Camp K12, an EdTech startup building a global online school for 21st-century skills, has launched Hatch Kids, its very own Metaverse and AR/VR creation platform for young learners.
Hatch Kids empowers students aged 6-18 to design, code, and build 3D games, Augmented Reality (AR) apps, interactive Virtual Reality (VR) worlds, and immersive Metaverse experiences without any prior design or coding experience. Hatch Kids supports all K-12 age groups and experience levels. Younger students and first-time coders can start using a visual, blocks-based programming environment, then graduate to programming advanced 3D applications using JavaScript. Students can instantly publish and share their creations to millions of supported devices, including iPads, smartphones, professional VR headsets, laptops & desktops via a simple QR code scan or a link share.
Speaking about Hatch’s vision, Camp K12’s co-founder and CEO, Anshul Bhagi, said,
“There are 100M+ kid coders out there today using a variety of free coding platforms to learn coding by building games and apps. These platforms are incredibly effective and set the stage for the kids coding movement starting in 2007, however, the vast majority of them are restricted to 2D project creation, built for the age of smartphones and flat screens. As technologies like AR and VR go mainstream, we need to upgrade the tools that kids learn on and that educators teach on for modern-day use cases and content formats. We built Hatch as a kids coding platform for the age of the Metaverse. We want to give 100m+ young kids their first AR/VR creation experience and the self-confidence to be builders in the inevitable Mixed Reality future rather than passive consumers of it.”
Camp K12 originally built the Hatch Kids platform for use in its own programming courses, but after witnessing strong demand from educators and students while working with early partners, it is now opening up the platform for any organization to use free of cost, along with free AR/VR curriculum modules for teachers to use in the classroom or in online workshops.
Over the past 6 months, Hatch Kids has grown organically to 1.1M+ users across 150 countries via school, government, and EdTech partnerships, with 75% of the consumption coming from the US and Canada. Other top geographies include the UK, Australia, and India. Students have created 3.6M+ projects on the platform to date, in the classroom, and beyond.
The government of Delhi started using the Hatch Kids platform in January 2022 to teach programming in government school classrooms, in the process of transforming its students into some of the youngest Metaverse creators anywhere in the world. The platform is also being used by 100+ schools and EdTech companies in North America, the Middle East, India, and Europe to make AR/VR creation accessible for kids.
The team expects 2M+ MAUs by December 2022, powered by both direct-to-student consumption, as well as partnerships with 1500+ schools, EdTech, and additional government bodies worldwide by year-end.
Camp K12 teaches coding and other STEM topics to kids spanning the age group of 5-18 via LIVE, interactive, and gamified online sessions. The company has raised $16 million to date, led by Elevation Capital and Matrix Partners India, and serves 400k+ students across North America, the Middle East, India, and Southeast Asia.
