In addressing this pressing concern, fun learning platform Kidovo is launching with a $1.2 million seed funding round to provide every child (2-8 years old) with personalised interactive learning.

The funding round saw participation from Venture Highway, Amplify PCC, Good Capital, and prominent angels including Ashish Singhal from Coinswitch among others. Using interactivity, Kidovo is aiming to turn passive consumption into active participation from kids, which helps avoid many of the problems prevalent today with kids’ screen time.

Kidovo was founded by Sameer Goyal, ex Amazon & AWS engineer, and Rahul Bhatnagar, ex Uber, Cubical Labs, Amazon. They met while beginning their careers at Amazon over a decade ago. Together, they have a combined experience of over 20 years in the tech industry.

“When Rahul reached out to me, about building an interactive learning platform for kids, I was sure something like this must exist. But I was surprised to see very few options for such content. Further, we both realised the massive size of this problem. This affects most of the kids on the entire planet. We started researching the space and found that there is a massive opportunity to build better learning experiences for kids using the latest technology.” said Sameer Goyal, Co-Founder of Kidovo.

“We’ve been testing the early versions of the product with a small group of about 60 families as part of our co-builder program since December 2022. While we have been constantly improving the product based on feedback from that program, the platform has already grown to serve 4000 registered families. Further, as a testament to our team’s commitment to improving kids’ learning experience and safety, we have already received kidSAFE COPPA+ certification as well as a 5-star certification from educational app store in just 6 months since our platform accepted its first external user. We are now confident in serving more users on our platform and have begun rolling out our paid subscription plans.”

Recent studies have suggested that kids spend about an hour every day on YouTube. With shortage of workers in the childcare industry, increasingly these devices are the child’s nanny. Further, since generation alpha is the first generation to grow up around digital devices, parents are increasingly finding it difficult to limit screen time without access to other sources of more meaningful and productive entertainment for children.

The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends for children two to five years of age to limit use to one hour per day of high-quality programming, while parents co-view and help children understand the content and help them apply what they learn. Kidovo is designed to provide children with a digital playmate, who would fulfil the above responsibilities when a parent is unavailable to do so.

“We found that existing interactive solutions were too focussed on academic outcomes & hence were unable to engage the child over a long period of time. Further, they lacked the variety of content that would support children as they explore different areas of interest. Therefore, we decided to work together with the best kids content creators and empower them with interactive tools to make more engaging content.” said Rahul Bhatnagar, Co-Founder of Kidovo.

Since children are spending increasing amounts of time on digital devices, the time they spend practising speaking has gone down leading to speech delay problems. The team has devised an innovative approach to get kids to speak while learning on their platform. One of the forms of interactivity on the platform is where kids are asked questions from the content and they need to speak to answer and get real time feedback almost as if there’s a real life tutor with them. The owl mascot, Ovo, also involves kids in casual conversation to help them build confidence to express themselves.

Kidovo not only helps children with healthier screen time options, but also helps parents participate in their children’s learning journeys. The platform offers parents key moments they might have missed from their kids’ activity on the platform, they can hear their kids speak, see what they drew. Further, parents are offered tips on activities and discussions that they can engage in with their kids based on their activity on the platform.

Kidovo plans to use this investment to move closer to their vision of empowering every child worldwide to reach their full potential through personalised, immersive, and engaging experiences that make learning fun and accessible.