Within our diverse group of international students, the familiar pull of shared nationality often fosters a sense of instant kinship. For Temy, Saruul, and Solongo, their friendship at the LKY School led to candid conversations about their career pathways, and their plans when they returned to Mongolia.

“All three of us applied for the LKY School, so that we could do something with greater impact back home,” recalls Temy. “In Mongolia, over a quarter of our population lives in poverty with distressed livelihoods, and we’d spent a fair share of our time studying inequality issues.”

The trio’s interest in inequality is intimately tied to their personal histories. Temy was raised in the rural south of Mongolia, an area lacking infrastructure, schools, and economic prospects, while Solongo grew up in a Mongolian province, where she lived in a ger (yurt).

“We experienced blackouts every night, and I used to do my homework by candlelight,” says Solongo. “Mine was a family of six, and I had so many responsibilities as a kid, such as getting water from a water distribution centre that was 2km away from home.”

Although Saruul spent her childhood in the city, her father would arrange family summer trips to the Mongolian countryside. “He wanted us to deeply connect with what we were given—our land, our resources, and our people—and understand how lives are impacted by decision makers, for better or worse,” she says.

From Coffee Chats to Changing Lives

Over many heart-to-heart talks between the trio, the idea for Equity Lab began to crystallise, and it was clear that the most pressing gap to address was education.

Solongo remembers how, as a child, she asked to tag along with a teacher to attend an English class, which wasn’t offered in her school. “After learning how to write my name in English, I was beyond happy,” she says.

For Temy, a defining childhood experience was getting to participate in the International Junior Science Olympiad, alongside children from all over the world, upon becoming a National Champion of Science in 2005. “I nailed the assignments on the first day, which were theory-based problems to solve,” she says. “But the second day was about experiments that I had only imagined, and it was my first hands-on experience in a lab environment, so I had no idea what to do.”

Apart from a lack of access, there was also gender bias to contend with. “Since my teens, I have been searching for ways to break the social norm of what girls ‘should’ do in terms of their professions. This led me to challenge myself to become an aviation engineer, when engineering was seen as a ‘man’s career,’” says Saruul. “After I joined the aviation industry, it didn't take me long to realise that I couldn’t make a difference alone. We need a team as well as policy tools and mechanisms geared towards encouraging girls to pursue engineering, tech, and other roles traditionally associated with boys.”

The women officially set up Equity Lab in 2020, with the vision of creating empowering programmes for underprivileged Mongolian students, such as 21st century skills training, internships, and scholarship opportunities. “Our biggest task was to overcome our first two years as a team, where we did a lot of R&D to define our product and the value that we wanted to provide to the youth community,” says Saruul. “This is known as the ‘zone of experiments’—or the ‘death zone’—and it has challenged us in many ways, but it’s no different from what most startups go through.”

Despite being newcomers on the scene, Equity Lab quickly rose to prominence when they made successful pitches to secure seed funding from some of Mongolia’s best-known startup challenges, such as the MonJa Startup Accelerator Program and She Loves Tech (Mongolia).

A New Era of Learning

A big break for Equity Lab came this year, when they secured MNT1.05 billion in funding by appearing on Shark Tank, a television show that connects ambitious startups with experienced investors to bring their ideas to fruition.






“We're strongly advocating for more experience-based learning, rather than classroom learning,” says Temy. “At the same time, we understand that the extracurricular industry in Mongolia is not very structured or developed. There are a lot of programme providers, and students are taking up enrichment courses and tutoring, but these transactions are mainly happening around the well-off households.”

“For kids who are underserved, under-nurtured, and undereducated, working their way to prestigious schools like the LKY School or the Ivy League schools would almost require a miracle,” Temy adds. “To change this, we started to think about how we could bring more stakeholders into this journey of making a student’s after-school hours more meaningful and productive, regardless of their background or financial capacity. And this is where we tried to solve multiple problems at one go, by building partnerships with corporates and foundations, where we would also provide value to them by giving them a sustainability report on the impact that they would be helping youths to create.”

The After School app currently has over 28,000 registered users across Mongolia, and the demand has been high in rural areas as well. “Kids are making amazing efforts where they’re at, like animal rescues and peer teaching,” says Temy. “And through us, corporates get to support what these kids have done for their community. So there's a real incentive for companies to make an impact through the next generation, and things are happening faster than we expected!”

As Temy, Saruul, and Solongo all hold full-time jobs, the day-to-day running of Equity Lab is currently in the hands of their team. “We were very much involved in the first two years, like physically hands down on the ground. But now Equity Lab has attracted talented people on board, so as the founder, I check in with them on a weekly basis, while I focus on strategic partnerships and our key stakeholder relationships,” says Temy.

As a lawyer by profession, Solongo continues to support Equity Lab in its legal matters, while Saruul oversees the creative side of things, such as how to solve problems using creative tools, as well as partnership engagements.

“There were many times where I actually lost steam,” Saruul admits. “But during those moments, I could share what I was going through with Temy and Solongo, as they are my best friends too. Everyone has their highs and lows, but we have a unified vision for how Equity Lab can make a huge impact in closing gaps for our youth, and bridging their growth opportunities. In this long marathon, we will play different roles at different times, but what keeps us together is our empathy, and our understanding for one another as friends, colleagues, and business partners.”