By: Jason Lasardo / Forbes Middle East
Our list of the Most Promising Startups 2018 highlighted the Arab-world entrepreneurs with the most funding, widest scope and most innovative ideas. These five schooling startups earned their marks providing educational tools to aide learning.
Lamsa
Arabic digital content for kids
Founder: Badr Ward
U.A.E.: 2013
Lamsa is an Arabic edutainment app with an objective to spread the love of learning through engaging, fun and interactive stories, games and videos. The app provides local as well as international content that is targeted at kids aged three to eight.
Through the app children can learn the Arabic language, including numbers, the alphabet and words through phonics games, tracing letters, finding the missing numbers and other activities, in addition to simple mathematics games such as counting, subtraction, addition and multiplication. Lamsa offers monthly and yearly subscription plans. The app’s interface is available in Arabic, English and French.
Hello World Kids
Kids platform to learn programming at schools
Founder: Hanan Khader
Jordan: 2015
Hello World Kids was the region’s first educational organization specializing in teaching computer and mobile programming for children between the ages of six to 12. In 2018, the Jordan Ministry of Education adopted the Hello World Kids curriculum in public schools as a core school subject for the elementary stage.
Hello World Kids’ curriculum starts from grade 1 to grade 7 and adds a level every year to grade 12. The curriculum is taught in 70 public and private schools, with 36,000 kids benefiting from the program.
Kamkalima
Arabic interactive learning platform for K-12
Founder: Siroun Shamigian, Nisrine Makkouk
Lebanon: 2015
Kamkalima helps students in grades 4-12 learn Arabic and develop their communication skills by providing them and their teachers with tools, including a digital library of content and tests through their online platform. The platform also offers help with assignment writing through its bot (called Fahim), which monitors students’ writing patterns and guides them with intelligent tips.
The startup was founded by two teachers, Siroun Shamigian and Nisrine Makkouk, who first started working on the idea in 2014 by submitting their plans to an MIT Business Plan competition.
Almentor
Online video e-learning platform
Founder: Ihab Fikry, Ibrahim Kamel, Hesham Heikal, Husni Khuffash, Abdelrhamn Fahmy
U.A.E.: 2016
Almentor is an online video marketplace for e-learning. The company was founded in the U.A.E. by four Egyptians, all with corporate work experience. The company’s target market is mid-level employees who are looking to build skills to advance in their careers. The company is currently focusing on the Gulf countries and Egypt to drive revenues.
Experts in any subject can sign on as mentors and receive a share of the revenues when their videos are viewed. The platform currently has over 5,000 videos and about 200 mentors.
Source: forbesmiddleeast.com