Co-founders of Epic!, a digital reading platforms for kids, on how they've made the best use of the children's obsession with gadgets
(L to R) Suren Markosian and Kevin Donahue, co-founders of Epic!
Seven years ago, naysayers reckoned that Suren Markosian and Kevin Donahue were doing an ‘epic’ blunder by starting a digital reading platform for kids under 12 in the US. Reason: Kids were already spending a chunk of their time on online games. ‘Hey, kids don't need more screen time’ was the taunt. “Well, they do need healthy screen time’, was how the co-founders took on the critics by rolling out Epic!. Started in 2014, Epic! boasts of a collection of over 40,000 books, audiobooks and videos for kids under 12. “I’m very happy that we've proven that screen time can be good for children,” says Kevin Donahue in an exclusive interview to Forbes India. Excerpts:
What was the trigger to start Epic!?
Suren Markosian: Our vision was to remove all kinds of barriers between a child and a book. We wanted to create a place where we can reach any child with a book. What it meant for kids was a place where they could enjoy reading, they could keep navigating and find content they would like to read through the use of technology.
The tailwind of the pandemic helped you scale at a faster clip…
SM: While we grew rapidly over the years, in the last year it accelerated. Now we are in almost every school in the US; we have 2 million teachers, and 50 million children on the platform. And they have read over a billion books just in the last year alone. That number keeps on growing and accelerating and we became the leading digital reading platform. While our own market is in the US, we have always had global ambitions because kids are everywhere. And we want to reach as many kids as possible. So we're always looking at expanding beyond North America.