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Cohorts2026 · Khoj Resort, Skardu, Gilgit-Baltistan · 7–14 June 2026

FELLOW NO. 06 / 10 / EDUCATION

Maira Siddiqui

Of the 70 million children enrolled in Pakistani schools, 77% cannot read or write basic age-appropriate text, because they are expected to decode a foreign language, English, before they can grasp basic literacy.

Maira Siddiqui

BIG IDEA

Tools for native-language instruction in elementary schools

Watch the pitch

View the deckOpen the video in Google Drive

The mission

Educate all Pakistani children using their native language.

How it works

Chiragh Taleem, a K-5 Urdu literacy app, supercharged with Bubbly, an offline-first conversational voice AI that speaks regional languages such as Pashto, Punjabi and Sindhi. A child chooses their language by voice and learns National Curriculum Urdu and math completely text-free, with offline progress tracking synced to school dashboards and EGRA/EGMA-benchmarked evaluation run with partner TTWF.

The dream

Become the onebillion of Pakistan: foundational literacy for 26M out-of-school children and reading fluency for 46M enrolled students. Doer and payer at scale: initially Chiragh with NGOs and INGOs, eventually the Government of Pakistan.

Potential for impact at scale

Read against four questions, in the context of the organisation’s stage: is the impact good enough, is the problem big enough, is the model simple enough to deliver at scale, and is it cheap enough for whoever pays at scale.

  • Good enough · impact and evidence

    EGRA/EGMA pre-, mid- and endline testing with TTWF; the metric is non-literate children reaching fluent Grade-1 mother-tongue reading within a 6-month window.

  • Big enough · addressable market

    26M out-of-school children plus 46M enrolled students, across six-plus regional languages.

  • Simple enough · to deliver at big scale

    Ships on a USB drive and runs offline on tablets; partner organizations' facilitators are trained to run it in their classrooms.

  • Cheap enough · for payers at scale

    $6 per child per year for the app license today, targeting $5, or $50 per child per year including a solar-charged tablet amortized over three years.

So far

  • A contracted institutional pipeline of 60,000+ out-of-school children with TTWF and the Sindh Education Foundation
  • 140,000 organic YouTube subscribers on Chiragh Kids TV, 10,000+ monthly returning viewers
  • $80,000 in early field-testing revenue over three years