AI based EdTech startup Lingumi crossed user milestone in Taiwan

Lingumi is an edtech startup founded by Toby Mather, for children aged 2 to 6 to provide interactive learning games and lectures to teach Basic English to them. Toby has a passion for teaching, during his education at Oxford University, he taught English to kids aged between 6-7 in Russia and Italy for a year.
During this time, he observed that youngsters who begin learning English in large groups had trouble learning the words, accents, and structures of the language.

After his research he came up with Lingumi with the purpose of making English learning for preschoolers enjoyable and effective, as well as affordable and accessible to all while making digital learning experiences feel more real with AI.

To improve a child's English learning, Lingumi uses an asynchronous teaching approach and provides daily English lessons, interactive learning games, speech recognition games, and video-based assignments. It uses artificial intelligence (AI) to assist children learn new words and phrases while also improving their accents and pronunciations. AI also plays a significant part in assisting the youngster in maintaining a smooth conversational flow with the teacher throughout lessons. Toby explained that this is an area of AI application in which they are putting a lot of effort because the most essential way they use AI is to make the speaking experience as natural as possible.

At first, Toby concentrated on the European market, however, as the startup transitioned to a software-only business, Toby realized the opportunity in Chinese-speaking regions, particularly Taiwan, due to the strong demand for English learning and the significance that Taiwanese parents place on their children's education. Since its launch in the Taiwanese market in 2018, Lingumi has seen tremendous user growth, with more than 10% of Taiwanese parents having already signed up.

Lingumi is growing fast in many Asian markets like China, Japan, Indonesia but Lingumi’s major market right now is Taiwan, thus when it comes to content production, the company is concentrating on creating content that is relevant and valuable for Taiwanese families.

"I'd like to travel more and return to Taiwan on a more regular basis. Because that is a critical approach for me to interact with our clients and understand what they require from us. And that's how we improve our product: we listen to what our customers want." Said Toby