Reedah El-Saie, founder of EdTech Brainspark Games, secured funding from Dragons’ Den stars Sara Davies, Deborah Meaden and Touker Suleyman on last night’s episode.
The London-based entrepreneur, who pitched her multi-award-winning business, impressed some of the Dragons with her AI-powered, immersive educational mobile games platform.
Launched in 2019, the platform is designed to make learning enjoyable and accessible to all, including neurodiverse learners.
Its fun, curriculum-aligned games for ages 7 to 13 cover subjects like maths, English, science, climate, languages and art. El-Saie said her product condenses 12 weeks of learning into a few hours of gameplay.
El-Saie said she has secured several grants from Innovate UK as well as funding from ‘super angels’ in the gaming industry, while also putting £400k of her own cash into the business, which remained pre-revenue at the time of filming. She was seeking £10,000 for 1% of the company.
Peter Jones, who has a strong background in the education sector – advising government, for example – said the only way it could really succeed would be to become embedded in the National Curriculum.
“It’s difficult to make money from schools,” Steven Bartlett agreed, questioning the business model.
However the other Dragons were more receptive. Sara Davies and Deborah Meaden quickly agreed to accept her offer, while Touker Suleyman played hardball by offering her the £10k for 5%, alongside a space in his own office.
However in a rare U-turn – Suleyman famously “doesn’t get out of bed for 1%” – he climbed down and accepted the 1% for £10k offer.
El-Saie agreed to give up a combined 3% of the business in return for a total £30,000 investment.
As she left the Den, Davies quipped: “That’s how to slay three Dragons!”
Mum-of-three Reedah said: “Before I headed into the studio, I watched every previous episode of the show and prepared responses for every possible question. I was surprised at how impressed all of the tycoons were.”
Meaden told El-Saie that she has connections in the education industry – including the founder of MumsNet – which could help make the business a success.
“Deborah Meaden was extremely enthusiastic, as was Sara Davies, who, as a fellow mother, connected with my vision of easing homework challenges for children and parents. Touker Suleyman’s expertise will be pivotal as we look towards launching a branded merchandise line. I couldn’t be happier with the result.”
Brainspark Games specialises in culturally inclusive neurogames technology which aligns with the National Curriculum and connects virtual with real world action.
The company is also actively developing I/GCSE-level games as part of its ongoing research and innovation efforts.
Founder on journey from Dragons’ Den to Luke Littler & KSI collab