Executive Summary
Superkidz is a fully immersive body-tracking augmented reality education game. This is a metaverse game, focused on kids aged 4-8. Our games are designed & developed to make kids stronger with physical movement, smarter by solving maths/English puzzles, and more mindful with stillness and yoga training. Demo - SuperKidz demo - YouTube
Our husband-wife founders have a track record of bootstrapping world-class award-winning products, learning and launching crowdfunding and successfully making exits.
Ashok has 22 years of experience in building innovative tech products and holds an MS in CS and an MBA in IT.
Ariane has 20 years of experience in Operations & legal and holds masters in Economics and Law from Cambridge University.
Please find the pitch deck at the following link
Description
During COVID, beyond online classes, children spend up to 7 hours a day online. The National Alliance of Mental Illness in the US, in 2020 found that 1 in 6 adolescents between 12-17 experienced major depressive episodes (with serious thoughts on suicide). When parents on average only manage to spend 5 hours a week with their children, we believe we can utilize the metaverse in helping parents, children, and educators.
Our game, for 4-8 year-olds, is unique in two ways: (1) full-body tracking in augmented reality on blockchain and (2) holistically educating children in a fun way i.e. learning English and Maths, financial education and mindfulness while moving. Research shows that children can retain up to 90% of knowledge if they are mimicking actions vs 20% if they learn through reading.
While parents are concerned about the impact of VR and the safety of kids in the metaverse, with kids’ safety at the forefront of our design, we can ensure parents (who drive the decisions of 4-8 year-olds) are more comfortable with their children adopting the metaverse and blockchain technology and in a long run become the biggest user base of metaverse and (510 million children under the age of 14). Companies like Lego announced that they will build their metaverse but not with body tracking and AR in mind. Large companies need to make money whereas at SuperKidz we want to create a positive impact to the next generation.
With learn-to-earn in place, children’s efforts in the game will increase their SuperPowers. When this reaches a certain level, they will learn an NFT. Children good in certain subjects will be able to teach other kids hence they become content creators and they will earn from that. Kids with a mobile phone, from anywhere across the world, will be able to access top quality content from vetted teachers/schools and in the metaverse enjoy curated trips to museums anywhere in metaverse or attend concerts. We will essentially create a child-safe ecosystem.
We have secured investment from one of Asia’s biggest direct selling companies with more than 25 million customers worldwide. They have a brick-and-mortar university and business in e-learning and they want to sell our game within their network. We will then bring more users onto metaverse. Similar institutions can be brought on board. These will be crypto newbies.
On the kids’ front, 74% of kids have asked for a pet. With that in mind, kids will be able to choose their Study Buddy who will nudge kids to play more in order to buy food for the Study Buddy or complete tasks. On the parents’ front, if they see their kids having fun, and becoming better kids, instead of YouTube or other apps, they will prefer SuperKidz.
We believe educational games for kids 4-8 years old today are the lowest hanging fruit to test our body tracking technology, improve user experience, file our patents and then venture into other verticals like fitness, professional education, sports, etc for other demographics.
Specification
Children aged 4-8 years old spend an average of 10 hours sleeping, 8 hours a day in learning, 3 hours in entertainment, and only 2 hours in physical activity.
We are combining learning, entertainment & physical activity into AR education mini-games to help children grow smarter, stronger and more mindful.
SuperKidz is the world’s first Move-to-Earn and Learn-to-Earn NFT game which makes it fun and rewarding for kids to learn, get active and become more mindful. Built on (TBD) Solana/Avalanche/Ethereum, SuperKidz integrates your kid’s daily activity in real life with blockchain Play-to-Earn economics so you can turn your kid’s real-life actions into expansive gameplay and earn crypto while doing it.
We started our research 2 years ago when iPhone 11 demonstrated real-time body tracing and 3D avatar rendering in real-time. We developed our proof of concept in Unity 2019 and noticed several challenges in terms of user experience and performance.
