[NE Coffee Chat] Careerble: "We Aim to Establish Reading Aloud as a Learning Trend to Improve Literacy"

Interview with Kang Daeyeop, CEO of Careerble
Relay Reading Service "Gromi"
Incorporating Game Elements into Reading Aloud

Everyone knows that consistent reading is essential for improving literacy skills. However, it is not easy to encourage children to develop voluntary reading habits. Moreover, children who are accustomed to short-form videos tend to skim through books with their eyes without truly engaging. They may turn the pages, but often fail to fully understand the content. Careerble is a startup that has stepped up to solve this problem through its service "Gromi," which allows children to experience reading in an enjoyable, game-like way.

Kang Daeyeop, CEO of Careerble

On October 30, Kang Daeyeop, CEO of Careerble, said, "Gromi is a relay reading service that helps children focus on reading and develop literacy skills." He founded Careerble last year to develop language cognition improvement solutions, starting with boosting literacy among elementary school students. His expertise, built through experience as a broadcast journalist across speaking, listening, writing, and reading, served as the foundation. The proposed solution, "reading aloud," originated from the idea of making reading more engaging by having several people take turns reading books out loud together. Kang explained, "There are research findings showing that elementary students demonstrate higher concentration after reading aloud compared to adults. Reading aloud in meaningful units can generally help improve both literacy and concentration."

Gromi's unique feature is the incorporation of game elements to make reading aloud enjoyable for children. The service operates as an online "relay reading game." Children take turns reading the book out loud; if they read accurately during their turn, their character's score increases. Conversely, if they make two or more mistakes, the turn passes to the next person. Kang said, "Transforming the act of reading aloud into something fun is what sets Gromi apart from other services."

In Gromi, each class consists of a minimum of two and a maximum of five participants, who read a variety of classics, from traditional folktales to world masterpieces. Typically, after four sessions, the group finishes an entire book and writes a review. To enable this service, Careerble has incorporated several technologies. Kang introduced, "We use real-time voice recognition to quantify reading accuracy, and we analyze children's gaze and behavior to assess their engagement with the screen, automatically generating a report after each session." Currently, around 30 freelance announcers serve as instructors, but development is underway to transition to artificial intelligence (AI) in the future.

Gromi is currently offered as a subscription-based service. Although it has been just over a year since its commercialization in July last year, results are already emerging. Kang said, "Since the service launch, especially in the past three months, we have seen steep growth. The number of classes conducted has increased by about 86%, and the number of paying customers has risen by about 133%. Repeat purchase rates among existing customers are high, and the number of new users registering voluntarily without advertising continues to grow steadily."

Gromi is also being used for reading classes in collaboration with local governments. It is utilized at Korean language schools in Chicago and Michigan in the United States, as well as in Hanoi, Vietnam. Kang has set goals for next year to collaborate with 10 local governments in Korea and to conduct classes at more than 50 Korean language schools abroad. He emphasized, "Among reading habits, we aim to establish reading aloud as a new learning culture trend."

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.