Tina Patel has spent 17 years running Montessori ONE Academy, a Montessori preschool and elementary school off Paseo Del Norte Boulevard in Albuquerque. In 2020, the Academy's CEO expanded those efforts, founding Amaran Senior Living next door to the Montessori school based on the same philosophy, but aimed at elder care instead of early childhood education.
But around the same time, Patel, a University of New Mexico graduate, struck out on a slightly different endeavor. Instead of forming an institution to practice Montessori learning, why not build a company to help Montessori leaders teach more effectively?
So, in 2019, Patel founded Education DNA, or EDNA, an education technology startup focused on integrating different school management systems into one software platform. The startup's first software platform is called Noorana, operated through a web and phone-based application that school administrators can use to manage a slew of different functions.
Noorana's features are informed largely by Patel's own experience running Montessori ONE Academy.The Montessori learning philosophy, Patel said, is focused on holistic education and independence for students, which she said is different from the traditional elementary and pre-elementary education system.
After a few years of building out the software platform behind the company and expanding the startup's team — it currently employs eight people — Patel told New Mexico Inno EDNA is set to officially launch in May.
To prepare for that launch, Patel said the startup has been in the "heavy marketing phase." That includes showcasing EDNA at a booth at South by Southwest, the sprawling arts and technology festival that was held in Austin in March, and other conferences early in the year, and by offering demos of the platform to interested schools. Patel said around a dozen schools have signed up for platform demos so far and more than 350 have expressed interest in using Noorana.
But Patel doesn't expect to hit hundreds of users right off the bat. Having 50 schools using EDNA's Noorana platform at launch would be ideal for the company, she said, but she'd be happy with closer to 25, too. The platform costs schools $2,500 in the form of an onboarding fee and then $5 per student per month.
That's in part because Patel wants to be selective about EDNA's first clients. Those initial clients, she added, will help shape future software iterations as the platform develops.
To spur that development and ready the platform for official release, Patel said EDNA is looking to add four more employees over the next month or so. Those new hires would be more on the software development side; the company hired a head of product design and first development team members last summer, she said.
And while early education Montessori schools may be EDNA's first market base, there are other verticals Patel said the ed-tech startup could expand into. Those include developing new software platforms for both new mothers to help manage various tasks related to early child care and, further down the road, for elder care, especially elders struggling with neurological disorders like dementia or Alzheimer's disease.
But with Noorana, specifically, Patel said she's heard a "hunger" from other Montessori administrators for the type of integrated software platform she hopes Noorana can offer. EDNA has been funded by Patel and her family, but she said the company could look to outside funding in the future if needed.
In the end, Patel said she hopes EDNA, the "umbrella" company under which Noorana and future software platforms would reside, can "make some change" in what she sees as a technologically outdated Montessori industry to, in turn, "disrupt" the broader education landscape.
