South African startup SeeBox, which has developed an educational console teaching children about electronics by means of gameplay and experimentation, has received its first orders and will ship its first units in March after obtaining funding.
Disrupt Africa reported in September on SeeBox, which aims to allow children to enjoy a practical and experimental way of learning the sciences and electronics. It engages children with short animated videos, and the allows them to put knowledge into practice with experiments on real playboards and game play. The SeeBox keeps track of a learner’s progress as they go.
The startup was afterwards named the winner in the educational category at the Africa Entrepreneurship Awards, which SeeBox founder Johann Kok told Disrupt Africa had given the startup enough runway to go into commercialisation without requiring further investment.
Kok said the SeeBox had received strong interest from the market, with Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE)-listed investment holding company Adcorp the first company to issue a purchase order, through its subsidiary PMI.
“Our long term objective is to stream people into technical training. To do this they need maths and science and the right aptitude. The SeeBox solution creates an interest in the STEM subjects, determines aptitude and will allow PMI to train electrical engineers in future,” said Sherrie Donaldson, business development analyst at Adcorp.
Kok said interest had come from outside of South Africa, with the company currently in talks with potential distributors for the United States (US), United Kingdom (UK) and India.
“SeeBox is currently preparing for field trials, and the first SeeBox units will be ready for the market around March 2016,” he said.
