(Saturday Deep Dive) - SpEd@Home: Revolutionizing Special Education from Mumbai to the World

Today’s deep dive is about SpEd@Home, a Mumbai based startup and the brainchild of Dr. Dhaval Mody and Aysel Enginner. SpEd@Home is an EdTech platform to address special education for children. As with every Saturday deep dive, we go deep into the origin story as told by Dr. Mody, the business model, the competitors and rest of the good stuff.

We hope you enjoy reading the deep dive as much as we did writing it.

Table of Contents

• Origin Story

• Addressing Inequity in Education

• Unique Selling Proposition (USP) of SpEd@Home

• Operating Models

• Comparative Analysis with Competitors

• Products

• Global Expansion and Goals

• Revenue Model

• Marketing

• Challenges and Triumphs

• Growth Metrics

• Funding

• Success Metrics

Origin Story

In a city known for its bustling streets and relentless pace, a quiet revolution is taking place in the field of education. SpEd@Home, an EdTech platform founded in 2020, is on a mission to transform special education for children with ADHD, Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) and learning disabilities such as dyslexia and social-emotional challenges.

At the helm of this initiative is Dr. Dhaval Mody, a seasoned child and adolescent psychiatrist with over three decades of experience. His extensive experience has profoundly shaped SpEd@Home’s vision and mission.

“As a child and adolescent psychiatrist, I have seen children who have academic issues, behavioral issues, communication and cognitive issues, development, emotional and social issues,” said Dr. Mody.

SpEd@Home aims to democratize special education in India, addressing significant gaps in resources and support for children with diverse learning needs.

“Often these backbenchers are not those who can’t study,” Dr. Mody explained. “Teachers may say he is intelligent, but he is very mischievous. If he just studies better, he could have done it- all these can't be an excuse.”

Dr. Mody’s journey into the world of startups is nothing short of impressive. “This is my third startup, he recalls. “Supriya and I have been working together since the first startup.”

His first venture, EduConnect, was acquired in 2014. His second, a teleconsultation platform for mental health, was acquired a day before demonetization, by a leading healthcare IT company in the USA, Edifice.

Dr. Mody’s co-founder, Aysel Engineer, is a clinical psychologist and an MBA graduate in finance, with over two decades of experience in mental health, having worked in various capacities in schools.

Addressing Inequity in Education

Our education system was created for the average child and results in major inequity, especially for children with different learning styles due to the lack of tailored support. SpEd@Home aims to bridge this gap by providing personalized learning strategies and interventions that cater to each child’s unique needs.

“I call my work divided into these few areas- A - children having academic issues, B - children with behavioral issues, C - children with communication and cognitive issues, D - children having developmental issues, E - children having emotional issues, and F - children with social issues. For a child, the basic occupation is education. The most measurable outcome of all these issues is seen in academic performance. Over the years, the amount of inequity, which can be seen in terms of the behavior of parents, school administration and teachers has been growing,” Dr. Mody elaborated.

Unique Selling Proposition (USP) of SpEd@Home

The company’s USP lies in its holistic and integrated approach, offering a multidisciplinary method for children in the comfort of their homes. This ensures long-term support in a non-threatening atmosphere.

1. Multidisciplinary Approach: The platform provides support for various issues under one roof, like ADS, ADHD, Dyslexia, Dysgraphia, Dyscalculia, Non-Verbal Learning Disabilities and Oral / Written Language Disorder and Specific Reading Comprehension Deficit, among others.

2. Experts Identification and Remedial Approach: Experts, who are often hard to find locally, identify and cater to each child’s needs.

3. SpEd@Home leverages the latest technology to enhance its services. Their proprietary learning management system, Speed 2.1, powers both its home and school systems.

4. SpEd Junior, a platform for the foundational and functional development of children at a young age, ensuring a strong base for their academic journey.

Operating Models

The company operates on both B2B and B2C models.

SpEd@School- the B2B Model

1. In this model, the company shares resources with the school, training teachers to work with special needs children.

2. In another format where schools are located in remote locations like Siliguri, Jammu and Aurangabad, regular teachers are trained to provide support.

3. In UAE schools, specially trained educators devote their time to children with special needs.

Products for Schools:

1. Speedy Labs- It is a set-up of equipment to see not just the academic development of children, but to help with cognitive and neurological development.

2. SpEd Junior- It is a set of books that is in sync with a mobile application. This is for children between ages 3 to 8 years, who may not be able to independently engage with technology or children who may have mild to moderate intellectual deficits.

SpEd@Home- the B2C Model

In this model, products and intelligence are provided for the effective management of children with special needs. Let’s look at the products-

1. Educational Assessment: It identifies the literacy and numeracy skills of a child through a 37-minute online assessment.

2. Occupational Therapy Assessment: This is used to evaluate a child’s specific needs, challenges, and abilities related to sensory processing, motor skills, self-care, play, school participation, and social interactions.

3. Remedial Therapy: It is used to improve a child’s learning ability with a holistic approach.

4. Homeschooling Program: It offers personalized curriculum and teaching styles.

5. Online After-school Coaching: It is designed to provide a supportive and inclusive environment for children with ASD, ADHD, and Learning Disabilities to encourage development through personalized strategies and activities.

Comparative Analysis with Competitors

Since the company has a presence in India and abroad and is looking forward for expansion.

The following table shows significant competitors to SpEd@Home across the globe:

SpEd@Home has a significant presence in the UAE, where PAGS is a major competitor.

