Educa is about bringing education into the digital space. The online portal is designed for early childhood teachers to record, organize and share updates about each child’s education and development.
When Nathan Li’s one year old daughter Nancy first started childcare in 2009, he and his wife constantly felt they were disconnected from her life “After talking to the early childhood teachers and parents who were in the same situation, I realised it was a common problem. With strong will to make a positive change to the world, I started Educa” says Nathan, Founder and Managing Director of Educa.
Educa is about bringing education into the digital space. The online portal is designed for early childhood teachers to record, organize and share updates about each child’s education and development. Educa gives parents the ability to see exactly what their child has been learning, teachers can upload stories, pictures or notes and the parents can instantly see them. Bringing the parents into their children’s education and helping them feel connected is what Educa’s all about.
Nathan started his relationship with Grow Wellington through the Activate programme, “Activate provided the knowledge required to transfer an idea into a start-up company. It forced us to ask ourselves all the hard questions about our business idea. The mentoring program alongside of Activate gave us effective strategic support which helped us build a start up business” says Nathan.
Taking what he learnt from Activate, Nathan then entered the 2011 Bright Ideas Challenge, where he made the top 20 and awarded finalist in the Education Category. “Bright Ideas gave us a stage to show-case our business idea and company. It further validated our concept and achievement since the inception of the idea. In addition, it put us in touch with valuable connections in the community, which opened doors to business opportunities for Educa” says Nathan. Educa is now in a number of early childhood centres throughout New Zealand and Nathan hopes that this will continue to grow “Our goal is to provide the easiest software solutions to connect early childhood teachers and parents around children's learning. Through the connectivity and timely access to quality learning information, we can help the early childhood education community raise better children. Going forward, we'd like to see more and more early childhood centres in New Zealand using Educa. We'd also like to take Educa offshore to other markets like Australia and China in the future.”