BrightCHAMPS is tapping GCC’s emerging edtech space
Edtech platform BrightCHAMPS was launched in the UAE in 2020. Targeting 6 to 16 year olds, the platform offers learning across coding, robotics, artificial intelligence, finance, and communication.
The COVID-19 pandemic changed how the world approached education, with startups being at the forefront of developing e-learning solutions.
In the post-pandemic world, GCC (Gulf Cooperation Council) and the larger MENA (Middle East and North Africa) region have echoed this effect. The e-learning market in GCC is expected to grow by $569.04 million between 2020 to 2025, at a CAGR (compound annual growth rate) of 10.66%, according to a report by technavio.
Targeting 6 to 16-year-olds, the live-learning edtech platform was launched in the UAE in 2020.
The startup operates across four learning verticals: CodeCHAMPS (for coding), RoboCHAMPS (for robotics and artificial intelligence), FinCHAMPS (for financial literacy) and LingoCHAMPS (for communications).
“We want to bridge the gap between school education and the skills kids actually need to thrive in the real world today, and become future-ready,” Ravi Bhushan, Founder and CEO of the startup tells YourStory Gulf.
So far, the 500-member team has interacted with over one million students across 30 countries including the GCC and other countries such as USA, UK, Australia, and Singapore.
Currently, 75% of its students for RoboCHAMPS belong to the GCC, with a majority being from the UAE. Additionally, 30% of CodeCHAMPS' students are from MENA and 30% of FinCHAMPS' students belong to the Middle East region.
Since its launch, BrightCHAMPS has built a global faculty base of over 2,500 educators, out of which, 14.1% belong to the Middle East.
“21.2% of our consolidated staff and teachers across all verticals are from the Middle East region,” states Ravi.
Tech-enabled learning
Ravi hails from a small town called Jehanabad in Bihar, a state in India. “At the age of 7, I realised that I wanted to learn much more than what was being taught at school. I requested my grandfather to allow me to be homeschooled and even formulated a homeschooling plan with him,” he shares.
He completed his Btech in computer science and engineering from IIT Varanasi.
“Coming from a small town with little prior exposure to computers and technology unlike my peers, initially, it was daunting. But my previous experience in self-learning helped significantly,” he says reflecting on his journey.
Drawing on his experiences with self-learning, Ravi wanted to establish BrightCHAMPS as a platform that allows children to learn at their own pace.
When BrightCHAMPS was an idea in formulation, he interacted with many students and found that a majority did not have a liking for traditional schooling.
He discovered that leveraging technology such as artificial intelligence (AI) and VR (virtual reality) were ways through which education could be revamped.
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BrightCHAMPS enables learning through the concept of invisible learning and AI-enabled adaptive learning.
“Invisible learning enables an individual to learn their own way by removing structures and institutions that control and restrict their learning experience. For instance, schools or colleges with set curriculums determine what or how students will learn, regardless of an individual's needs and capabilities,” Ravi explains.
Through this method, BrightCHAMPS aims to strengthen critical and logical thinking, technological skills, computational thinking, financial literacy, mathematical thinking, and design thinking.
AI-enabled adaptive learning solutions are deployed in the startup’s learning processes.
“We provide every student with real-time feedback based on their participation in the class and performance in the after class quizzes. The remaining coursework is modified depending on these valuations to ensure maximum learning and retention rather than adopting a one-size-fits-all approach,” says Ravi.
This helps the team recognise a student’s learning style, interests, and performance. All this data is then used to cutomise the programme ahead.
The team is also offering pair programming, in which two programmers can work together at a workstation or a single computer.
Pricing and curriculum
The platform offers live one-on-one classes. The courses are largely divided into three categories called Little Champs (for grades 1-3), Junior Champs (for grades 4-6), and Senior Champs (for grades 7-10). They are priced at 1,514 AED ($412.19) for 30 classes, 2,948 AED for 66 classes ($802.61) and 5,763 AED for 150 classes ($ 1,569).
Those interested can choose a vertical and book a demo class. Depending on their performance, they are allocated into one of the three plans including accelerator, achiever, or champion.
Little Champs focusses on coding fundamentals, app development, game development, scientific exploration, Codimath, Tinkercad 3D, AR/VR, design thinking, HTML/CSS and Microbit.
Junior Champs is centered on slightly advanced forms of tech, including machine learning, python advanced and more.
Senior Champs provides practical experience in electronics, Arduino, in developing various training modules using the block-based approach, web development, making a website dynamic using Javascript, data visualisation using different libraries and graphs.
Since February 2022, the startup has been accepting cryptocurrency as payments across all countries.
At present, BrightCHAMPS globally competes with the likes of Whitehat Jr, Yellow Class, Byju's Future School, Cuemath, Purple Tutor, Planet Spark, and Moneytime Kids.
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The team’s approach echoes extensive focus on gamification and learning outcomes.
“We’ve created many nodes within the classes and the app and student dashboard to continuously check for understanding and retention. This is enabled through quizzes, puzzles, projects, and assessments,” he says.
Their gamification features across products include the international cultural exchange programme Global House, global hackathon Code/Decode, and in-app play currency BrightBEANS.
Its content is also offered in Arabic, which is the most used language among its Middle Eastern users.
The road ahead
At present, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Oman, and Kuwait stand as the key edtech consumer markets in the region, as per technavio.
With the aim of adopting an omnichannel approach in the post-pandemic world, BrightCHAMPS is aiming to usher into a hybrid or phygital model.
It maintains active involvement in schools by conducting workshops, hosting olympiads and masterclasses, arranging competitions, among other events.
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In its last funding round in October 2021, BrightCHAMPS raised $51 million at a valuation of $500 million from marquee investors including Premji Invest, GSV Ventures, Flipkart cofounder Binny Bansal, 021 Capital, and BEENEXT.
“In June 2022, we announced a $100 million corpus to make edtech acquisitions across the US, UK, Middle East and North Africa (MENA), Southeast Asia (SEA), and India in FY 2023,” says Ravi.
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Edited by Affirunisa Kankudti