After debuting on iOS and 500 Startups’ demo day last year, children’s books startup MeMeTales launched a version of their app on Android. MeMeTales is started by Maya Bisineer and Pree Kolari, who are a husband and wife duo from Seattle, but now reside in San Francisco. This is an app that contains picture books for kids at around the preschool to early elementary range. These picture books go beyond the norm however as kids can earn in-app points and rewards to unlock games related to certain books. This concept is a little familiar to the achievement system seen in most video games today in which you earn points or trophies by performing certain tasks. The partnerships that MeMeTales collaborated with for this app range from Little Pickle Press, PBSKids, Harper Collins, and other publishers. An online sharing platform is also out there for publishers to share their works with the rest of the community. Bisneer also shared some stats with TechCrunch on how MeMeTales is doing so far since its launch. She said that about 81,000 people downloaded the app, 37,000 users are registered, and 400,000 books have been read completely. In addition, 20% of current users are using it on a daily basis.

MeMeTales’s app is also getting updated on iOS to coincide with the Android release. In addition, they are teaming up with multiple children book publishers for a special reading initiative for the summer called Readathon 2012. Free books from the publishers will be offered through MeMeTales for the duration of the summer. Along with getting involved with Readathon 2012, there will be meal donations for kids that signed up to read to FoodForEducation.org. It is great that the app is doing events like these for the summer when the kids are not in school, especially when it is for a good cause. In the past year, MeMeTales has raised over 100,000 dollars from 500 Startups and other ways as they are looking forward to raising more for the next year. Apps like MeMeTales are especially useful for kids who want to get started with reading books. Personally, I have to get used to having children book apps since I have a nephew now. With successful numbers in its first year, MeMeTales numbers should grow further now that people can use the new Android version. MeMeTales shows that entrepreneurship, tech and good causes can come together, which is a more reason to support startups like these.