[HN Gopher] Launch HN: Kalam Labs (YC S21) - Science games and l...
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Launch HN: Kalam Labs (YC S21) - Science games and live game
streaming for kids
Hi HN, we're Ahmad, Sashakt, and Harshit of Kalam Labs
(https://www.kalamlabs.in/). Kalam Labs lets 6 to 14 year old kids
learn their favourite science topics by watching live game streams
and playing science games. It's like Twitch for science, except you
also get to play :) Here's a sample video of our live stream:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QGMmUg0N0HE High curiosity in kids
is directly linked to better academic performance and better
outcomes when they grow up. However, school leads to a drop in
curiosity as they discourage asking questions and encourage
"focussing on the blackboard." Parents don't have a solution, as
internet resources are unstructured and unreliable and
encyclopedias are static and boring for the kids. We were
batchmates at our undergraduate degrees and worked together at
India's largest educational body, NCERT. There we interacted with
hundreds of kids, and they were really curious about science. Their
heads were filled with questions like: Why is the sky blue? What is
inside a black hole? etc. But the conventional teaching mediums
were just too boring for them. So we started searching what do they
want? Turns out almost every kid was on Roblox and Minecraft.
There were entire communities there hanging out, hosting live
streams chatting with each other. Digging deeper, we saw that
Roblox and Minecraft are being extensively used as educational
media. Microsoft has launched Minecraft for Education and Roblox
has launched Roblox Education, and this was prompting teachers to
migrate from Zoom to these multiplayer games. So we got it: we will
use live game streaming to help kids learn science. We launched our
MVP and saw phenomenal results. Generating $1k USD revenue in just
a couple of days, we saw a market potential of scaling it and hence
decided to start a startup around it. At Kalam Labs we host daily
live game streams on kids' favourite science topics like space,
black holes, and dinosaurs. During the live stream, an instructor
takes the kids around a virtual world where they learn new topics
by playing game-based exercises. The cool parts are: unlike a
typical live game-stream on Twitch/YT where only the video of
instructor playing a game is shared, at Kalam Labs kids can play
the game with the instructor. This helps the instructor to give
short fun activities for kids to solve for explaining any topic. In
addition, our Live Chat has a tag-feature, which is really loved by
kids. Instead of typing the entire chat, kids can just tap on the
different recommendations and convey their thoughts. This leads to
very high-engagement with sometimes kids liking the tapping feature
more than the game itself. We are seeing cool metrics pop out due
to this: Our average watch time of a live stream is 40 minutes - 5x
higher than Youtube. Further, just launched in Mid-June our product
has amassed thousands of paying customers growing 50% week-over-
week. Please share your thoughts and feedback!
Author : KLFaraaz
Score : 34 points
Date : 2021-08-28 17:51 UTC (5 hours ago)
| ratsforhorses wrote:
| On the landing page I get prices in ? Rupees... (I'm in Romania
| atm....) and no way to get a taster... will see how my kid reacts
| to the link you've provided tomorrow :-)
| marian99 wrote:
| Nice username :)
| void_mint wrote:
| Love it. Twitch would've been an alright place for something like
| this, but they're pushing harder and harder into being a very
| unfit place for kids (gambling streams, stripping streams, etc).
| I think it's great to see more streaming services with better
| intent in mind popping up!
| Grustaf wrote:
| People play games not because of the medium, but the content. So
| just making a game would seem pointless, it has to be a very
| engaging game, and frankly speaking this one looks pretty bland.
| Is the idea that kids should play this on their free time, just
| for fun, or as part of their studies?
|
| Also, what's OP? "Yes OP", "No OP", "Curious OP"
| MattGaiser wrote:
| > Our average watch time of a live stream is 40 minutes
|
| This seems like the big accomplishment to me. Lots of educational
| resources, but they aren't that interesting or engaging.
| quadcore wrote:
| Your hindsight here sounds really great. Congrats on the launch.
| I only worry about one thing. Many entrepreneurs dont realise
| that even games follow the _killer app_ economics. All software
| do because software sucks by default. In other words, games are
| not content (economically-wise). Only 1 in many gets most of the
| play time. Im not entirely sure how this is gonna impact you but
| I feel the game-as-content shadow is lurking here.
| throwaway088 wrote:
| >>So we got it: we will use live game streaming to help kids
| learn science. We launched our MVP and saw phenomenal results.
|
| Ahem, phenomenal results for yourselves. But what did kids learn
| ? How is the retention?
| ssiddharth wrote:
| This looks great! Would love to know more about the tech stack
| behind this.
|
| Tangential question: is it named after Kalam, the scientist?
| namanyayg wrote:
| What else would it be? It's definitely Kalam.
|
| For those unaware: APJ Abdul Kalam was a renowned aerospace
| scientist and then was the President of India.
| KLFaraaz wrote:
| Yeah!
| KLFaraaz wrote:
| Hey we have used Unity + Photon to build this.
|
| It is basically a multiplayer game with live video and chat
| enabled.
|
| And,yup it is :)
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(page generated 2021-08-28 23:00 UTC)