As we hear more about the ‘new normal’, the only thing for certain is that the business world has changed for the foreseeable future. One of the main issues businesses are facing is need for remote work. This has impacted not just companies alone, but the entire industries are being challenged due to their specific type of work.
One of the biggest issues is that training is a challenge, especially for those with a large workforce or with specific technical training requirements. How do you train hundreds or even thousands of people when there are restrictions or limitations with getting them into a warehouse or training facility.
Edtech is an evolving industry that has been brought to the forefront of the world. We speak to Eduspaze to find out how they are changing the industry.
This is where ACKTEC Technologies is trying to change the world through their immersive technology platform. We had a chance to speak to their CEO Rayvan Ho about their latest round of funding, their work in the industry and how they plan to scale throughout the world.
He had some interesting insights to share.
Congrats on your recent funding. How do you plan to use that investment moving forward?
This recent funding is a step forward towards our vision to serve 100 million learners around the world with over 10,000 enterprise-grade learning contents. Our strategy is to scale our business rapidly and to gain more market share with focus on digitizing learning content with strong accreditations and certifications with immersive capabilities.
Besides improving the accessibility and automation of our platform, we will also be adding Artificial Intelligence to recommend courses and to track the learning analytics, and introducing a Humanised chatbot companion (digital buddy) to facilitate 24/7 delivery of lessons. We will also be bringing in user authentication technologies such as facial recognition and signatures to prevent fraud.
Have you met significant user resistance to your training programmes and methodology, especially as you look to scale these significantly? How do you overcome these issues?
Initially, yes, but with COVID-19, the notion of learning online has become the new normal. Industry partners and schools are looking to digitalise their contents for learning anytime, anywhere on smart mobile phones.
We are already working with leading vocational schools and accredited industry partners with high-quality contents that provide certifications for training to bring forth digital learning on our platform across Asia.
Can you describe how your technology works in a real-world setting?
ACKTEC is a pioneer in the development of digital interactive content that uses AR, VR and 3D animation to deliver immersive and authentic learning experiences for corporate and training institutions.
ActiveLearn is ACKTEC’s flagship Artificial Intelligence Smart Learning Platform. Using cutting-edge innovative technology, ActiveLearn delivers personalized, adaptive learning using AI virtual assistance and also offers a 360 review powered by AI predictive analytics. Our customers have benefited in two areas: (1) cost savings on training and (2) an accelerated learning curve for students/employees using the ACKTEC ActiveLearn platform.
Do you foresee challenges with scaling your business in markets with poor infrastructure such as lack of internet penetration and low smartphone usage?
Our platform has been tested in many regions, including parts of Africa and even remote locations in ASEAN, and we have found that 4G network implementation and the use of smartphones are already prevalent in these countries, and our platform can be accessed easily. To ensure more people can access it, we upgrade our backend to keep the bandwidth needed low. As our platform does not require a lot of bandwidth to operate, any region with a 4G network will be able to support our platform. Furthermore, our platform is not restricted to mobile devices, and can be accessed in website form on a desktop, as long as wifi is available.
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How did the COVID-19 pandemic help you scale your business, which seems ideally placed for the ‘new normal’?
The need for digitalisation will be a norm for both asynchronous (online) lessons and blended (self-directed and online). As such the need for digitalisation for immersive content will increase. During this COVID-19 period, we have seen an increase in 30% of revenue.
Our growth is driven by the emergence of digital lifestyles (learn, work, live) within the context of the global Industry 4.0, so users are already aware of on-demand learning and are attracted to our tethered-learning with immersive content on our platform.
During this transformational era of COVID-19, there has been a strong surge in demand. We strongly believe there is a permanent and strong shift towards digital lifestyles globally, which is the new normal in a world of remote everything.
ACKTEC has established its strong reputation as a pioneer for immersive learning across Asia over the past 4 years. This has led to companies (overseas and local) reaching out to us constantly to help them solve their immediate pain points through digital learning, using interactive contents and gamification to improve the user experience for better learning outcomes.
Importantly, a key aspect of our value proposition to the learner is that ACKTEC is making jobs a lot more accessible online, as our immersive learning platform facilitates skills upgrading — leading to higher paying jobs in this new world of remote everything.
What are your plans for ACKTEC Technologies moving forward?
We are passionate about democratizing immersive learning for learners across Asia. We are developing our ACKTEC digital authoring software to industrialize the transformation of curated learning contents into immersive contents through AR scan and proprietary technologies, which is one of the key pillars to support our vision to serve 100 million learners around the world with over 10,000 enterprise-grade learning contents
We will continue to scale our marketplace KQwest to further broaden and deepen our geography coverage where we will also onboard more courses and learners so as to bring jobs for them across Asia.