Kehinde: Why Investment in Digital Textbook Distribution Is Key to Quality Education

Israel Kehinde is the principal cofounder at LockBook Limited, an educational technology startup to close the digital infrastructure gap to distribute textbooks and provide equitable access to quality education. In this interview with Funmi Ogundare, a graduate of Computer Science, Babcock University, Ogun State, who recently won a grant of N15 million as the second runner-up of the Fund-It-Forward project organised by Channels TV, explained why investment in digital infrastructure for the distribution of electronic textbooks and resources, is imperative to make them accessible to students. Excerpts:

What inspired you to apply for the Fund-It-Forward initiative?

I applied to the Fund-It-Forward initiative because I saw that the programme’s social mission aligns closely with mine, our company and the nations’, which is to use my knowledge in building LockBook as a fast-growing educational technology startup to nurture core values in myself and others, building relationships and providing an inspired vision for those around me.

Your project must have a unique vision. What is your project’s core idea, and how has Babcock University inspired you?

At LockBook, our vision is to provide equitable access to quality education as a right and not a privilege. An experience I had while schooling in 2020 during the COVID pandemic highlighted the problem of book piracy, exposing the weaknesses in local textbook distribution, and this made the message clear to myself and my team about the need to build an African solution that will solve copyright control and piracy problems of global distribution. And that is exactly what LockBook is. We are a startup company closing the gap of digital infrastructure for the distribution of books, especially textbooks. Babcock University has helped us in many ways. Personally, I would say it has instilled in me the discipline of consistency and the love of learning required to be successful in any venture I decide to pursue in life. Moreso, as a business, through the support of the Babcock Entrepreneurship Development Centre  (BEDC), we have been incubated and given a grant of about one million naira to jumpstart the project at the early stage.

What challenges did you face in the house for about eight weeks while trying to perfect your project, and how did you overcome them?

Most of the challenges I faced were related to the weekly tasks, which had different topics and required different dynamic approaches. So, I had to continually and rapidly evolve in my thought process.

Winning the Fund-It-Forward grant is a significant accomplishment. How will this impact the direction of your project?

The catalytic N15 million grant would bring us one step closer to actualising product-market fit. Gracefully, it is coming just at the right time as initial capital to serve our partnership with Babcock University, which requires 6 times our present capacity. We have been managing the MVP ever since because of the costs associated with getting new servers and technology.

In what ways do you believe your project will benefit the university community or society at large?

The benefit of LockBook to society is digital. Our main growth driver is to ensure access to quality education as a right, not a privilege, starting with the university community. I started LockBook because of an experience I had while schooling during the pandemic, where there was no avenue to access my recommended textbooks. Schools have moved on since then to embrace digital learning as a standard medium with many adopting different models like hybrid learning and full online/distant learning programmes. However, the gap is still there. Students still cannot access the required materials they need to learn because copyright holders have the fear of digital piracy. To date, there remains a dearth of digital infrastructure for the distribution of electronic textbooks and resources, highlighting the need for more investment to make education a right and not a privilege.

That is what LockBook.org is really all about. We are all about solving the problem of lack of access to books for learners and solving the problem of piracy for copyright holders. Part of our goal is to build the world’s first battery and glare-free e-reading consumer electronic device, which we believe is the techno-utopian ideal for digital reading, the future of education. This would be powered by our reading app as a cutting-edge solution to ultimately eradicate low attention spans and make reading easier and more enjoyable. Until now, this has only been possible with cutting-edge digital technology like the Brain-Computer Interface (BCI) and smart glasses, which both break down every little barrier that could make the reading process seem like hard work such that a user can wake up in the middle of the night and without lifting a finger, using our eReader hardware, right there on his/her bed, access any library or repository globally for a sustained period of time (prolonged reading). Hence, this has a huge potential for solving attention span as it is a proven solution.

What role do you see innovation playing in the success of your project? Can you share any unique element of your approach that sets you apart from others?

Innovation is in LockBook’s DNA. We have built and commercialised the first Nigerian digital rights management solution for institutions. We are not stopping there; our goal is to commercialise the world’s first battery-and-glare free e-reading consumer electronic device. Only one technology research company in China and in the world has gotten the hardware formula as we speak. Of course, we don’t have the zeroes, but our Research and Development (R&D) team has written a whitepaper for our ideal hardware specification in partnership with Babcock’s Research and International Collaboration Department because they have more authority as an institution.

They are qualified to lobby so we would be using them to lobby as well as apply for grants for this purpose of investing into the technology. While all this is going on, we are not resting on our oars internally. LockBook would keep a keen focus on developing the most lightweight secure software that would power the hardware. The quality of the software that drives the hardware just has to be the best. It has to be proprietary at the core, just like the proprietary Apple iOS that powers the Chinese-produced Apple iPhone hardware, that is the perfect example. The software is exactly what our focus is on right now, and it has no option but to be the best. Our goal for product-market-fit is to make our e-reading software to be able to engage four out of the five learning senses at once, no digital reading platform does that yet! Think of it; worst case, if we don’t get the hardware right,  we still have the best software ever for reading books. Also, our marketing team is building some revolutionary with our LockBook growth platform that combines the power of artificial intelligence and marketing automation to power our advertising across all our marketing channels. We would continue to move forward with superb research and development so we can keep at the technological forefront in the meantime and obtain durable first-mover advantages while what we do becomes the new standard.

How do you plan to manage and utilise the funding from Channels TV effectively to ensure the success of your project?

In order to ensure the success of our project, 60 per cent would go into achieving Product- Market-Fit: Servers, Licensing, User Experience Trademark and Domain (lockbook.com), while 40 per cent would go into getting work tools and facilities,  software, hardware, electricity and Internet. We believe allocating the funds in this way would help us serve six times our present capacity in 2025.

Can you describe any partnership or collaboration you are working on to strengthen the impact of your project?

We are working on a partnership with Babcock University to be the exclusive partner for electronic textbook distribution in the school. So far, the project has kick-started, and we’ve been refining our technology to serve this capacity.

What advice would you give to other aspiring entrepreneurs or innovators who are interested in starting their own projects but hesitant to take the first step?

A key takeaway is that we young people have the power to make a positive impact on our communities by thinking creatively, identifying opportunities, and taking action to address critical problems. Many initiatives like Fund-It-Forward abound at this age and time to create opportunities for visionary young social impact entrepreneurs to get the necessary support required to build original, thriving and innovative enterprises that transform lives starting from Africa. These diverse programmes come with training, mentorship, and networking that can be leveraged to make a significant positive and disruptive impact on various sectors. Also, dream big, surround yourself with quality friends who will help you succeed, and pray for grace.