Sovan Srun & Meas Sak Pheng of Edemy: The Startupper of the Year and Top Female Entrepreneur

Social Innovation Asia

Sovan Srun and Meas Sak Pheng join the series on social innovation in Cambodia to discuss Edemy, their award-winning social enterprise. The Tesdopi learning app developed by Edemy recently won the Cambodia Total Startupper of the Year award and Sovan Srun won the Top Female Entrepreneur Award.

After returning from the USA where they were Fullbright scholars, they turned to develop Edemy, which has the mission of equalizing “access to quality learning for everyone everywhere." To achieve this mission they combine their expertise in "education and technology to create a holistic learning experience".

They launched Edemy in early 2017 and joined the EPIC Incubation Program by Development Innovations, a USAID funded project. The EPIC Incubation program provided funding, mentoring and business training for Edemy to grow. Since then, they have gone on to create a range of projects that are transforming the experience of education for thousands of young Cambodians. These projects have included a Blended English Program and Learning Labs for rural schools.

Their latest creation is the Tesdopi app, which Sovan describes as a Fitbit for learning. Having lived through the trauma of preparing for university entrance exams in Cambodia, Sovan and Meas Sak were well aware of many of the problems faced by students. But they dived deeper and sought to understand why so many students were failing to achieve their goals. Among multiple challenges, they found that one critical but addressable problem was that students had no means of monitoring their exam preparation progress. So, they developed the Tesdopi app which diagnoses the strengths and weaknesses of students. It then provides learning videos for students to work on their weaknesses and generates a report which students can share with their teachers to optimize support.

The conversation with Sovan and Meas Sak covers a range of other topics including their experience studying in the USA, leveraging technology to deliver education in rural Cambodia and their efforts to inspire and expand the world of young Cambodians.