Geniebook

 

Company: 

Geniebook, founded in 2017, a Educational Tech Company that specializes in developing AI learning to help students access affordable personalized learning. Geniebook has grown to become Singapore's largest online learning platform (Shu, 2021).

Vision:

To becoming the leading online learning platform for grade school students across Southeast Asia. 

Mission:

Geniebook firmly believed that education is personal, and that students should have access to a personalized world-class education that brings together the best of technology and learning pedagogies, to help them grow into confident learners and contributors to society.

Goals:

- Streamline the process of incorporating students' reward incentives across platforms in all countries. 

- Build specialized curriculum tailored to each country's demand.

-To become the dominant online learning platform in Vietnam, Malaysia, and Indonesia.

Relationship:

I was an Curriculum Specialist for the company. I built and designed math curriculum for the AI database. In addition, I also teach in-person classes and interact with students with the company's online platform.

External Environmental Factors:

Political: Politically, Vietnam is a one party communist country with strong ideological control over the ministry of education. As a result, while there is potential for capturing large market share in Vietnam, Geniebook is ultimately constrained by the regulations of the Ministry of Education and might not be able to offer social sciences or humanities subjects according to Singaporean curriculum in Vietnam.  

Economic: Economically, Vietnam is a good potential environment for Geniebook to expand. The Vietnamese economy is growing fast and there is a lot of demand for private education in English and STEM. Geniebook Vietnam defnitely has potential in catering to young population of a growing economy. 

Sociocultural: The sociocultural context for Geniebook expansion in Vietnam is good because Vietnamese has compatible culture to that of Singaporean. Both cultures are heavily Sinicized. Vietnamese students have little difficult adopting to Geniebook curriculum. In addition, some of Geniebook products such as Chinese learning may be an attraction for some Vietnamese parents.  

Technological: 74% of Vietnamese use the internet. As such there is real potential for Geniebook's products in the Vietnamese market. With the recent lockdowns and the covid regulations, internet use and online learning has become more common and this is a good thing for Geniebook, although many Vietnamese parents are still resistant to the idea of online learning.

Environmental: Since this is an edtech company, there is no unusual environmental regulations that apply to the company.

Legal: The school has to comply to the regulations of the Ministry of Education. There are some communist ideological regulations that may prevent Geniebook from being able to offer courses in social sciences and humanities. 

Internal Factors:

I don't know the exact details of how each department works but the structure of the company is roughly as followed:

Geniebook has a corporate structure and I am in the Curriculum Department. My direct mid-level manager is the Head of Curriculum. The daily tasks of the company involved deliver lessons and tutoring services, building database for the company's AI. The general goal of the company is to reach a certain level of students to be able to turn a profit and potentially expand to other cities in Vietnam. Since it is a Ed-Tech company, most of the work are done on the computer. Teachers have to come into the classroom for real life lessons, but the IT team, for example, work mostly on the computer. Overall I think the structure of the company is quite inflexible and is not that responsive to bottom-up feedbacks. Often time, upper management's plans from Singapore are not consistent with the observable facts in Vietnam. 

If I were the CEO of Geniebook, I would not have a branch manager and I would not have expanded into the Vietnamese using the same brand. Instead, I would seek strategic alliance with an up and coming private educational institution in Vietnam. In this way, the independent legal entity can be more responsive to the environmental and cultural factors in Vietnam without having to be constrained by the corporate structure and standard regulations of Singapore geniebook.  

References:

Shu C. (2021, October 18), Singapore-based Geniebook’s personalized learning platform raises $16.6M Series A, Techcrunch.
https://techcrunch.com/2021/10/18/singapore-based-geniebooks-personalized-learning-platform-raises-16-6m-series-a/

Geniebook. https://geniebook.com/

Individuals using the internet (% of population)- Vietnam. https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/IT.NET.USER.ZS?locations=VN