Edison Durán Lucena, CEO of PleIQ, in a conversation with Contxto.com discussed the company’s recent victory at the Impacta Spotlight Demo Day and its plans for the future of education technology.
“Winning the Impacta Spotlight Demo Day is a great honor and validation for PleIQ’s present and future impact,” Durán Lucena began. “We’re already contributing to the education of over 200,000 children through responsible use of technology.”
PleIQ, a Chilean edtech startup, creates interactive and adaptive learning experiences for preschool and K-12 education. The company integrates augmented reality and artificial intelligence into physical books, combining traditional and digital learning methods.
Durán Lucena explained how PleIQ plans to leverage its $16,000 prize from Morris Opazo: “We’ll use it to strengthen our technological infrastructure and enhance our AI capabilities. This includes advanced technical support and Amazon Web Services cloud infrastructure, allowing us to scale our XR+AI services more efficiently.”
The CEO highlighted key learnings from the Demo Day, including the importance of personalizing user experiences and differentiating their value proposition in saturated markets. “Investors emphasized the need to communicate clearly how PleIQ outperforms competitors in terms of educational impact and technology,” he noted.
Discussing the integration of generative AI, Durán Lucena revealed, “We’re developing an ‘Artificial Intelligence Department’ dedicated to creating and implementing generative AI models. These will allow book characters to interact naturally with children, answering questions and adapting educational content to individual needs.”
PleIQ faced challenges during the Impacta Fundraising Strategy Program 2024, including articulating their value proposition to international investors and adapting their business model for different markets. “We refined our pitch and focused on adjusting strategies to better address the needs and regulations of each market,” Durán Lucena explained.
Looking to the future, the CEO shared PleIQ’s vision: “We see all education deeply enriched by augmented reality and artificial intelligence. Our goal is to transform books into intelligent tutors, combining the best of traditional and digital learning.”
To measure educational impact, PleIQ uses a learning analytics platform that collects real-time data on student interactions. “This allows us to monitor educational progress, identify areas for improvement, and adapt content based on individual needs,” Durán Lucena said.
The company is expanding internationally through strategic alliances with publishers and educational companies. “We’re currently expanding with Chilean publisher Caligrafix in Mexico and Colombia, and in talks for new partnerships in Argentina, Ecuador, and Peru,” he revealed.
PleIQ plans to transform the publishing industry by developing the first no-code Generative Edtech platform for creating intelligent books. “We aim to cover all primary and secondary education subjects in the next two years, once we complete our current investment round,” Durán Lucena stated.
The CEO concluded by sharing PleIQ’s long-term plans: “We’re raising our SEED round to implement a scaling strategy based on generative ed-tech. Our goal is to grow from creating 10 intelligent books per year to over 1,000, increasing our annual recurring revenue by 20X and expanding our educational impact from 200,000 children to over 20 million across Latin America.”
