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UNICEF selected a promising Pakistani startup earlier this week for its Innovative Fund 2020 programme. The startup contains Augmented Reality (AR) games that promote the development of cognitive and motor skills among children with special needs.
The brains behind the startup are Muhammad Usman, the CEO of WonderTree, whose older brother was diagnosed with Down syndrome-and preferred learning through games. In the beginning, WonderTree only had three team members who initiated the startup with a thought of making the quality of education and physiotherapy accessible and highly affordable.
The startup uses machines learning, human pose estimation, and Artificial Intelligence to generate eye-catching and interactive games for children aged between 4 and 14 years. Special kids with mild and moderate disabilities are the target of WonderTree.
In a statement, WonderTree said: “Our inclusive and unique approach of using motion-based games as an assistive tool makes the learning process fun and exciting for children. Parents and teachers also have access to an online psychometric dashboard to track and measure the progress of the child.”
The statement further read: “With UNICEF’s Innovative Fund, we are hoping to enhance our technological infrastructure and scale our solution to populations with limited access to quality learning. Over the next year, we will focus on creating an optimal experience for the end-user, reduce the computing requirements to run our games, and test the technologies with data gathered through this program.”
WonderTree firmly believes that collaboration with UNICEF is going to be a stepping stone for the startup, and soon it will reach the global market, thus impacting millions of disabled children worldwide.
Earlier on, the Karachi-based startup was also selected by Google’s accelerator program on Sustainable Development Goals which allows the developers to closely work with engineers from over 20 Google teams along with other subject specialists to address product, engineering, funding challenges, and business development.
