LoveHeart AI raises $2.3 million to lighten the load for early childhood educators

Early childhood education startup LoveHeart AI has raised $2.3 million in seed funding for its platform which aims to reduce administrative burdens for educators.

The round was led by OIF Ventures and Skalata.

Founded in 2022 by Himal Randeniya, LoveHeart AI was developed from his decades of experience as an educator and running early childhood centres.

According to Randeniya, he was inspired by the intense workload faced by educators, which contributes to a 26% annual turnover rate. He wanted to create a solution that automates and streamlines some of the administrative tasks.

“Our goal is to help educators spend less time on paperwork and more time with the children,” Randeniya said to SmartCompany.

Reducing time spent on regulatory paperwork

The federal government recently approved a 15% pay rise for early childhood educators. While this is a positive change, Randeniya believes more is needed to tackle educator burnout.

A major pain point for educators is the extensive regulatory paperwork, which can take up to four to five hours each week.

LoveHeart AI addresses this by automating documentation related to a child’s learning and development, saving educators valuable time.

“On average, a teacher is saving about 4.2 hours a week using LoveHeart,” Randeniya said.

The platform processes observations, photos, and voice memos provided by educators, translating them into comprehensive reports and plans.
This not only reduces the workload but also ensures that documentation is accurate and aligns with regulatory standards.

LoveHeart AI helps educators by analysing their observations and providing insights into each child’s development.

“At a simple level, we take a teacher’s observations of a child in their development, we understand those observations and then we use that to help them understand the development that’s happening and also think about what to do next,” Randeniya said.

The platform includes two types of AI models: Coach Sue and Sentinel.

“Coach Sue prompts and challenges the teacher’s thinking in order to help them internalise the knowledge that the application is giving them,” Randeniya said.

“Sentinel scans how each individual teacher is using the application to ensure that it’s being used ethically.”

Randeniya believes that the accuracy of the reports generated by LoveHeart is over 90%, but the platform is always looking to improve.

“One accuracy metric we look at is hallucinations. How do our models translate the observations that a teacher or educator made into documentation and how closely does that documentation align to what really happened?” Randeniya said.

“We’re using a number of techniques to create close to zero hallucinations.”

In terms of privacy, LoveHeart AI uses an opt-in voice memo feature rather than continuous listening.

“With surveillance laws, having an always-on listening feature with children is quite a challenging concept, not only from a regulatory perspective but also from a family perspective,” Randeniya said.

“The solution to that was voice memos, which you can opt into recording a moment and then turn off. It’s almost like a walkie-talkie.”

Future plans for LoveHeart

Since its launch, LoveHeart AI has been adopted by over 40,000 educators and early childhood centres. As the platform grows, maintaining its quality remains a priority.

“Scaling is important, but what’s more critical is ensuring that we don’t lose the quality and effectiveness that have made LoveHeart AI successful so far,” Randeniya said.

Looking ahead, the company plans to focus on the ANZ region over the next 18 months, though it already has customers overseas.

“We’ve had really great traction in ANZ, and it’s really about how we impact all children, all teachers across the world. That’s the long-term goal,” Randeniya said.

LoveHeart also wants to address the pressure on educators to continuously take photos of children to satisfy parental expectations, often at the expense of meaningful educational moments.

Randeniya pointed out that this practice disrupts the learning experience.

“Imagine you’re having a lovely, intimate moment with a child, exploring something together, and then suddenly, you realise you need to take a photo so their parents can see it. The magic of that moment is gone,” Randeniya said.

LoveHeart AI aims to refocus educators on having meaningful conversations about a child’s growth and development, rather than being distracted by the need to document every interaction with photos.

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