Readmio - Startup of the Year

Company: Readmio, Brezi, the Czech Republic
Company Description: Readmio is a small startup company founded in 2020 by Ilya Novodvorskiy in Prague, the Czech republic. It's a mobile application that brings stories to life for parents and their little ones and makes it easier than ever to read to them and record stories for them. We use voice recognition to follow along as you read and play sounds and music at exactly the right time in the story.
Nomination Category: Company / Organization Categories
Nomination Sub Category: Startup of the Year - Consumer Products Industries

Nomination Title: Readmio

Readmio is a mobile application that brings fairytales to life with sounds and music triggered by your voice. We use voice recognition to follow along as you read and play sounds and music at exactly the right time in the story. Parents, teachers, and children are amazed at the magical experience and due to its educational benefits, it has been a very popular tool during the pandemic.

The application was launched in June 2020 and since then has had almost 100,000 downloads. Also, we were able to raise our first investment of 500,000 euros in just 6 months from launch.

Currently, we have over 200 stories in 3 languages and are aiming to add multiple additional languages this year.

To create the app, we have worked with some of the top voice recognition scientists in Europe to develop the technology and have proprietary technology that we have created in-house. We have our own team of voice-recognition experts and advisors so we are able to adapt to any language, and we have the ability to process the voice recognition work offline on-device which makes the technology much more secure and promotes user privacy.

The application was launched in June 2020 and by the end of the year, we already had 65,000 downloads and over 100 stories published in 2 languages. Due to our incredible growth, we were able to secure our first round of funding for 500,000 euros in just 6 months. Since then we have introduced a new premium subscription to the app and have launched internationally.

Currently, we are almost at 100,000 downloads with over 20,000 active users per month. We have very high ratings in both app stores and have won multiple awards for our product. Most recently we won the Creative Business Cup and were chosen to represent our country on the world stage.

In addition, we have applied and become sponsored by the Czech government through its Czechinvest program. We were one of the top three startups of 2020 in its yearly competition.

Our achievements are quite significant because of our speed and success. In just a very short amount of time, we were able to bring the product to market and also get a very large amount of users. We have also received much recognition in the press due to our innovative product and have been able to spread very quickly due to word of mouth. Parents, teachers, and kids love the application and it can be seen in our high % of retained users.

Also, we closed a large amount for our first round of funding in a very short period of time. This is because our investors saw how quickly we were moving forward and gaining success. In addition, our team has extensive experience working together and the previous startup we worked on together was sold to a publicly traded company in 2018.

In general, ed-tech is a very difficult industry to break into but currently, due to the pandemic, we were able to create an educational tool that parents can use at home with kids. Compared to other ed-tech startups we have had very user acquisition and most importantly retention and sales.

Here are multiple articles about our application from the top media publications:

https://forbes.cz/pohadky-nikdy-nebyly-dojemnejsi-aplikace-readmio-babickam-umoznuje-predcitat-vnoucatum-i-na-dalku/

https://www.czechcrunch.cz/2021/04/jak-sel-ilya-do-sveta-pohadkove-readmio-vyhralo-cesky-creative-business-cup-a-rychle-roste/

https://www.expats.cz/czech-news/article/fairytale-reading-app-wins-creative-business-cup-start-up-prize