Innovation

GraphoGame’s innovative product provides an engaging and accessible tool that teaches literacy skills to children. Originally developed within universities to research computer-assisted reading interventions and technological gamified tools for teaching literacy for children, the app emerged from collaborative research among neuropsychologists, linguists and speech researchers. Their goal was to find out whether gamification would improve the reading and literacy results of children.

Following the completion of research, with promising results, GraphoGame founded in 2018 as a research spin-off, acquiring intellectual property rights to commercialize the concept. The app now delivers personalised learning experiences through gamification and algorithms, requiring only 15 minutes of daily play. GraphoGame’s mission is rooted in social impact, specifically in providing inclusive and accessible education, and addressing the issue of global illiteracy through their scalable solution.

Inspiration

With over 250 million children in the world who cannot read, the founders of GraphoGame recognised a problem they wanted to address. “We have a literacy crisis globally, and it is getting worse”, says Jesper Ryynänen, Co-Founder and Chief Operating Officer of GraphoGame. “Technology may not be the only solution for illiteracy, but many children do not have a parent or a teacher who can help them with learning even fundamental literacy skills.”

Illiteracy is often inherited from parents and society. Adaptive and research-based literacy games, like GraphoGame, can stop this cycle. GraphoGame provides a game that is free for the user to download, easy to use, and highly adaptable for each learner’s needs. GraphoGame sells licenses mainly to governments, which allows broad distribution of the app for free. This way, the app can provide access to high-quality literacy education for children in different countries. “We often think of literacy as an old problem,” Ryynänen adds, “but actually illiteracy is getting worse. Technology and games can deliver personalised and high-quality education, regardless of the background of the user.”

Overall impact

GraphoGame sells their apps directly to governments, NGOs and foundations, instead of targeting schools directly, which allows rapid scaling and broader reach, maximizing the impact of their solution. “We go directly for scale,” says Ryynänen. “That is why during our seven years of operation, we have achieved ten million downloads, half a million active users, and deals with governments in twenty countries.”

The company is now also evolving from an app-licensing model to an educational data company. Its new tool, GraphoGame Teacher Dashboard, allows educators to analyze how children are learning across regions and schools. With 25 literacy competencies tracked through the app, GraphoGame is exploring ways to measure broader societal impact beyond academic metrics. “We’re working on linking literacy improvements to wider impact metrics,” Ryynänen notes.

Business benefit

Ryynänen, as a social entrepreneur, believes that companies need to lead by example while creating both impact and revenue in a balanced manner. “We aim to show an example of how a company in the private sector can create positive impact and be mission-driven. We want to show companies, that it is possible to increase both shareholder value and societal value at the same time.”

With distribution across 20 countries and in 17 languages, the company is next looking to expand into Malaysia, Thailand, and Somali-speaking communities around the world. According to Ryynänen, cultural localisation has been key in expanding to new markets. While the company’s Finnish origin creates trust among decision-makers, the apps content is adapted to local users. For example, the graphics and visual details of Brazilian, Kenyan and Tanzanian versions have been adapted to reflect local environments, which the users value. Customers are primarily institutional, and marketing is done mainly through universities and teacher networks in a word-of-mouth manner. Ryynänen also believes that consistency of the business model and pricing creates trust among customers.

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Social and environmental benefit

GraphoGame’s innovation supports particularly UN SDG 4: Quality Education and UN SDG 17: Partnerships for the Goals. By providing inclusive and equitable quality education, promoting literacy learning opportunities and fostering international cross-sector collaboration, also in least-developed countries, the company’s concept is well-aligned with the UN SDGs.

In the future, GraphoGame aims to keep developing the game towards an even more modern version, visually and functionally, with an even wider impact. The company aims to provide the most-researched literacy learning app based on the most evidence-based content, as well as data that can benefit governments and decision makers on education-related matters. “Our goal is to also become a tool for decision makers to provide useful data on education, while also still being a fun game for kids to play“, Ryynänen says. He admits that especially in low-resource countries with structural barriers to education, the challenges can sometimes feel overwhelming. Nevertheless, the company remains committed to its mission to eradicate illiteracy. “We continuously adapt based on what the world looks like – and what the world needs.”

Interview

Jesper Ryynänen, Cofounder, Chief Operating Officer