At the 4th ASEAN Digital Ministers Meeting recently held in Singapore, Vietnam's online education platform ICANKid won the gold prize at the ASEAN Digital Awards 2024 in the Digital Content category.

ICANKid is an online English learning application for preschool and pre-primary school children (ages 2-6) developed by Galaxy Education (later Galaxy Play).

The learning materials on the application are designed according to the development standards for 5-year-old children of the Ministry of Education & Training, and the comprehensive development standards of UNICEF.

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A young user of the English learning app ICANKid.

Learn English through cartoon game application

Sharing with VietNamNet, a representative of the development team said that before ICANKid, Galaxy Education won the ASEAN Digital Awards 2019 with the online learning platform product Hoc Mai (Hocmai.vn).

“ ICANKid's success this season is partly due to the enthusiastic support of the Ministry of Information and Communications by sending experts and staff to guide and discuss with businesses how to present and introduce products in each round, ” said a representative of the development team.

In addition, during the competition in Singapore, representatives of the Ministry of Information and Communications also enthusiastically advised and guided ICANKid on the direction of product development to the markets of Southeast Asian countries.

According to the development team representative, the application's business model is to provide online English learning packages for children. Customers can experience the product for free, then purchase the service at an affordable price, starting from only 59,000/month or 499,000/year.

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ICANKid is loved by children because it is a game that allows them to learn while playing and play while learning.

The difference between ICANKid and other applications lies in the model of learning while playing, playing while learning, balancing education and entertainment for children through vivid, highly aesthetic illustrations.

Not only do children learn from pronunciation exercises, they also watch entertaining, fun animated clips that are censored safely and completely ad-free. This helps children learn and grow in a healthy space, while also providing peace of mind for parents.

“ ICANKid will help children fully familiarize themselves with Vietnamese – English – Math according to the standard curriculum without having to attend extra classes. Children can relax with learning games, learn to listen and speak English, practice spelling Vietnamese, and practice Math thinking, ” said a representative of the development team.

The app also helps children develop life skills through a series of highly educational stories. At the same time, the app stimulates creativity with drawing, coloring, and rhythmic dancing games.

For parents, the application allows parents to adjust their children's application usage time, monitor their children's learning results remotely through detailed weekly reports. In addition, ICANKid also ensures a reasonable playing and learning path for children with an automatic balancing system.

Currently, the ICANKid application has more than 50,000 customers who are paid subscribers. In the next 3 years, ICANKid will focus on the Vietnamese market. The development team aims to have 1 million subscribers by 2024.

Vietnam's ICANKid app can 'go global'

As one of the judges at the ASEAN Digital Awards 2024, Mr. Nguyen Thanh Tuyen, Deputy Director of the Department of Information and Communications Industry (Ministry of Information and Communications), said that the ICANKid application is considered the "dark horse" of the award when it surpassed many big names to win the Gold award in the Digital Content category.

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ICANKid won the ASEAN Digital Awards 2024 Gold Award in the Digital Content category.

According to Mr. Tuyen, the reason ICANKid won the Gold Award at the ASEAN Digital Awards 2024 is because this is a truly excellent product with a global dimension. In the presentation round, the representative of ICANKid had a strong impression and was highly appreciated by the international judges.

“The performance of the Vietnamese representative was carefully prepared. ICANKid also showed a very attractive cartoon to illustrate, making the judges exclaim with delight. The gentle and intelligent Q&A performance of the development team representative was also very engaging,” said Mr. Tuyen.

Currently, ICANKid products are only available in Vietnam and have not yet been released abroad. However, when talking about the future of ICANKid, the Deputy Director of the Department of Information Technology and Communications Industry said that the opportunity for this application to “go global” is very bright.

According to Mr. Tuyen, ICANKid can expand its market to many other countries because the demand for learning English is everywhere. This can become a reality if the Vietnamese application does well in terms of communication, strategy and developing a business model with reasonable prices.

The Ministry of Information and Communications will support ICANKid and Vietnamese digital technology enterprises through communication, connecting enterprises with the market as well as bringing Vietnamese products to international playgrounds.

ASEAN Digital Awards is a large and prestigious award for software and IT solutions from ASEAN countries. The award is judged and evaluated according to many strict criteria by a jury of 10 ASEAN countries along with representatives from Japan, China and Korea.

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