PAGS provides personalized packages depending on the needs of a child, has a monitoring system and generates IEP and real-time progress reports just like SpEd@Home. However, PAGS only helps with social interaction, communication and cognition, unlike SpEd@Home which also focuses on children with ASD and ADHD while promoting the numeracy and literacy strengths of the students.

Products

Let’s dive into SpEd@Home’s suite of products:

1. SpEd Probe- It is a 37-minute assessment tool, to identify a child’s learning gaps in literacy and numeracy.

2. SpEd Probe Plus- This is a level two assessment that involves a brief parent interview. This is for children who may be identified into tier two and tier three support.

3. SpEd Track- It identifies the learning needs of the children, whether a child requires group coaching or an individualized cognitive program.

4. SpEd Track Plus- It identifies the learning needs of the child, to create a personalized learning pathway. It has an adaptive feature, where the program adapts itself to the learning style of the child.

5. SpEd Monitor- It is a multi-level monitoring system for parents, for a deeper understanding of progress.

6. SpEd Prog- This is one of the USP of SpEd@Home. This feature uses millions of data points to analyze the performance of the child and then creates the course material accordingly, which can further be customized by the teachers.

7. SpEd Junior- It is a set of books in sync with a mobile application, for younger children to enhance their foundational and functional development.

All these products are powered by the latest Speed-2.1 software.

Dr. Mody said, “The courses we provide are certified by Missouri State University, USA, and some special education courses are certified by a University of Mumbai college called Hashu Advani College of Special Education.”

Global Expansion and Goals

Currently operating in India and the UAE, SpEd@Home has ambitious plans for global expansion. “We are already in five stages of negotiations with companies in the US and Singapore, where we are looking to have our footprint by January 2025,” revealed Dr. Mody. By 2027-28, the company aims to reach a million lives and be present in nearly 300 schools.

Revenue Model

• The company has a license fee per site user in UAE.

• In India, the products and services of the company are available through an annual subscription fee for schools.

• For B2C, customers subscribe to the services in terms of number of sessions they want to buy.

• Around 80 percent revenue of the total business comes from the B2B channel, while the remaining 20 percent comes from SpEd@Home.

Marketing

Dr. Mody said, “Currently for our B2B model, we have a sales team that is put on the ground to see that we are to reach out to schools. For B2C, we have our digital marketing and social marketing team through which we get our leads.”

Challenges and Triumphs

SpEd@Home faced several challenges in its journey, including changing mindsets in schools and convincing parents to adopt online special education services.

The team acknowledged the following challenges for B2B and B2C models-

Challenges in B2B Model-

1. Many programs are available for children across schools, but there are not many programs that meet the requirements of these few children in the classrooms.

2. Schools are reluctant to spend money on the selected few children, who according to them don’t perform well in academics.

3. While the country may have 300 million children with some form of learning difficulties, there are not enough special educators and occupational therapists to meet the requirements of these children.

4. Lack of awareness and acceptance among school authorities and teachers.

5. Lack of access to technology and teaching staff who are compatible to deal with children with special needs and attention.

6. The model is optional for the parents if they want to opt for it. Parents can pay for these services to schools. At this stage, the mindset of the parents needs to be changed, which is challenging.

7. Where there are shared resources, it is challenging to change the mindset of the teacher who finds it difficult to spend so much time with these children and to stay motivated to put in extra hours for this work.

B2C Challenges-

1. Trouble in lead conversion. A lot of people inquire about the program but very few of them enroll in it.

2. Parents still believe in the conventional model for searching for local help, or someone to come at home to work with the child.

How the company tackled these challenges-

Dr. Mody explained, “We work for three A’s- Awareness, Acceptance and Access to support services. We are spreading a lot of awareness for this particular domain to see that we build a significant amount of acceptance.”

1. By ensuring standardization. Standardization in a way that the child gets assessed at every stage of learning from writing to the way a child will be taught a particular concept. This led to standardization of the results that come for every child.

2. By ensuring scalability. Initially, special educators were spending two hours assessing children and then spending an equal amount of time putting in the data. But using the new software, the productivity of these teachers has increased by over 40 to 45 percent because now they can work with 30 children and don't need to spend any time on feeding the data.

3. Replication in Results- Initially some parents would want a specific teacher for their child. But over the last year, no parents have come out and complained about the teacher.

Dr. Mody said, “Our system has become so robust that whosoever the teacher is, in the school or within our ecosystem, we are able to replicate the results. Parents have written the names of our educators on Google reviews and how they have seen the journey of their children with them.”

Growth Metrics

1. SpEd@Home is expected to grow at a rate of 6.2 percent CAGR per year until 2030, with the current market size being 2.9 billion.

2. The company boasts a dedicated team of special educators and occupational therapists, “We have 11 educators, which includes eight special educators and three other occupational therapists, these are the actual employees of the company,” the co-founder shared.

3. Currently, the B2B platform has over 10,000 children using the application.

4. The number of active users every week is abound 2500.

5. In B2C, the company has worked with over 2000 children, at any time, the number of students active every week is around 100.

In the words of Dr. Mody, “We have not pivoted ever from the original idea. I’m always razor-sharp and focused on what I do. We have gone from Speed 2.0 to now Speed 2.1, it's the same thing that we will do.”

Funding

Mr. Mody confirmed that to date the company has raised around USD 825,000 so far. However, the company is currently in the mature stages to close another round of 1 million. Scitech Park was the major investor in seed rounds of funding.

Success Metrics

For SpEd@Home, success is measured not just by numbers but by user experience and satisfaction. “When school renews for me and when a parent has a good review, that’s where it makes a lot more sense for me,” the co-founder emphasized. This focus on customer satisfaction ensures recurring revenue and long-term success.