School Rebound emerged as a winner of Venture Kick’s third phase. The EPFL spin-off convinced the jury with its unique solution to a problem affecting 25% of school-age children, namely poor or dysfunctional handwriting skills.
Today, 25% of children between the ages of 5 and 12 face challenges in their education as a result of difficulties in the development of their handwriting skills. Close to 9% suffer from dysgraphia, a cognitive dysfunction impacting motor skills, particularly writing skills. The concerns are not just aesthetic, as these difficulties cause stress, fatigue, and low self-esteem in affected children and ultimately impact their overall performance and aptitude as well as their assessment and treatment by educators.
In development at the École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne’s laboratory for Computer-Human Interaction in Learning and Instruction (CHILI) since 2017, School Rebound’s application named Dynamilis uses an AI model to analyze dynamic aspects of handwriting humans cannot, such as pen pressure. Based on the input of over 10,000 children’s handwriting, the analytical method was patented and shared in top scientific journals.
Dynamilis is unique because it functions both as an analytical and remediation tool: once the app analyzes a child’s handwriting profile, determining which aspects require improvement, the app offers gamified exercises for autonomous training which were developed with handwriting specialists and teachers. The analysis helps therapists and educators to determine problem areas much more rapidly than with usual methods, while children are offered a way to train and progress in areas that are harder to train on paper, such as tilt or pressure.
The app is offered with a subscription model and is currently available in the App Store in France, Italy, Switzerland, Germany, and Austria. Before the launch of its subscription-based version, the app was tested with over 100 therapists, 350 schoolteachers, and 50 families. In just a few months, the company has gained over 500 paying users.
The startup will invest the CHF 150,000 awarded by Venture Kick in testing and optimizing marketing channels to attract new customers, intending to make Dynamilis available in key European and North American markets and tapping into an estimated addressable market of CHF 4 billion.
School Rebound was co-founded by Thibault Asselborn (CEO), a machine learning expert and postdoctoral researcher at the EPFL’s CHILI lab who obtained an Innogrant in 2020; Pierre Dillenbourg, an education expert and AVP of Education Administration at EPFL, among other things; Laurent Boatto (CTO), founder of anibis.ch; and Anthony Peguet (COO), project manager at the CHILI lab. The company also relies on a team of expert advisers on neurodevelopmental disorders, dyslexia, dysgraphia, data science, and bias in education.
“The Venture Kick program helped us develop our project both with funding and the Kickers Camps,” Thibault Asselborn said. “During these camps, we received a terrific amount of support and advice from world-class business experts. We are very grateful for the program. Keep it up!”
(Press release / SK)
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