Experts maintain that the time before age 6 is prime time for foreign language learning.
However, as early childhood educators took more of an interest in offering language learning courses, Moulay Essakalli and his wife, Julie Klear, noticed that there were no good language learning solutions for young children already on the market.
The couple decided to put their own language, design and entrepreneurship skills to work to fill the market need with Zid Zid, a subscription-based language learning platform for preschoolers.
Zid Zid works through colorful on-screen activities and real-world play. As teachers can learn alongside the children, they don’t need to have any prior knowledge of the language to guide lessons. Through Zid Zid, children receive language instruction from their primary, trusted teacher, which makes the lessons easier for a child to embrace as opposed to lessons offered by a different teacher for the foreign language.
“Communication is paramount to everything we do as a society. Being able to talk to someone in their own language or in a common language is probably one of the most exciting things we can do as humans.”
The language learning platform also offers activities for the parents to reinforce the learned skills at home, such as counting plates for dinner in Spanish.
“When the parents support kids’ learning at home, their learning becomes holistic and sets a foundation for a lifetime love of learning,” Essakalli said. “Most educators today are trying to build the bridge between school and the home, because they know how important it is for the parents to be involved in learning, and with Zid Zid we do that."
While language lessons are currently only offered in Spanish, Essakalli said more languages will be added as the company expands.
But before we look to the company's future, let's consider its past.
Zid Zid's playful approach is based on Klear's longtime work as an art educator, product designer and children’s book illustrator. In the early days of Zid Zid, her creative workshops with children in different parts of world who didn’t speak English were multilingual experiences. Through these workshops, children acquired the English language, as Klear incorporated some English words into the activities.
Klear and Essakalli took note of the great impact: children were learning new languages through creative play activities. They were captivated by this and turned their energies toward bringing Zid Zid to others.
Essakalli and Klear sold the children’s clothing, toys and accessories company (also called Zid Zid) that they ran for 10 years from Morocco. The couple and their children then moved to Cincinnati during the summer of 2016 in order to develop the new Zid Zid with the help of the startup accelerator The Brandery.
“Working with The Brandery has been an amazing experience because of the depth of the mentors’ network, which gave us the chance to really fine-tune our value proposition minimal viable product,” Essakalli said.
Zid Zid continued work with startup accelerators through joining UpTech’s sixth cohort in September 2017. This time, they focused on solidifying business fundamentals, speeding up their momentum and setting a foundation for growth.
In addition to the guidance through resources like The Brandery and UpTech, Essakalli and Klear had their own experience to bolster their work. After all, they are no strangers to learning new languages themselves; like many Moroccans, Essakalli’s native language is Arabic, but he began attending a French speaking school in Morocco at age five. Learning French was easy for him because he was so young at the time. It was harder for him to learn English when he began lessons during high school.
However, he picked it up more quickly when he moved to the U.S. to work as a French teacher in a university exchange program. This is where he met Klear, who moved back to Morocco with him and their firstborn daughter. They stayed in Morocco for 15 years, where their son was born and Klear learned Arabic and French. Both children are also trilingual.
“Communication is paramount to everything we do as a society. Being able to talk to someone in their own language or in a common language is probably one of the most exciting things we can do as humans,” Essakalli said. “Research shows there are unlimited benefits from cognitive, social and emotional standpoints that come with learning other languages. It makes you smarter, more empathic, and opens up worldviews. It enriches one’s world and experiences.”
Essakalli and Klear were ready to sell the aforementioned previous Zid Zid business, which sold products in over 20 countries and was recognized by President Obama at the First Global Entrepreneurship Summit in 2010, because he knew the social impact of the language learning service would be greater. The company began with trial subscriptions for three Cincinnati-area preschools, and both loved it so much they purchased subscriptions for the 2017-2018 school year.
There are currently 22 schools that subscribe to Zid Zid. However, Zid Zid will soon expand nationally, as they have recently secured a partnership with one of the largest preschool chains in the U.S. Essakalli said Zid Zid plans to partner with private schools and then public schools before expanding internationally.
