Meet the team building a global education platform  

UK-based start-up Knowledge Collective is delivering remote-learning solutions to students across Europe.

Founders Dr Erfan Soliman, Dr Ti Xu, and Dr Sarujan Ranjan launched Knowledge Collective to deliver experience-driven and point-of-need learning through collaborative environments and digital tools.

The trio met in 2017, following their participation in Oxford Biodesign, an EIT Health-supported programme that led to the emergence Oxford Healthtech Labs, the next generation of need-driven innovation training programmes.

“The Oxford Biodesign programme brought us together as co-founders and allowed us to gain crucial business insights through the lens of need-led innovation. The EIT Health network, notably the collaborations we formed with industry, research, and education actors, helped us develop new educational products and services and place them successfully in the market,” said Dr Erfan Soliman.

Knowledge Collective has two streams of work that serve to drive its global education platform. The first stream produces software and mobile applications to provide on-demand and personalised remote-learning solutions for students. The second involves the running of digital summits for both executive and youth participants to generate global community initiatives based on the need-led innovation methodology. They have reached thousands of individuals worldwide through their various activities. The company has also recently launched a venture builder aimed at commercialising ideas from within the innovation ecosystem at Oxford (and the UK more broadly).

As the gap to access quality education services grows in light of the COVID-19 pandemic, Knowledge Collective has formed new partnerships with schools in the UK, Europe, India, and China to support students around the world. The company’s tutoring platform, StudyPal, has also received support from Innovate UK.

“Synchronous, human-led, digital learning is the way of the future—it’s important to build the technologies that will form the backbone of remote and curated education models. At Knowledge Collective, we aim to do our part towards serving this mission.” Dr Soliman explained.