When you think about it, with all the buzz about PISA scores it’s a surprise that you don’t see more Finnish startups in the educational field. Finland’s success comes down more to good old-fashioned teaching more than technological advancement, but Finland has a nice brand to be capitalized on.
That’s not to say Finnish education startups don’t exist. Helsinki-based 10Monkeys is one such example that has an e-learning product designed to get 6-10 year olds crunching math using scientifically confirmed approaches to learning. The company is seeing some growth as well – they’ve announced a Commercial Partnership agreement with a Saudi Arabian distributor at the IEFE 2013 educational fair in Riyadh in late February.
“As education is becoming more individualized the market values the adaptability and versatility of content more than before”, says Katri Björklund, Managing Director and founding partner of 10Monkeys. “So our service was designed to be curriculum and device agnostic, and it is made available in multiple languages. This combination is proving very attractive to our clients”, Björklund explains. “Versatility makes a lot of business sense too, as it increases the product’s scalability.”
Meanwhile they see that the political will to bring the best digital solutions into schools is growing, which makes sense given the individual attention these platforms can provide.
“The demand for easy to use e-learning and edutainment products is booming as schools and homes everywhere benefit from improved access to technology and the web. 10monkeys.com is ideally positioned to respond to this demand”, says Björklund.
Currently they are building a reseller network for their products, and will focus on licensing their SaaS product to schools. Later this year they will also be launching “edutainment” apps as well.
