{"id":37669,"date":"2023-10-20T14:51:34","date_gmt":"2023-10-20T14:51:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/startupsmart.test\/2023\/10\/20\/this-sydney-startup-wants-to-get-its-innovative-technology-into-the-hands-of-every-school-kid-startupsmart\/"},"modified":"2023-10-20T14:51:34","modified_gmt":"2023-10-20T14:51:34","slug":"this-sydney-startup-wants-to-get-its-innovative-technology-into-the-hands-of-every-school-kid-startupsmart","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/uncategorized\/this-sydney-startup-wants-to-get-its-innovative-technology-into-the-hands-of-every-school-kid-startupsmart\/","title":{"rendered":"This Sydney startup wants to get its innovative technology into the hands of every school kid – StartupSmart"},"content":{"rendered":"
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An Australian not-for-profit which bootstrapped development of a new school computer and tablet is asking the federal government for $10 million so every child in the country can have one.<\/p>\n

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One Education<\/a> founder Rangan Srikhanta says the investment will be a small commitment from the government, which has already allocated nearly $1.1 billion<\/a> to its innovation agenda.<\/p>\n

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\u201cWe want to reach millions of children,\u201d Srikhanta tells StartupSmart<\/i>.<\/p>\n

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It wouldn\u2019t be the first time Srikhanta and his team received a large sum of money from the government either, with an $11.7 million investment helping One Education provide 50,000 low-cost laptops to disadvantaged children around Australia and the world.<\/p>\n

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One Education\u2019s newest initiative Infinity is a tablet computer that can grow<\/a> with students.<\/p>\n

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Srikhanta says the product is strongly aligned with the government\u2019s focus on boosting STEM education and digital literacy.<\/p>\n

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\"sgrt\"<\/p>\n

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A tech solution for schooling<\/b><\/p>\n

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One Education developed the product as a solution for schools, where investment in digital education is extremely expensive and inefficient due to restrictive upgradability and the cost to repair existing computers on the market.<\/p>\n

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With a pre-order price of about $330, Infinity offers schools a tablet that can not only be upgraded cheaply and easily but its parts are simple to replace, Srikhanta says.<\/p>\n

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\u201cIt\u2019s a modular computer where the core modules like the battery, camera and CPU slot out in seconds,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

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The prototype was released through a brief one-month campaign at the end of 2015, which resulted in 1400 units pre-ordered by more than 25 Australian schools.<\/p>\n

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While this generated about $500,000 in revenue, Srikhanta says they now need to raise significant funding to roll out their technology to all schools.<\/p>\n

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\u201cKids need to get access to technology if they want to participate in a knowledge-based economy in the future,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

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With a mission to create fair and equal access to digital education, Srikhanta says government funding will be critical.<\/p>\n

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\u201cThis is very much about capacity building for the future,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

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Their ultimate aim is to provide an Infinity tablet to any student regardless of their socioeconomic background or school\u2019s budget.<\/p>\n

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\u201cOur product is significantly more advanced than what we previously offered,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

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\u201cWe want to get our technology in the hands of every child.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\"Sdfg\"<\/p>\n

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Bootstrapping computer development <\/b><\/p>\n

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The innovative piece of technology was created on an extremely tight budget, Srikhanta <\/i>says\u00a0<\/i><\/p>\n

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\u201cWe had to be very creative,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

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To bring their idea to life, Srikhanta says they outsourced tasks through Alibaba global trade platform<\/a> and had lots of conversations via Skype.<\/p>\n

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\u201cWe did not take a single flight to make this machine happen,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

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The software was designed in Sydney while the electrical engineering was completed in India.<\/p>\n

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\u201cWe spent a few hundred thousand dollars to get Infinity this far,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

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This comprised leftover proceeds from their previous program, contributions from schools<\/a> and use of existing resources.<\/p>\n

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As a not-for-profit, he says it\u2019s a worthy achievement that they have been able to bootstrap the development of Infinity – particularly, in Australia, which doesn\u2019t have a well supplied \u201ctech city\u201d like Shenzhen where inventors can rapidly prototype ideas with easy access to parts and components.<\/p>\n

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However, he says it also proves that there is opportunity for tech development in Australia.<\/p>\n

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\u201cThe fact that a not-for-profit has been able to design an innovative piece of technology does provide a blueprint for others wanting to get into this space,\u201d Srikhanta <\/i>says.<\/p>\n

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Follow\u00a0StartupSmart\u00a0on <\/i>Facebook<\/i><\/a>, <\/i>Twitter<\/i><\/a>, and <\/i>LinkedIn<\/i><\/a>. <\/i>\u00a0<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

An Australian not-for-profit which bootstrapped development of a new school computer and tablet is asking the federal government for $10<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":61867,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37669"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37669"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37669\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/61867"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37669"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37669"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37669"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}