Priyanka Raswant, 31, is a graduate from Columbia Law School and a mother of a four year old Aahaan who launched Highbrow, a platform that curates regulated educational videos for children between 1-11 years, two years ago.
“It was supposed to be a side project initially but then became a full-time job for me after it took off”, said the ShePreneur who quit her job at City Law firm for Highbrow.
The law graduate was thinking of starting a family so, when she started making a list of videos that she wanted her kids to watch. At the end of the summer she had a total of 25,000 videos on that list.
“It was then that I realised that a platform which curates educational content for children was missing and something that other parents would want,” she said.
Highbrow is a video-on-demand platform similar to Netflix but instead of entertainment it offers curated educational videos over a range of categories- from cooking to history to languages. A subscription based portal, it charges £5.99 per month in comparison to existing platforms such as YouTube Kids, and Disney-which charges £4.99 per month among others.
“Parents like me go to Youtube Kids where we find educational videos but it is cluttered with advertising and often has content that is not appropriate for their viewing. “Also, Disney is entertainment based whereas, we do educational videos. It is as good as comparing pizzas with broccoli, the first is healthy while the other is not,” she said.
In a new study published in journal JAMA Pediatrics researchers have discovered the amount of time that children under the age of two spend on digital devices has more than doubled over a 17-year period. Kids today consume more content today than any other generation and parents are caught in the constant debate of finding that balance between allowing hours for good screen time versus entertainment screen time.
Educational videos on Highbrow come in from curators across the world and are vetted by their internal team. At present, the company has scaled to a level where they are now working with nurseries and schools where their videos in many cases are replacing YouTube in classrooms. But getting to that stage and receiving that financial investment was a challenge in itself. “It was terribly difficult to find that funding. The UK funding structure isn't very mature and it is evident in the fact that we don't have unicorns in the system.
“But more importantly it is hard to fundraise as a woman. I don't remember the number of times at pitch meetings where investors have openly told me of how I should not be pursuing this,' she laughs off.
