The pursuit of ‘appy-ness’ – Wamda

Founder
Dinesh Lalvani with some of his characters. (Images via
AppyKids)

Before becoming the Samsung Galaxy Tab regional
ambassador for kids, or starring in the first Arabic cartoon
webisode series, Zee was simply a character sketch for Dinesh
Lalvani.

Before Zee, Lalvani launched the characters of
Alfie, a young Indian boy, and his best friend Haathi, a baby
elephant, with an interactive storybook on the Apple app
store.

All three undeniably adorable illustrated
characters now lead the pack at AppyKids, an
edutainment app and content developer for children in the MENA and
South Asia. Lalvani is the founder and CEO of AppyKids.

The launch of Alfie is a direct result of
Lalvani’s many futile attempts to teach his then two-year-old son
his first words in Arabic and Hindi. He hoped his iPad would come
to his aid.

“Kids today naturally gravitate to the iPad,
it’s their device,” Lalvani explained. “Even at the age of two,
they don’t know what this device does, but it’s very intuitive for
them.” However he found nothing to his liking on the store,
quality-wise or ethically. “There weren’t that many books on the
matter either,” he added.

A still from ‘Zee Writes’.

Addressing the problem

An established entrepreneur in the technology
and marketing sector, Lalvani turned to his own experience for a
solution.

Trained as a developer and designer, Lalvani
launched his first startup in India and then cofounded Dubai-based
digital media agency, Flip Media. In 2012, Flip Media was acquired
by Publicis Groupe.

Sitting on the board of a local school and
coming from a family where many are in the education business
definitely helped the cause too.

Integrating his expertise under the single rule of
creating content that had a gamified, fun factor, Lalvani launched
AppyKids under parent company Growl Media. Established in 2013,
Growl Media is a content company aiming to “educate, entertain,
empower”.

A young learner with AppyKids.

Launching

Within the first month of launching, AppyKids
reached number one on the Apple App Store in 17 countries. Today,
its apps have generated 2.2 million downloads with Zee’s Alphabet
and Alfie’s Alphabet Hindi app voted the best of Apple
2014.

The app content targets children (7 and below),
moms and teachers in the MENASA region.

The world of educational apps for kids is not
without variety. Globally, there’s Disney,
Toca
Boca, PlayKids,

Fisher-Price, Paper Boat,
and Nickelodeon
churning out interactive educational apps for kids.
Regionally, the choices are limited and include Media Plus,
Lamsa,
EduKitten.
With global ambitions, AppyKids considers the former list as
competitors.

A still from the ‘Alfie’s Alphabet’, the Hindi alphabet
learning app.

With no real marketing budget, a grassroots
approach of personally going to schools and talking about AppyKids,
is among their key outreach strategies.

“We go to schools and talk to moms and are
always presenting to educators,” said Claire Lalvani, chief
marketing officer at AppyKids. They are currently used
in 80 schools around the UAE.

“We encourage this concept of co-viewing,”
Lalvani said, “where the parent and the child are a part of this
journey together. We always ask parents how
we can create better experiences.”

Growing their market

To seamlessly update and adapt the content to
the current market, Lalvani and his team developed their own
proprietary app development framework, Eureekah. This allows the
team to build prototypes and immediately go into testing with kids,
parents, and teachers. Often, development happens in parallel to
the testing.

“We grew up with the mouse and keyboards. Our
kids are growing up with swipes and gestures,” Lalvani added. “And
that is our challenge – how do you keep up with this constant
evolution?”

Since its launch, AppyKids has grown to include
15 apps, a cartoon webisode series and will soon launch an
Interactive PlayKit. To help with the process, Lalvani brought
Avantika Hari, an award-winning filmmaker, on board as Chief
Creative Officer.

Based in India, Hari also believes there is a
desperate need for “great content for our kids”.

“Children here consume a ton of adult content,”
she explained. “There is not much content targeted at them, and if
it is, it comes from an entertainment space. There’s nothing with
much meaningfulness.”

Going forward

On the future of AppyKids, Lalvani said, “Our
aspiration is to provide really good quality content on this side
of the world in the [local] languages with all the cultural
markers, but also make it fun and experiential and immersive for
the kids.”

The Interactive Play Kit is another step in
building immersive experiences for children and also breaking out
of the screen. The Play Kit is a global physical product launching
in 2016. From a business side perspective, this is also easier to
monetize and enables AppyKids to unlock much larger platforms said
Lalvani.

A homegrown business, Lalvani said the region
has got a fantastic opportunity to be a hub of innovation, but it
could use a bit more of a risk appetite.

“What’s missing in the Middle East or at least
UAE is not a great ecosystem of startups,” he elaborated. “There
needs to be a framework that allows for innovation to happen,
allows for failures to happen. That’s how you create that
ecosystem, that infrastructure where people are comfortable saying
I’ll start a business here and investors will say the
same”.

To that end, with the exploding app economy
regionally and globally, Dinesh believes it’s on developers and
designers to take their work up a notch.

“A lot people make the mistake of taking
something and saying they want to create an app [out of it],”
Lalvani said. “It should come from a personal space. We have moved
beyond funding an idea, you have to have a prototype…There are a
million ideas. Execution is tough.”