AGEM - Making education meaningful

The world’s most pressing problems are in Afghanistan, not Scandinavia. The fundamental differences areeducation and health-care. Education is the catalyst for health-care, democracy, civic dialogue and job creation- all vital necessities in developing nations including India - the first focus of our work. EdK12’s AGEM initiativeaddresses these issues.

1 The Problem and the solution

K12 education across India is a broken system that the Govt. is trying to address without success. Our solution isscalable, affordable, effective and measurable. Most importantly it leaves an audit trail of performance without theneed for high stakes examinations.

AGEM’s services and products provide classrooms across the country the content, embedded questions for eval-uation, wireless feedback devices for immediate graphical feedback, and the ability to archive performance data.That allows us to analyze and report on remedial measures for students, teachers, schools and our own content.

2 The opportunity and our competitive advantage

India has 200 million students in K12 Education. Our first target will be Grades 6 to 8 extending via this cohortto Grade 12, for schools that are under the premiere board of education in the country - CBSE. There are 4 millionchildren in this category nationwide in Central Govt. and private schools. Our first market will be the approximatelythree million children in private schools in the K6-12 sector.

Our core competitive advantage is the ability to blend software, hardware, measurement and content into thedevelopment of our products and the ability to fine tune it each day from the data that we receive from classroomsacross the country.

Our primary competitive advantage is that we measure our performance every day in respect of each student.There is no evidence that any competitor is either measuring or promoting their efficacy in this way. Finally, nocompetitor approaches our pricing, nor are their systems as scalable. Our systems need neither textbooks norhomework.

3 Our team

Our founder researched our product for more than a decade. He setup two elite schools where initial versions weresuccessfully implemented. Evolving versions were used for validation purposes in urban and rural environmentsin more than 6 Indian states. A Pilot project in a local school has yielded unexpected gains using 3 independentmeasures with the latest technology.

Our hardware developer specialises in low power drain wireless devices - a key issue in India - which lets ourfeedback devices operate for a year without change of battery. The younger members of our team bring the software,marketing and logistics skills needed for this project.

4 The promise

We have in the last few months tested our pricing in three schools at annual prices of USD60, USD 70, and USD 90per student for one hour of complementary instruction per week in maths. Signed agreements have been receivedfrom the first two and we are awaiting the final one. We expect to cover more than 300 schools in 5 years to achievea cumulative profitability of about USD55 million at annual prices of less than USD40 per student per subject. Noaccount is being taken of additional revenue sources such as franchising, production of wireless sensors for datacollection, certification charges, and its scope in other regions.

5 Funding

Our first round of funding requires USD 500 thousand to setup and service schools in Bangalore. A second roundof funding of 0.5 million dollars will be required in 2 years time when we go all India.

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