KUALA LUMPUR: Sasbadi Holdings Bhd will focus more on the early childhood education market and further develop the existing product with additional digital offerings and classroom solutions aimed at pre-schoolers and students in primary school years 1-3.

The company aims to leverage on Peapod Readers, a series comprising 200 titles of levelled and Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR)-aligned English readers developed by Collins.

Peapod Readers is a powerful educational tool for young children to kick-start their early English literacy journey.

"We have leveraged on our educational technology expertise to develop companion

mobile applications that can be used with the readers to develop children's listening skills.

"The company believes that these efforts will be instrumental towards growing our market share in the early childhood education market," group managing director

Law King Hui said in the company's annual report filed to Bursa Malaysia.

Sasbadi continues to place a strong emphasis on the development and enhancement of

in-house developed educational technology via innovative digital learning solutions.

"Accordingly, we ensured that i-LEARN Ace, our flagship digital learning platform,

is consistently updated to adhere to the latest national curriculum of Malaysia and intend to further enhance its functions in anticipation of the nation's deeper embrace of digital education moving forward.

"Besides i-LEARN Ace, Sasbadi will also continually develop our home-grown online tuition platform, Tutor2U, which allows students to receive on-demand one-to-one e-tuition services from qualified tutors across the nation.

"We anticipate Tutor2U will gain more traction in tandem with current online learning trends," Law said, adding that the company have also been heightening

efforts in its network marketing business division to promote and market i-LEARN Ace to the masses.

Sasbadi remains cautiously optimistic about its prospects for the fiscal year ending 31 August 2022 (FY22), particularly with the resumption of economic activities due to vaccination progress and the gradual reopening of schools, which began in early October 2021.

However, with the recent announcement by the Ministry of Education (MoE) regarding

the delayed commencement of the new academic year in March 2022, Sasbadi foresees an impact towards its seasonal first financial quarter performance for FY22 as book orders will inevitably be delayed.

"With that said, our company expects the orders to pick up over the second and third financial quarters for FY22.

"This is because MOE had at the same time announced an evaluation/intervention period during January and February 2022 to gauge the readiness of students in advancing to the next academic year.

"We believe this evaluation period will create additional demand for our education solutions, notably our hybrid print publishing products that combine conventional print media and digital

solutions, which have been well-received by teachers and students alike in the 2021 academic year," he said.

Law also said that several competing education solutions providers in Malaysia had scaled down their operations and even exited the market due to the detrimental effects of the pandemic, it serves as a prime opportunity for the company to increase its market share and further cement its presence in the Malaysian educational landscape in FY22 and beyond.