A social education platform that aims to encourage Cambodian youth to increase their reading and learning skills has scooped a title in a digital start-up competition.
Reachsa received third place in Bandos Digital Startup 2021, organized by National Incubation Center of Cambodia (NICC) with Royal University of Phnom Penh (RUPP).
The application is the brainchild of three youth majoring in International Business Management at RUPP.
Co-founder Chhour Kimhong, 21, said social media shapes the behavior of youth in their use of the internet in both positive and negative ways.
“According to my observations, nowadays the media shapes negative content more than positive content. So, if we have a platform that can be used for youth participation in terms of learning purposes,” he said.
Launched in early 2022, Reachsa is a social education app and platform where a community of life-long learners can connect, learn, and share important content with one another.
It is a space where users can exchange useful content and connect readers with common interests, as well as learn from each other, whether in knowledge or experiences. Furthermore, it offers fair advertising space for both SMEs and large enterprises.
“Our first goal is to get users to download our application. Even though it is not a complete app, there is a lot of good educational content there,” Kimhong added.
During the first phase of its application, Reachsa is targeting university students before expanding its reach to high school students.
Kimhong said it is at university that students start to choose their specialist major, which also forms a major turning point of their life. In response, Reachsa provides a platform for students to build both their personal growth and development.
He added that while there are many ways to access educational content through Facebook and YouTube, users easily get distracted by other content.
“Users spend from five to 10 minutes a day and can gain knowledge they like from our application,” he added. “Our application focuses on values that we believe is key to bring Reachsa to the market and for students to experience on this education platform.”
Im Mengchy, 21, a co-founder, said Reachsa’s mission is to create a Cambodia-based social educational platform to inspire creators to make better changes, create fair advertising efficiency, and offer a convenient marketplace.
“Our goals are to create learning behaviors for youth to feature on the education content. Nowadays, social applications like Facebook consist of different contents,” she said. “The user can share their experiences with other users and have an opportunity to be a creator. They can be shared as a text, photo, or video.”
Co-founder Lim Soubouy, 23, added, “Reachsa plans to have a chat feature, which allows users to interact with each other. We also have a commission for a creator who creates content on the platform. And we provide a fair allowance regarding big or small companies.”
While all co-founders major in business, their main challenge is regarding technical issues.
“We have to hire a developer to create the application and the Reachsa team checks on the interface as a user experience.” she said.
“Our goal is to become a social education platform created by Cambodians that provides values to people, specifically students,” Soubouy said.
Kimhong added that the reason for developing Reachsa was to provide an educational mobile application that is more convenient for users.
“Recently, I see a lot of emerging businesses that keep growing. But if we zoom into business in the education sector, it is still a small amount. So, we decided to initiate Reachsa as a tool that provides an impact to society,” Kimhong stated.
In late June, Reachsa had reached 200 downloads, meaning 200 users have access to the education platform.
Kimhong said youth have the potential to thrive from access to educational outside knowledge, such as YouTube videos and other learning content. “In the future, I want Reachsa to transform into a super application that can cover more educational content than social media,” he said.
