Diana al-Dajani won the second place in Al Fikra National BusinessPlan Competition-Qatar 2013 and the MIT Best Female Entrepreneur Award as well. She tells Shalinee Bhardwaj how she developed a zingy self-learning educational and fun-filled platform for kids
The unique digital education platform is showing positive results and is fast gaining acceptance in the wider parent-teacher community. It is also growing as a business model bringing in fame and recognition to its founder —the success seems seamless! Or is it so?
As we sip the pleasantly flavoured tea, peppy with the taste of fresh lemon grass that is growing in her backyard, I try to absorb the ‘ifs and buts’, ambition and insecurities, success and failures of a young entrepreneur who ventured into the world of business and competition in order to prove her point.
Diana al-Dajani, a Computer Engineer by profession and Founder of ‘eduTechnoz’ caught everyone’s attention when she won the second place in Al Fikra National Business Plan Competition-Qatar 2013 and the MIT Best Female Entrepreneur Award for the year 2013.
Her work is remarkable — providing children with a self-learning educational and fun filled platform where they not only develop their skills in Arabic language but also learn to fall in love with it.
The online games are targeted to meet the needs of children aged 3-7 years, enabling them to master the different aspects of the language in a fun way. Data analyses of the performance reports that are generated regularly depicting the child’s progress indicate a definitive 19% rise in their lingual skills level.
This comes at a time when the availability of support learning material for Arabic is limited or if present, not widespread.
“Qatar’s Vision 2030 focuses on acquisition of Arabic language skills and the area is drawing a lot of attention. In Qatar itself, there are a lot of initiatives to promote Arabic. But, it is a new developing industry; there is always room for improvement.
“As it’s said that ‘it takes a village to raise a child’, eduTechnoz is a drop in the ocean that we hope it will ripple and grow to reach as many kids as possible. It would probably take a couple of generations to manifest the ultimate dream that goes beyond enhancing language literacy in the population”, says Diana.
Though Diana had shown inclination towards entrepreneurship since childhood, it was during her teenage when she came face to face with the crucial decision of making the correct choice — to be an astronaut, which was a fad with everyone at that time or to be an agent of change in the world.
“eduTechnoz did not happen in a day. It has been a long journey full of challenges, learning and hard work”, exclaims Diana. She had the ‘entrepreneurial bug’ in her since the time she was ten years old. Palestinian by origin, born and brought up in Kuwait, Diana recalls her childhood spent in the shadow of the Gulf War, “We had no schools and no TV. We were bored at home watching the VCR. Once my father gave an Iraqi coin to each one of us. We were three siblings (now we are five) and were constantly fighting over toys. I smartly traded and was able to procure all the three coins! That was perhaps my first business venture that really excited me into taking bigger stakes”.
She recalls smilingly, “I started selling my brother’s toys in the neighbourhood and gained much till the time my mother found out and the whole business was put to rest.”
Her thoughtful attitude as a teen pushed her towards choosing a career wherein she could promote and reiterate Arab custom and culture among the children. When she saw foreign cartoons and programmes that had no connection with the Arab way of life, getting introduced to children through the TV, she could feel the conflict in thoughts.
“We could not relate to what was being shown on TV”, and thus seeded her passion and ambition to take children to identify and relate to their cultural roots.
Once decided, in order to fulfil her dream, 15-year-old Diana decided to further her studies in computers and graduated in Computer Engineering from the University of Toronto, Canada. She started working there; developing websites and all along nurtured the passion that consumed much of her efforts. She spoke to as many people as possible on the subject, did market research, gained information on the rules and regulations of starting a business and realised that more than anything else; gaining customers is the most difficult aspect of any venture.
She developed an animation that had all the elements relating it to the Arab society, in partnership with a company but could not sell it. She took the setback as learning.
Her dream was not to become a reality until much later when she had moved to Qatar with her husband and had two sons. Her five-year-old son pushed her to think hard this time with his developing detestation towards Arabic homework. He would cry and found it very difficult.
She didn’t want him to lose out on Arabic at this foundation stage. So she made a game for him which he found to be fun and through it easily mastered the required skills of the language.
To assist her child when she was not around, she did what she is good at, developed this game for the computer because she could not find similar games! The game gained popularity among other parents and teachers as well.
Encouraged, she took the most difficult decision of leaving her salaried job that she managed working from home and made up her mind to start this business as a social enterprise. “It was a turning point in my career. But I believed in the adage that ‘Be the change you want to see in the world!” says Diana, the victory of a passionate mind over an insecure future clearly manifest in her soft voice.
The much needed thrust in her endeavour came when she got introduced to the Bedaya and Al Roudha Centre through Mowgli Foundation.
“These organisations just held my hand through the entire struggle of developing and understanding the business process. I had an amazing mentor in the form of Khaled Sadeddin who introduced me to the various potential possibilities. He encouraged me to participate in the Al Fikra competition of which I was not very hopeful of winning and hence the hesitation. He said one thing that wedged in my thought,” she remembers, “Submit the business plan not for winning but to open the door of opportunities.” This was a success mantra for her. Though a shy person by nature, she never wants to stop knocking at the door of opportunities.
Winning is but one step forward in her journey. “We have to move with the rapidly changing technology. Kids are now going mobile and we want to follow their changing interests and adjust to their behaviour related to shorter attention span. I have developed a mobile platform along with my team to allow children to keep progressing on acquired skills no matter how many times they play the same level or even not completing it. Our app was selected by Arab Mobile App Challenge, organised by Silatech to represent Qatar in the upcoming ‘Mobile World Congress’ to be held in Barcelona, Spain. Although we don’t have enough funds to take up the development on a large scale, we will make sure to have a powerful presentation to honour this privilege of representing Qatar”, reflects Diana.
“The app (https://edutechnoz.com/Mobile_Arabic_Game.php) is intelligent and goes beyond the basic levels of alphabets and vocabulary. I consider it as the missing link that through teaching how to read will generate confidence and interest in the child towards Arabic language”, explains Diana.
Diana’s capability to take crucial decisions at the right time while maintaining the desired work-home life balance stands her apart from the many whose dreams die out due to their under confident, hesitant approach. “Talk to people about your idea. Even if someone copies that idea, they need your passion to see it through. Networking literacy is extremely essential”, she suggests. As an advice to the upcoming entrepreneurs, she says, “Never say no to an opportunity, minimise your price tag — start slow and small and test the market before taking the plunge. Bedaya, Al Roudha and such organisations are great places to seek help and guidance from.”
Qatar’s goal for economic diversification in line with the QNV 2030 has led to an increase in support for entrepreneurs and SMEs.
What would draw a line between those who succeed is their perseverance, analyses and a passion that is bigger than the dreams.
BELOW:
1) ACCOMPLISHED: Diana al-Dajani is the brains behind the idea.
2) A group photo of the interns.