Dubai startup targets global franchise for special-needs tech

Key2Enable won on Shark Tank UAE
Rolling out Literacy Lab product
Already operational in UAE and Turkey

An education technology startup that appeared on the UAE’s Shark Tank entrepreneurship TV show last year is targeting global expansion through a franchising model.

Dubai-based Key2Enable designs technology and software to help educate children with special needs and is now on the cusp of rolling out its next phase of commercialisation, one of its executives told AGBI.

The company won an investment worth more than $300,000 when it pitched its products on Shark Tank UAE in January 2024, a show on Dubai TV where entrepreneurs seek investment from business leaders.

Roughly 240 million children around the world live with disabilities according to Unicef, many of them excluded from education.

Selling to this market isn’t an act of charity, Key2Enable’s chief strategy officer, Indranil Chatterjee, said.

“No matter what, people will never stop sending their kids to schools,” he said.

The special needs sector is home to few advanced operators, said Chatterjee. “Special education is a blue ocean market for us.”

Key2Enable started out making a keyboard and other tools that could be used by children with physical or mental impairments for learning. It is now rolling out a more comprehensive package that involve setting up special needs educational rooms that it calls “Literacy Labs”, full of its own equipment, powered by its own software and with staff training as part of the package.

Key2Enable’s Literacy Labs products will offer rooms with 10 workstations for one student each, a smart TV, its own technology and software and training for staff included in the price tag of $50,000 per room, or about $5,000 per student.

It is opening Literacy Labs in 20 centres across Portugal, 10 in Turkey and already has four in the UAE, all as part of deals with government agencies.

But the plan is not to simply sell these labs to whoever wants them. Instead, Key2Enable is building a franchising model to provide recurring revenue, instead of the one-off sales it’s made so far.