Introduction: What are you building with growth funding?

At Tilli, we believe learning should feel like play and leave a lasting impact. We’re on a mission to help young children build the most important foundational skills (both cognitive growth - how they think, and emotional growth- how they manage those difficult emotions)  they need to thrive - both in school and in life. Through colorful classroom play kits, engaging lessons, and smart AI-powered assessment tools, we turn complex learning and behavioral science into everyday magic for teachers and students.

With support from the UNICEF Venture Fund Growth Funding, we’re leveling up: launching a brand-new Social Emotional Learning (SEL) Assessment Suite powered by a powerful AI data assistant to help teachers and school leaders unlock the true power of their learning data and generative AI to build tailored interventions going beyond a mere chat GPT prompt. This next phase of work will help us deepen the ways in which we achieve measurable learning outcomes, strengthen teacher support, and bring high-quality SEL tools to more classrooms around the world.

Picture this: a teacher asking Tilli, “Hey Tilli, I am struggling with managing my class after recess, any tips” or better “How is my class doing with their critical thinking skills these past two weeks”

How does your solution empower children's cognitive skills and emotional well-being through safe AI-driven learning?

Our solution empowers children’s cognitive skills and emotional well-being by combining safe, AI-driven tools for teachers with play-based learning. Through gamified modules and classroom play interventions children systematically build 8 critical cognitive and social emotional learning functions like working memory, attention, emotion awareness and regulation. At the same time, our assessment suite and AI data assistant help teachers understand their classroom’s learning data and spot patterns and gaps beyond cumbersome dashboards and spreadsheets. 

Tilli's SEL assessment

What did your startup initially build with the seed stage investment from the UNICEF Venture Fund?

With the seed stage investment from the UNICEF Venture Fund, we laid the foundation for Tilli’s core learning ecosystem. We localized our learning content to Sinhala and Tamil and launched the first version of our gamified SEL learning modules, and built a content management system that lets educators create their own SEL journeys. We also created open-source design tools, developed measurement models to track social-emotional growth, and rolled out Tilli in three languages across pilot schools and homes in Sri Lanka. This early investment was crucial in validating our product-market fit and proving the impact of playful learning on young minds.

How will you build on the solution initially built with the Venture Fund and what learnings will you incorporate from your initial investment experience?

We follow a 3 step framework for how we hope to change student behaviors: Learn - Measure - Reflect. The first phase focused on the “Learn” phase to build, test and improve a robust curriculum and set of interventions for K-5 classrooms to build foundational skills. Now with phase 2 our focus is on “Measure and Reflect” - building on our tried and tested curriculum and learning modules that have reached over 27,000 learners to date, we are now creating measurement tools to help educators, and school leaders measure these foundational skills so that we can truly personalize classroom instruction beyond the averages. 

What is unique about your solution and how is it different from what currently exists?

Over 80% of a human’s brain development occurs before the age of 10, which is why Tilli was built at one of the leading centers of education research in the world - Stanford School of Education and tested with over 15,000 learners across diverse classrooms to make sure we transformed how K-5 classrooms work. Our secret is the ability to bring together the joys of play-based learning, the precision of learning data and the power of behavioral sciences to build the most foundational skills before a little one turns 10. Much of education in a majority of classrooms in the world have been ad-hoc activities, random lesson plans and learning outcomes for a world 30 years ago; we want to change that so that every 10-year-old is developmentally on track to thrive. 
 

Why does being Open Source make your solution better?

Being open source allows our solution to be more transparent, adaptable, and collaborative. It enables local educators, developers, and researchers to tailor the tools to their specific cultural and contextual needs—especially important in underrepresented regions. It also fosters innovation by inviting contributions from a global community, helping us continuously improve the platform while ensuring accountability, security, and ethical AI use in children’s learning.

What did you accomplish over the first half of your investment period with the UNICEF Venture Fund Growth funding?

During the first half of our growth funding period, we reached a significant milestone of 27,000 learners using Tilli!

In Sri Lanka, we partnered with Leeds International School Network to launch a pilot in grade 1 across all 17 branches. Following a successful semester, the school committed to a full rollout for grades 1 through 5 in the 2025/2026 academic year—set to impact nearly 10,000 learners. We also continued work with Asian Grammar School, renewing our contract and reaching 196 students this year.

Through Compassion International Lanka, we trained 60 staff members—caseworkers, counselors, and center managers—from across northern Sri Lanka to integrate Tilli into their psychosocial programs. With International Needs Lanka, we brought Tilli to 100 students in rural Welimada and trained five of their teachers. Meanwhile, the Batticaloa Zonal Education Office onboarded 35 government teachers to use Tilli in classrooms across the region.

In India, we renewed our partnership with the Hippocampus School Network, ensuring Tilli’s continued impact across schools in Bangalore for another academic year impacting over 3500 students. 

From a product perspective, we built out our assessment suite focused on measuring foundational social emotional learning skills like emotion awareness, emotion regulation, empathy, and social awareness. We experimented with Gen-AI features to allow school leaders to better dissect and analyze the learning data. We also worked with UNICEF’s privacy mentor to strengthen our child safety and data privacy protocols and measures. 

A sneak peek at Tilli's teachers' dashboard

What will you focus on during the second half of your investment period with the UNICEF Venture Fund?

Jordan Pilot Rollout: We will localize and implement our solution across select schools in Jordan, training master trainers to deliver content in Arabic and testing contextual relevance - more about this soon! 

Leeds International School Rollout: We will deploy our full K–5 program across 17 branches, while piloting a newly developed SEL + career exploration curriculum for Grades 6–9.  

Teacher Assessments and Dashboard Integration: We will design, implement, and integrate 4 new assessment tools alongside a learning outcomes dashboard. This will be followed by a series of experiments with creative prompting to help us understand the kind of questions teachers will find useful to ask a dataset about their classroom. These tools will be embedded into the platform to visualize teacher and student progress and improve classroom implementation strategies.

Data Privacy & Open Source Improvements: We aim to enhance our data protection protocols and documentation, while improving transparency and usability of our open source repository, making it easier for other organizations to adapt our tools.
 

Tell us about emerging challenges and what kind of support the broader ecosystem can provide

1. Localization at Scale

Challenge: Scaling Tilli to diverse regions (e.g., MENA, South Asia) requires deep localization—culturally, linguistically, and contextually.

How to support: Stakeholders can help by connecting us with local educators, translators, and cultural consultants to adapt content meaningfully.

2. Expanding Master Trainer Networks

Challenge: To scale sustainably, we need a larger pool of master trainers fluent in local languages and experienced in SEL.

How to support: Partners can nominate, train, or fund regional trainers and co-create localized training modules with us.

3. Strengthening Evidence & Research

Challenge: We need longitudinal research to validate the long-term impact of our tools on children’s SEL outcomes.

How to support: Stakeholders with research capacity or funding can collaborate to design studies, conduct impact evaluations, and publish findings.

These opportunities will help Tilli grow as a scalable, open-source solution supporting children’s well-being globally.