We tested our prototype at home with our kids and found that VR was too dangerous for kids because they kept bumping into things. Any external hardware was also a challenge because parents weren’t willing to buy or set it up. We found that the TV in the living room provided the best user experience.
It was very intuitive for kids to mirror their smartphone or tablet to the TV however everything was inverted. We solved this problem by developing a “mirrored” AR game environment in Unity 2020. We spend 3 more months launching our demo app on the app store. After alpha users’ feedback and several iterations, our MVP is available on the app store at the below link.
(Had to remove because new user can only post 2 links)
We learned from children that they learn better when they play with others. We are designing 8000 baby ape 3D ERC721A NFT avatars to keep kids company in the metaverse. Children will access the games with a baby ape avatar. Kids’ avatars will help them learn by mimicking kids’ physical movements in the metaverse to solve maths and English puzzles. Parents who buy these BabyApes can get a lifetime membership of the game for their kids.
SuperKidz mixed / augmented reality mini education games accessible via 3D baby ape character NFT that becomes a kid’s avatar in the game or kids can play in the free mode and accumulate enough SuperPowers to evolve the BabyApes and then these SuperPowers are minted as NFT accessories. We are the first mass-market NFT game targeting kids aged 4-8 years old. We want to educate kids on how to navigate through Web3 and incentivize them for learning, exercise and enhance their emotional intelligence while having fun.
Kids’ avatars would gain different superpowers by solving puzzles. Kids then could trade these superpowers to teach other kids. Baby apes can also earn the SUPA coins with their superpowers and use these coins to buy accessories like hats, bags, sunglasses, etc, and can trade them with other kids.
SuperKidz combines the nurture and evolution of Tamagotchi, the crafting and collecting of Animal Crossing, and the training, and battling of Pokemon Go, while rewarding players with crypto as they go through our carefully curated positive content. Besides, there is no additional equipment to be purchased. Players just need a mobile phone, and better if they have newer phones and a smart TV.
Personnel
Ashok Jaiswal (CTO) - Over 20 years of experience in building tech products, masters in computer science and MBA from HKUST, Goldman alumni, certified Blockchain professional & solidity expert.
Serial entrepreneur participated in 3 startup accelerator programs, won several pitching awards, and got grants/fundings worth over USD 3 million.
Wrote dozens of technical articles and white papers, minted 1,000 3D NFTs, forked Uniswap DEX, built NFT marketplace, trading algo, clothing marketing place in React/Node JS, and open-sourced the work at aeropriest · GitHub.
Ariane Li (CEO) - Master in Economics and Law from Cambridge University, 18 years of multinational experience in legal, internal audit, and operations.
Co-founded EzeeCube, the world’s first modular home cloud TV Setup Box to automatically back up and arrange photos, videos, movies, and music from smartphones, computers, DVDs, CDs, etc. Boot-strapped and crowdfunded over USD250,000 back in 2014, raised over USD1.2 million in private equity, and sold the company in 2017.
Planned & launched the only new museum in the world. In charge of oversight of HKD60M+ budget, building renovation, curation of exhibitions, IT infrastructure, and interactive games.
Lon Lee (Lead Artist) Monash University graduate in design & illustration with over 10 years experience in digital art, published author of many children’s illustrations books.
Roadmap and Milestones
Conception [January 2021] - Project was conceived due to COVID frustration when our daughter had to spend a lot of time studying on an iPad and got sick due to lack of physical activity.
Demo Launch [Sep 2021] - We launched an alpha iOS demo app that demonstrated full-body tracking and 3D avatar rendering in real-time. The demo was well received by alpha users
MVP Launch [May 2022] - Developed (patent pending) mechanism to match the body shape to English alphabets and is used in the spelling game similar to Wordle. Kids would spell 5 new words each day, dancing to the beat to shape their bodies to alphabets of the worlds in sequence.
Strategic Partnership [July 2022] - We have signed a strategic partnership with one of Asia’s biggest direct selling companies with over 25 million customers. Our terms include a USD1 million investment to build the first version of the maths and English games targeting 4-8 years old children.
