BrainNook from NuNook – World’s First Educational Virtual World for Children.
BrainNook, a newly released product from Nunook Interactive, Mumbai brings NCERT Syllabus based computer games in Mathematics & English for kids. I personally loved the way the idea has been executed and the great value that BrainNook brings for the Indian school going kids. Mmmm, and it’s quite heartening to note that quite a few startups have taken to bringing great software to schools lately.
BrainNook works like this: “Children take on the role of an alien exploring Earth and collecting stars in order to repair their spaceship. Children earn stars by traveling through virtual worlds and playing games. The worlds are based on different regions of the globe, increasing children’s curiosity about our planet and engrossing them in the story.” – Well, I am engrossed in the story too:-)
The application is designed keeping in mind age group of kids and there are dozens of games based on Maths and English Grammar skills, embedded within colorful virtual worlds that encourage exploration. By playing the games and exploring the virtual worlds, children develop critical skills such as numeracy, language proficiency, reading, reasoning, analysis, memorization, dexterity and computer literacy.
From what I got to see myself, BrainNook has real good value on offer for the Indian education market. But that is not the end for this bootstrapped startup from Mumbai. Abhijeet Vijayakar, CEO & Co-Founder has both business & consumer versions of BrainNook priced very competitively at Rs. 10,000 & Rs. 400 each for schools & parents respectively. Both versions are desktop applications, as BrainNook is currently pushing sales through a distributor-based model across India.
Strategically speaking, this type of sales model for consumer version (even S&B version) seems a bit of a barrier according to me. A “human-less” sales process is a better bet for a young embryonic startup any day. Not only is scaling much easier, and conversion percentage also higher, in an online model, but also there is a possibility of discounting the distributor margin and the logistics cost to the end consumer or adding it into one’s profit margin too (depends on how the entrepreneur thinks 
). Right now, to buy your copy of BrainNook you got write an email to NuNook team.
Second issue that seems would probably work against the product is “avoidance” of socializing tools amongst kids. Kids these days are way too smart on Facebook and Orkut, and anything that does not synergistic with social web might just wither away unclicked on a desktop. Though Abhijeet, did confirm to me that their next level application would be browser based one with online sales too. It is worth considering SAAS, online downloads model I must reiterate again.
Third suggestion that I have for BrainNook is to keep in mind is that Indian education has great value abroad. Particularly, that of Maths. So your product might just find takers abroad too as long as the aliens get to see & learn about the entire world. Would you wanna miss on the dollars, do ya?
So Pluggd.in readers do give your machines to the kids and let them spin BrainNook asap. I loved it.
About the author - ZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz....If u r not sleepy then follow me @marvindanig or write to him on arvind [at] pluggd [dot] in
Hello Arvind,
Thanks for the great writeup on BrainNook. To address some of the valid issues you have raised:
- Our initial go to market strategy is to tie up with distributors and retailers to establish multiple offline points of presence across India, as this is where we see a large part of the market is.
- A browser-based version of the application, as well as an installable application that can be downloaded from our website, are very much in our plans.
- I’d like to emphasize that though our application is installable, it is not offline. What this means is that all players’ scores are stored on our server, although the bandwidth-intensive graphics files are stored locally. Due to this, we can offer parents a detailed comparative performance report for their child – showing them how well their child has done in Maths and Grammar, compared to all other children using the product. At the same time, the desktop nature of the application prevents children from visiting undesirable websites – a highly important concern for Indian parents in our market research.
- As you have rightly pointed out, the concept of BrainNook has value outside India as well. International expansion is a key part of our near-term plans.
Thank you for the detailed and thoughtful feedback on our product.
Abhijeet Vijayakar
Founder and CEO, Nunook Interactive Pvt Ltd