14/03/2019
We are really excited to have been chosen for the second time running as the digital & tech partner for the ESquared and Allan Gray accelerator program. We spent most of the morning having our first 1 on 1s with the ventures. This venture (Tshimong) focuses on using debating to help build critical thinking skills and facilitate the learning process (its easier to grasp a concept if you know its purpose- debating helps build that knowledge) for children between the ages of 9 & 16 with possible aspirations to scale their programs to professionals looking to develop skills to help them better articulate their ideas/work.
Tshimong is already working with clients such as the Nelson Mandela Foundation, ABSA and the City of Ekurhuleni. They have aspirations of incorporating an online learning element to help scale to other countries- allowing for a greater reach and lower operational costs.
Future visions involve gamifying the learning experience by building online games to help better teach students and potentially using machine learning (a recommender system of sorts) to recommend learning games based on teacher input, learning goals and other factors.
The gist of our conversation was centred on getting a deeper understanding of their context, their business model, key learning, client acquisition strategies, the entire sales/marketing cycle, core business metrics & general industry insights to better understand how to help them scale from a digital & tech perspective