we are one of the first language educational apps for kids that provide a scoring system, review the mistakes, and correct speaking and pronunciation. Third, this app would be a strong support for schools' curriculum. With Galaxy Kids, children can practise speaking and listening skills while having reading and writing assignments from the schools. Lastly, our app could rebalance the overwhelming cost of second language study and eventually lead to accessibility for all children and parents of all incomes.
Have you tested your solution’s approach? If so, how?
We tested our solution through various means. First, we selected and provided parents with early access to try new activities and lessons for their experience feedback. Second, with the parents’ consent, our team reaches out to them to survey and get feedback based on their experience. We have a social media community for parents to share and engage in various activities. Parents are the key to our fast-growing performance because their voices define the needs of society.
Describe the core technology that powers your solution.
Galaxy Kids uses the existing technology with a new application to the language education sector. We use Unity to develop the application, SoapBox for English language speech recognition, and Google for Chinese speech recognition. We developed our curriculum based on the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR) standards on all the content. Moreover, we take pride in our 3D media production that integrates AI technology into the animated characters using human voices with their personality. The characters can understand children's speech, help correct their mistakes, and provide personalized suggestions based on the children's ability.
What is your theory of change?
to bring equality to language education to kids in thailand and other developing countries
Which target population(s) does your solution address?
If you selected Other, please explain here.
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What are the key characteristics of your target population?
If you selected Other, please explain here.
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Which categories best describe your main EdTech product or service?
If you selected Other, please explain here.
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In which countries will you be operating within the next year?
How are you measuring your progress toward your impact goals?
We measure our impact goals by quantitative and qualitative means. The quantitative results include install rate, subscription rate, retention rate, and cancellation rate. Install rate is the portion of people installing the app after seeing it on either the Play Store or the App Store. The subscription rate is the number of people who installed the app and became paid members. Retention rate is the people who return to use the app again after the installation in days, weeks, months, and years. Lastly, the Cancellation rate is the portion of people who cancelled their subscription.
Moreover, we dive into qualitative measures to identify the impact of our members’ lifestyle and progress of their child improvement. We have a team that reaches out to parents weekly for a quick survey or an interview. The qualitative results measure satisfaction, learning quality of children, speaking improvement, and understanding their needs and expectations in language learning.
We also look at the rankings in Play Store and App Store. The rank is an indicator of demand as well as positive impressions from the users.
What are your impact goals for the next year, the next three years, and the next five years? How will you achieve them?
Less than two years ago, we started with the English language, and now we are expanding into the Chinese language. A year from now, our goal is to reach 80% (about 2.6 million children) of the children who do not have access to study English and Chinese in Thailand. To achieve this, we promote our app to end consumers through various digital channels. These channels include social media, website, Play Store, and App Store. We also partner with schools and language learning centers.
Our long-term goal is to replicate successful business strategies in Thailand overseas. Vietnam, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Greater China are the countries we plan to penetrate by the end of the third year. The Chinese language will begin in fourth years in Vietnam, Indonesia, Malaysia, North America, and Europe. By the fifth year, we will expand on a global scale with more languages available for young children all over the world.
What barriers currently exist for you to accomplish your impact goals?
If you selected Other, please explain here.
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Describe these barriers as they relate to your solution. How do you plan to overcome them?
The main barrier for Galaxy Kids at the moment is the financial resources. Unlike other language learning apps, our production cost to create each 3D animation is exorbitant. Each lesson displays a premium quality animation with an authentic storyline and characters. We augment the characters with actual human voices along with a unique personality for each character. Children can interact and learn to speak the language while they would enjoy the journey of original Galaxy Kids’ content. At the same time, the unique AI characters support the children in correcting and suggesting their incorrect speech.
Please provide a brief history of your organization. What was the motivation behind starting your organization and/or the development of your solution?
The original concept of Galaxy Kids was to provide a friend that can educate children anywhere and anytime. It all began when our founder, Jerry, was a developer and distributor for the popular humanoid robotic platforms NAO and Pepper. NAO was a platform without ready-made applications, so Jerry developed an English learning app for the NAO robot. Although he successfully sold many robots to universities and corporations, he was not satisfied with the price of the robots that cost over US$15,000. It was not possible to make the robot affordable for the mass market. He decided to create Galaxy Kids mobile application to make language learning accessible for everyone.
Galaxy Kids mobile app, then, became a project he devoted himself to develop as it would answer the need of mass impacts. Along the journey, he found the competition in the English learning app market was very competitive. That brings us to the present; we scoped down the focus of our app into speaking and pronunciation because these two aspects of language learning are missing from what’s available in the market or available at a price where most parents cannot afford.
What type of organization is your solution team?
For-profit, including B-Corp or similar models
How many people work on your solution team?
25 people consist of 3d animator, developers, teachers
How long have you been working on your solution?
3 years
How are you and your team well-positioned to deliver this solution?
Our team consists of experts from various fields, including media production, software & game development, and education. The founder, Jerry, is a serial entrepreneur who built a successful regional IT business in Singapore. A large corporation acquired his company later in 2018.
He was also a pioneer in humanoid robotics working with NAO and Pepper robots as the distributor and developer for Soft bank Robotics. Our CTO, Real, has over ten years of experience in software, game development, robotics and worked for leading software development in the UK. Our Production Director is a veteran in the media industry who created award-winning TV cartoon series on a national television channel.
That said, beyond work qualifications, I am confident to say that the most pivotal quality of our members is resilience. We have failed countless times before the current Galaxy Kids. Never a single moment the team fell on their back completely. Everyone has always been looking for a solution to carry on for success.
For example, our developers had to overcome the challenges of creating new and unique features due to technological advancement. The most recent challenge for the developers was to integrate language learning with augmented reality (AR) and combined it with our speech recognition technology. This feature creates an in-depth interactive activity that children can practice speaking while having fun with AR.
Provide an example of your Team Lead’s ability to conceptualize and implement a new idea.
Our team lead conceptualizes the ideas from every stakeholder and form a concept. He works closely with developers to validate feasibility of concepts. The developers take the concept to create possible output from the concepts and refine them into actionable items. The education and production teams bring the actionable items to develop the content and visual graphic. Once we have the demo, the marketing team begins to promote the product to the public. Lastly, we collect feedback from the users and create routine updates with more ideas for each feature.
What organizations do you currently partner with, if any? How are you working with them?
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Why are you applying to the Octava Social Innovation Challenge?
1. funding
2. network
In which of the following areas do you most need partners or support?
Please explain in more detail here.
we have been bootstrapping this business and currently we're looking for grants or investors to help us to scale the business as well as develop additional language products like Chinese.
Solution Team
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RS
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JY
MR jerry yiu Founder & CEO , Robot Galaxy Kids Co Ltd
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JY
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Solution Name
Galaxy Kids - English & Chinese for kids