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Taamkru Plans to Fix Thailand’s ‘Disgracefully Bad’ Education System

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Taamkru press conference

Taamkru press conference

 

 

BANGKOK  – Thailand ranks eighth out of 10 in Southeast Asia for education. That’s a low bar, considering most of the field are developing nations. This prompted Thai startup Taamkru to embark on a mission to improve, in its own words, the country’s ‘disgracefully bad’ education system.

Now, the internet company has received a huge boost, in the form of a US$620,000 seed funding round led by Silicon Valley fund and accelerator 500 Startups. M&S Partners, IMJ Investment Partners, Ookbee, and Red Dot Ventures also invested this time.

Taamkru, which translates to ‘ask the teacher’ in Thai, hopes to change education through its web and mobile apps, giving pre-schoolers a fun, gamified way to prepare for examinations in a manner that black-and-white paper workbooks can’t. Its platform also lets parents track their child’s performance and benchmark it against other kids in the nation.

To market itself, the company has been organizing nationwide contests where children take a test that “provides parents with an accurate measure of the true analytical and reasoning ability of their child benchmarked against indicator data.” The competition has so far attracted 20,000 preschool applicants from Thailand and China.

Taamkru CEO and co-founder Wicharn Manawanitjarern tells Tech in Asia that the startup now sees 100,000 monthly active users across its web, iOS, and Android apps. 5,000 of them come from Singapore. It began monetizing mainly through advertising on its website, but recently started offering in-app purchases in the form of extra assessment content. It plans to move into B2B sales (selling to schools) and revenue sharing arrangements with content creators through an online publishing marketplace for preschool workbooks.

“What’s more interesting is that monthly active users grew as exercises get released more frequently. It shows that our users are hooked on what we offer, which aligns with our intention of driving usage through ever-expanding exercise inventory,” says the founder

Taamkru executives (in black) at an event announcing their plans. Read more: Taamkru plans to fix Thailand’s ‘disgracefully bad’ education system, raises seed money http://www.techinasia.com/taamkru-plans-fix-thailands-disgracefully-bad-education-system-raises-seed-money/

Taamkru executives (in black) at an event announcing their plans.
Read more: Taamkru plans to fix Thailand’s ‘disgracefully bad’ education system, raises seed money

Can tech fix Thailand?

Much ink has been spilled about the state of education in the country. A British-American teacher in Thailand calls it a “terrible failure” on CNN iReport. She writes:

Plagued by inadequate funding, huge class sizes (more than 50 students to a class), terrible teacher training, lazy students and a system that forces teachers to pass students even though they’ve actually failed – there doesn’t seem to be much hope education in Thailand will improve any time soon.

That’s not all. She complains about changes to rules and guidelines every semester and how educators routinely ignore plagiarism.

A series of reports by Asian Correspondent blames it on the shoddy quality of the standardized tests. The National Institute of Educational Testing Service (NIETS) came under fire for exam questions with disputable answers. The author writes:

Common complaints are that the O-NET questions are too difficult, ridiculous or too vague. Many say the questions bear little relation to what they have learned in class or even in cram schools. And talking of cram schools, many have also said that their teachers don’t teach everything in class but save the best bits for ‘tutoring’ class after school, for which they have to pay, which of course, poor kids can’t afford.

With this in mind, Taamkru made an interesting choice to tackle the problem at preschool. In a blog post, the startup admits that solving the problem would take a long time. Nonetheless, the fix needs to start the moment the child is born.

While lacking heft to change things at the national policy level, the team has plenty of expertise in educating preschoolers. So it was a matter of playing to their strengths. By inculcating fun into its curriculum, Taamkru hopes children will have a better grasp of fundamentals that would serve them well as they advance.

The courtship

This investment is significant because it is the first time 500 Startups has led a round in Southeast Asia. Khailee Ng, venture partner at the firm, did not respond to Tech in Asia’s requests for comment, but did say at the Taamkru event in Bangkok that 500 Startups led the round because he believed in Taamkru’s potential, team dynamics, and the fact that parents in Southeast Asia put most of their money into children’s education.

For Charn, getting to this stage wasn’t easy. He pointed out the challenges of getting Khailee’s attention.

“I was actually pitching to Khailee with a different startup when I first met him last year during Geeks On A Plane Bangkok. Being a hot venture capitalist, it already is difficult to get some face time with him let alone trying to give him my elevator pitch,” he says.

But Charn persisted, heading to after parties Khailee went to and failing half the time because people would swarm him or he would leave before Charn got a chance to pitch.

“I didn’t get a chance to really talk to him until about end of last year when he started to notice that he has seen me before and I finally got a chance to pitch Taamkru to him. After 15 minutes, he became interested and gave me his number.”

Charn and Khailee remained in contact after that. Charn fed him business updates every few months until he was seriously interested and finally invested.

Right to left: Moo Natavudh from Ookbee, Leslie Loh of Red Dot Ventures, Khailee Ng of 500 Startups. Read more: Taamkru plans to fix Thailand’s ‘disgracefully bad’ education system, raises seed money http://www.techinasia.com/taamkru-plans-fix-thailands-disgracefully-bad-education-system-raises-seed-money/

Right to left: Moo Natavudh from Ookbee, Leslie Loh of Red Dot Ventures, Khailee Ng of 500 Startups.

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