MindCETGO in China - EdTech Startups' Journey to International Expansion

Last week Gil Almog , our CPO and head of MindCETGO , hosted a panel at the GET conference in Beijing about EdTech startup’s journey to international expansion.

The panel included 3 CEOs from the MindCETGO program –  Anna Iarotska CEO and co-founder of  RoboWunderkind, Boris Alterman CEO and co-founder of Chessmatec , and Jon Chan – CEO and co-founder of Jules.

All of these startups are selling at significant levels and have experience selling and marketing their edtech products in various countries.

Anna Iortska of RoboWunderkind, Austria. GET Conference

The purpose of MindCETGO, the new program coming out of MindCET from Israel, is to expose successful edtech startups to new markets. The program which started in September takes place in 5 non-consecutive weeks – in Israel, India, China, US and UK. There are 7 startups in the program from diverse locations – Austria, Singapore, Nigeria, Spain and Israel. In each location, there is a lot of learning about the local education market, along with many opportunities to meet investors, partners and customers.

Various important insights came from this panel:

• Anna Iortska of RoboWunderkind from Austria spoke of the challenges of expanding too quickly with too many distributors. Cutting down distributors and focusing on key markets in Europe and the US was instrumental for the health of her company. Robo Wunderkind is selling their amazing robotics and coding product for kids from as early as 4 yeas old,  already at 1 mil Euro/year and are targeting a 3x growth for next year.

Boris Alterman, CEO of Chessmate, Israel. GET Conference.

• Boris Alterman, CEO of Chessmatec from Israel, a chess Grandmaster and former training companion of world champion Gary Kasparov, spoke about the challenge of finding the right markets when their product – a problem solving and creative thinking tool for kids aged 4-8 –  is not in the core curriculum. His solution was to look for countries where Chess is actually a mandatory subject, and through that introduce their product which teaches much more than Chess. Chessmatec is already operating in over 1000 schools in quite a few countries  including Russia, S. Korea, India, Canada and Israel. Chessmatec is expecting massive growth and adoption this year.  Now that Chessmatec has great traction in so many schools, it is becoming easier to distribute the product in locations where Chess is not mandatory.

• Jon Chan from Jules in Singapore , a former investment banker, is already operating in several countries in south east Asia an has established his China operations in Shanghai. Jules is a computational thinking game for kids in primary school.  His approach is to look for impact in addition to the bottom line. Through his socially responsible approach, Jon managed to distribute his award winning product with the help of Unicef and other NGOs that support his product. The combination of a business model with funding from NGOs that support a portion of the licensing allows his company to thrive.

Jon Chan from Jules, Singapore. GET Conference

The journey that all of these startups share is the challenge of many edtech startups. The education market is diverse, and every new market requires research and a customization of the business model and local operations. In some countries, such as India and China, a B2C model will work much better than selling to schools, while in countries with a uniform public education system such as Russia and Singapore, a B2G model would work much better.

Since the business model defines in many cases various aspects of the company – the product, the marketing and sales strategies, funding and more – operating with multiple business models introduces significant challenges to edtech companies. In order to succeed in such an environments, startups develop very creative approaches that in may cases defy conventional wisdom.

Our next stop is the USA! The MindCETGO cohort will be in Boston (Jan 6-7, 2020) and New York (Jan 8-10, 2020). Come and meet us!

You can learn more at MindCETGO website.

Gil Almog, MindCETGO.