Professional gamer to startup of the year: How Language Your Way is riding the startup rollercoaster

He’s just picked up the startup of the year award at the Australian Information Industry Association’s Victoria iAwards, but Language Your Way founder Pawan Lalwani says his language-learning startup hasn’t had the smoothest road to success.

An ex-professional gamer, Lalwani tells StartupSmart the concept for Language Your Way, which is aimed at Chinese speakers learning English, moved gradually from just gamification of language learning to actual game-based learning “using adventure and role-play”.

Language Your Way was founded in 2014 and in its early days, the startup was part of a Founder Institute of Melbourne accelerator programme. But it didn’t make it to the end.

So Lalwani took a step back, identified some of the issues with the original program, and tried again, this time starting with building a network in China.

“I built some connections out there, took my first trip, visited first-, second- and third-tier cities, and built a small prototype,” he says.

Eventually, he found the “third-tier cities were happy to give it a crack”. Read more

Stephanie Palmer-Derrien - Startup Smart - 21 May 2018