Migo Identified by UNICEF as Innovative Solution to Reach Marginalized Students

While the pandemic slowly subsides, its effect on Indonesia’s schooling system remains: in 2020, covid-19 served as the catalyst to expedite the development of digital learning platforms in Indonesia. For many learners with limited or no internet connectivity, this meant limited or no access to education. Today, this divide subsists and is particularly affecting disadvantaged children, girls, children with disability, and those living in remote areas.

In an effort to solve this problem, UNICEF held a national symposium to identify feasible strategies to bring quality digital learning to last-mile users in Indonesia through innovative technologies. Migo was among the identified solutions and shared its technology with other attendees, aiming to collectively craft the solution that will make digital education widely accessible.

In this endeavor, Migo’s unique online-to-offline network, which costs less than $0.50 annually per user to run, is well-positioned to deliver quality learning materials to mass-market consumers, including students in remote areas.

In fact, educational content is already popular on Migo, with over 30% of users choosing eLearning content when downloading from the network. This popularity is driven by top local and international content providers, including government-owned TV Edukasi, Deutsche Welle (DW), and edtech startups Zenius, Kiddo.id, and Educa Studio.

One parent shared how Migo is helping her better her child’s life: “Learning English is very important for my child’s opportunities. I don’t have the skills or time to teach them, but they can learn by themselves with the content on Migo. And I know they’re in good hands, using a safe platform.”

Migo Founder Barrett Comiskey explained how Migo is bridging the digital education gap: “In the same way we’re leapfrogging FTA viewers to OTT, we’re enabling mass market learners and educators to access premium digital learning materials. In our markets where schools are systematically underfunded and understaffed, we’re providing high-quality digital education a student from a developed country would enjoy.”

Migo Indonesia Chief of Staff Carl Fakaruddin, speaking at the symposium, said “We’ve built a network 40x cheaper than any other alternative telecommunication provider. With the right selection of content partners and with the support of institutions like UNICEF and other key education stakeholders, Migo can affordably and durably bridge the digital education divide and offer better life outlooks to millions of Indonesians.”

As Migo scales, it plans to onboard other partners to deliver even more quality learning content to its users. Starting with additional education video partners but eventually branching out into all education verticals, Migo aims to make entire curriculums available on its platform and supercharge SEA’s growing EdTech scene.

About Migo

Migo is an innovation company uniquely and exclusively focused on bridging the data divide in emerging markets, with its disruptive unique ecosystem solution providing affordable access to digital products and services, available at convenient neighborhood locations and easily sharable between users.

After bringing reading into the digital era, Kindle tech inventor Barrett Comiskey built Migo’s disruptive unique ecosystem solution to provide affordable access to digital products and services. Backed by Temasek, YouTube’s Co-Founding CTO, blue chip VCs, and key industry insiders, Migo can permanently zero-rate data costs for mobile-only consumers.

Migo launched in Indonesia in 2020 and today has over 1,600 locations covering 30 million Indonesians. In September 2021, MNC Vision Networks (MVN), a subsidiary of leading media conglomerate MNC Group, invested $40 million for a minority stake in Indonesia.

Migo carries movies and tv series from a range of top local and international providers; educational content from high-quality Indonesian EdTech players as well as from the Ministry of Education, Culture, Research and Technology; music and podcasts. Migo also plans to launch additional verticals including Ebooks, Games, Digital Financial Services and Offline E-commerce in the next couple of years.