Why We Built KOOMPI

In August 2018 we launched KOOMPI at BarCamp ASEAN. It wasn't Cambodia's first laptop: Sabay PC came in 2009. What mattered to us was the Linux on it, made for students.

KOOMPI means "book of knowledge" in Khmer. We wanted students to reach knowledge at a time when imported laptops cost $1,000 or more, which they couldn't afford.

When I visited schools around Phnom Penh, I kept seeing computer labs full of dead machines. They had been donated from abroad and had broken, and there were no spare parts, no support and no budget to fix them. Teachers were afraid to let students touch them, because once something broke it stayed broken.

So students learned about computers on paper. In schools with no lab, they didn't learn at all.

We had no big factory and no venture millions. What we had were engineers who believed Cambodians could build hardware, and a Linux system we could shape for the classroom. We already worked with schools, and we were patient enough to start simple.

The first KOOMPI was rough. But it worked, you could repair it, and it cost a fifth of an imported laptop.

As we put KOOMPI into schools, we saw that the value was in the software on it and the training we gave teachers. Since then we have set up more than 60 computer labs in schools around Cambodia. Each lab has KOOMPI laptops loaded with learning software. We train the teachers to do basic fixes, and we keep the labs running.

Building hardware in Cambodia is hard. Supply chains are scattered and customs is unpredictable. The bulk discounts hardware firms get elsewhere don't exist here.

So we built machines to last, and made them fixable with basic tools. The software works offline, because the internet here can't be relied on. That made KOOMPI a better fit for the schools we serve.

We built KOOMPI to give Cambodian students and schools reliable, affordable computers. It will never beat a MacBook or a Dell on specs.