Launch HN: Kalam Labs (YC S21) – Science games and live game streaming for kids
Here's a sample video of our live stream: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QGMmUg0N0HE
High curiosity in kids is directly linked to better academic performance and better outcomes when they grow up. However, school leads to a drop in curiosity as they discourage asking questions and encourage “focussing on the blackboard.” Parents don’t have a solution, as internet resources are unstructured and unreliable and encyclopedias are static and boring for the kids.
We were batchmates at our undergraduate degrees and worked together at India's largest educational body, NCERT. There we interacted with hundreds of kids, and they were really curious about science. Their heads were filled with questions like: Why is the sky blue? What is inside a black hole? etc. But the conventional teaching mediums were just too boring for them. So we started searching what do they want?
Turns out almost every kid was on Roblox and Minecraft. There were entire communities there hanging out, hosting live streams chatting with each other. Digging deeper, we saw that Roblox and Minecraft are being extensively used as educational media. Microsoft has launched Minecraft for Education and Roblox has launched Roblox Education, and this was prompting teachers to migrate from Zoom to these multiplayer games. So we got it: we will use live game streaming to help kids learn science. We launched our MVP and saw phenomenal results. Generating $1k USD revenue in just a couple of days, we saw a market potential of scaling it and hence decided to start a startup around it.
At Kalam Labs we host daily live game streams on kids' favourite science topics like space, black holes, and dinosaurs. During the live stream, an instructor takes the kids around a virtual world where they learn new topics by playing game-based exercises. The cool parts are: unlike a typical live game-stream on Twitch/YT where only the video of instructor playing a game is shared, at Kalam Labs kids can play the game with the instructor. This helps the instructor to give short fun activities for kids to solve for explaining any topic. In addition, our Live Chat has a tag-feature, which is really loved by kids. Instead of typing the entire chat, kids can just tap on the different recommendations and convey their thoughts. This leads to very high-engagement with sometimes kids liking the tapping feature more than the game itself.
We are seeing cool metrics pop out due to this: Our average watch time of a live stream is 40 minutes - 5x higher than Youtube. Further, just launched in Mid-June our product has amassed thousands of paying customers growing 50% week-over-week.
Please share your thoughts and feedback!
Just a small note - you might want to get a copywriter to go over your front page, and just go through it with a fine-tooth comb. As a few examples:
* Phrases like "Child's own Science Universe" don't make full grammatical sense, although "Your child's own science universe" could.
* The quote from Arush is incomplete. Other quotes have grammatical errors.
* "789000 Facts" has no comma while "300,000+ Learners" does. Should just be consistent.
* "following are trademark of Elixar Systems Private Limited." should be "trademarks" however it is not followed by a list of trademarks.
* "cause confusion among coustomers, or in any manner that disparate" should be customers and disparages. You will find that people are allowed to disparage your brand though, using your brand name :) (criticism isn't protected).
Only small things, but important at looking professional :)
Ahem, phenomenal results for yourselves. But what did kids learn ? How is the retention?
There we have posted on all the new science facts we have taught to kids, also kids have built their own science projects after learning from us.
Regarding retention, kids are returning 3 times per week, spending 40 minutes per session.
I watched a few minutes (~5) but can’t say I observed any scientific content or signs of a teaching curriculum. What would someone have learned after watching your live stream?
I’m a bit concerned that while fun, the content is closer to Twitch than Khan Academy—-is this just a science-themed gaming stream? Or will viewers learn a science curriculum?
But our focus is more on making it fun for kids rather than ensuring a curriculum is completed.
We want to build kids' curiosity for science, this will not be built just by making them remember facts, this will be done by equating science with fun.
Btw we are more Twitch for Science rather than Khan Academy through live gaming
Tangential question: is it named after Kalam, the scientist?
For those unaware: APJ Abdul Kalam was a renowned aerospace scientist and then was the President of India.
It is basically a multiplayer game with live video and chat enabled.
And,yup it is :)
This seems like the big accomplishment to me. Lots of educational resources, but they aren’t that interesting or engaging.
Seemingly the app has brought in great new value.
When it comes to education, people must understand the implications of the Explore Exploit tradeoff that shapes how many curious chimps a chimp troupe can tolerate.
Also, what's OP? "Yes OP", "No OP", "Curious OP"
Further, we are not just building an educational game.
Everyday at 6 PM IST, an instructor conducts live streams where he plays the game and teaches the kids their favourite science topics.
Kids will learn at Kalam Labs exactly how they learn through encyclopedias.
And are kids playing this because they want to, or because school or parents tell them to?
Kids play because they want to.