[2021 Start-up Station Lecture Series #2] Start-up Enuma Korea Gets Funded 5 Billion Won by Elon Musk

Hyunju Kim, the Impact Business Director, lectures on “The Road to Social Venture: Educational Innovation in Developing Countries”

The second round of the 2021 Startup Station Lecture Series, hosted by Korea University Business School (Dean=Jongseok Bae), was held on April 6th. The Lecture Series is a program organized by the Entrepreneurship Academy of Seung Myung-ho Entrepreneurship Education Center, the educational department of Start-up Station. Various start-up mentors are invited to give lectures in this series of events.

In this event, Hyunju Kim, the Impact Business Director of the start-up Enuma Korea, gave a lecture on “The Road to Social Venture: Educational Innovation in Developing Countries.” The speech was broadcasted online due to Covid 19.

Enuma Korea is an Edu-Tech start-up that develops and runs mobile education applications for children such as Todo Math and Todo English. In May 2019, it launched Kitkit School, a game-based program that enables self-directed learning for children, thereby winning the “Global Learning XPRIZE.” This eventually led them to be funded 5 billion won by Elon Musk.

Director Kim explained how Kitkit School helped children from developing countries with self-directed learning. There have been efforts in the existing digital education industries to utilize Edu-Tech to provide solutions for education in marginalized regions, but it did not lead to successful academic achievements. Director Kim commented on the problem, stating that “Many of them focused too much on hardware development, therefore paying less attention to the importance of user-based learning experience.”

Moreover, Director Kim explained the outlook of Enuma Korea in today’s society, where the education gap further widened due to Covid-19. She wrapped up the lecture by saying that “Enuma School Program is reaching out to children of regions such as Indonesia and Latin America, where children have difficulty accessing online education services.”

Article | Hyejung Park (College of Liberal Arts, Korean Language and Literature Major '19)

Photo | KUBS Start-up Station