The Beaj 2023 Story: English Proficiency & Tech for the Underserved
A year in the life of a new startup should really be thought of as a ‘dog-year’ – anywhere between 5-15 regular human years – and likely a nonstop roller coaster.
Beaj Education came into being with a clear mission: help young people in Pakistan build real-world skills to succeed in the 21st century (skills that schools often don’t teach, unfortunately). These include digital literacy, financial literacy, entrepreneurship, communication, career guidance, etc. To figure out where to begin, we asked over 300 people what skill(s) they thought they lacked that held them back in life. The resounding response of over 90% was: “baaki sab kuch chorein, humein sirf angrezi bolna sikha dein” (“forget everything else, just teach us how to speak in English”). Despite arguments to the contrary, harsh reality is that English remains the gateway skill and biggest barrier to upward socioeconomic mobility in Pakistan.
So that’s where we began: Beaj aims to democratize English for anyone who wants to learn it, with world-class instructors, locally relevant content, and practical training for real-world use cases – all at a super affordable price.
2023 was big for Beaj. Despite a ton of challenges, we:
- Created an English proficiency program for Pakistanis,
- Built our own tech and launched on the app store,
- Piloted with 10 organizations (including The Citizens Foundation (TCF), Developments in Literacy USA (DIL), Pehli Kiran Schools (PKS), The Educators [Official], and Kiran Foundation Official
- Acquired 500+ active users,
- Nurtured a community of 1000+ teacher leaders and changemakers,
- Grew to a team of 11,
- Won a Tools Competition grant to help fund our work.
A huge shout out to our incredible team and awesome advisors! Ambition only grows as we look ahead. In 2024 we want to:
- Integrate an LLM-linked bilingual voice chatbot into the Beaj app as a conversation practice buddy and personalized tutor for our users,
- Grow our community of teachers, students and young professionals looking to upskill,
- Iterate our core offering to meet the needs of different user groups,
- Create customized solutions for large partners,
- Bundle language proficiency with other essential 21st century skills as well as career guidance and mentoring/coaching.
Wish us luck and stay tuned for updates!
May 2024 bring respite to those who are suffering and peace to our tumultuous world.