We are the winning team. The first Vietnamese team ever won at the biggest competition for EdTech startups in the world.

Selected from a large number of competing teams all over the world with innovative tech products aiming to help solve problems in education, ELSA was among the top 10 best teams and after a convincing 3-minute pitch – advanced straight to the top 3 finalists of the competition.

ELSA’s CEO & co-founder – Vu Van – is pitching in front of SXSWedu judges.

Competing with two other teams who also offered persuasive technology-based solutions for educational problems, we decided to make a big move – releasing [ELSA’s public beta version for iOS](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/elsa-speak/id1083804886?ls=1&mt=8) right after receiving the good news. Guess what? We got more than 1,000 downloads within the first 10 hours of release!

Vu Van together with 2 other finalists and Canva’s chief evangelist also event’s emcee Guy Kawasaki

Motivated by the very encouraging results, Vu Van delivered a pitch that finally got ELSA to be named the winner of SXSWedu Launch this year.

Vu Van accepted the winner’s prize

We at ELSA are celebrating the success of the team at the competition. But most of all, we celebrate a milestone – at which we are encouraged that people love our product and there’s a real need to be solved. ELSA will continue our journey to enable many many people all over the world to overcome the language barriers as well as unlock better opportunities in career and in life.

One user even sent us a personal message: “I highly appreciate your application even it’s in the preview version. It would help millions people reduce their accents in English. I failed several interviews when I was in the US because of my strong accent. I’m struggling to find a good way to improve it but I couldn’t until I know this app.”

Thank you for being with us. We will keep moving forward.

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ELSA is now available for download on both iOS and Android. Download now to let ELSA help you speak English like a native speaker. You can also check us out here.

Read more on our journey at SXSWedu Launch here (Vietnamese).