Reading to kids has always been an incredibly important activity both for children and adults.
A Czech startup Readmio wants to elevate this experience by bringing fairytales to life with sounds and music that respond directly to the parent’s voice. With this mobile application, they want to help parents read to their kids and instill love of reading.
Using modern speech recognition technology, Readmio has been able to create a new and unique bonding experience. As the stories are read, the application follows along and plays sounds and music at exactly the right time in the story. With a collection of over 150 stories from around the world, Readmio currently offers stories in English, Czech and Slovak.
The application, which is backed by Ilya Novodvorskiy, has been on the Czech market since July 2020. And since then has generated over 80,000 downloads in just half a year and more than 20,000 active users.
“From the start, we wanted to develop something that would bring a smile to people’s faces,” said Novodvorskiy who added that he and the 3 other co-founders of Readmio value “the rarity of family moments spent together” and kept this in mind while developing the application.
Coming from a multilingual household himself, Novodvorskiy said he specifically wanted Readmio to offer stories in a variety of languages. Living in Prague himself, he wanted to introduce traditional Slavic stories to English-speaking parents and children.
Throughout the current COVID pandemic, Readmio has gained a strong following due to its ability to also record your own audiobooks. Many parents record themselves or have grandparents and loved ones record Readmio stories so that children can listen to their family members read to them at any time.
Many users also use the Readmio app as an important nightly ritual before bed. The app is specifically designed so that children focus on the parent’s voice and the story. Apart from the cover illustration, there are no visual stimuli involved in the experience so that there are no distractions. Also, every story has a distinct purpose, providing readers with a clear “why”.