Lebanese-British star Razane Jammal and entrepreneur Malek Fatta have achieved a new milestone in education technology! Their startup, Storyland, just won the ESA-HEC Entrepreneurship Award 2026 for an innovative app that uses artificial intelligence to create personalized stories for children.
The app lets you create stories tailored to each child's interests, and it can even generate audio narration using voices that sound like family members, making the reading experience truly personal.
Storyland is designed for use in homes, schools, and nurseries, aiming to integrate digital storytelling tools into early childhood education.
Storyland's win came after a judging panel selected it from 12 startups that made it to the final stage of the competition's seventh edition, which ESA-HEC launched last spring.
The award is organized in collaboration with L'Orient-Le Jour and Smart ESA, and in partnership with the French Embassy, French Tech Beirut, HEC Paris Alumni Lebanon, Air France, and Light FM.
The company is set to join the HEC Paris incubator at Station F, the world's largest startup campus, for a 6-month incubation program. This program aims to speed up the app's development, boost its expansion into the business-to-business (B2B) sector, and attract investments to support its next phase of growth.
This achievement builds on Razane Jammal's long-standing interest in the world of children. She previously published a children's book called "Loulou and Blue" in both Arabic and English.
She has also participated in several humanitarian initiatives supporting children, including visiting a school that hosts displaced families and children from South Lebanon and Beqaa, in collaboration with the Embrace Association. This initiative aimed to support children and bring smiles to their faces.
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