TutorsInc. Limited

As for the problems, we are trying to solve the lack of access to quality education for 50% of our population - women. We are providing Quality Education which is affordable and accessible to all, with the goal of reaching the women of our country. Helping them to grow up educated would not only help us to develop valuable resources for our country and result in economic growth,but also help nurture the future generation better as mothers are the first teachers in the life of a child.

Education would drastically reduce discrimination in our society. Furthermore, an interesting study published by VAW 2015 highlighted that woman at all levels have reported being subject of different forms of violence. However, the rate of violence declines where a woman is educated. Therefore, if this solution can be scaled globally, we can help empower women with education across the world.

There are a number of issues in our existing education system. There is a big deviation in the access to quality education across our country - especially for women. Following are some examples of the problems we are trying to solve:

• Lack of Quality Education: Our country experiences a huge gap in the quality of education! The difference in rural & urban is frightening.
• Inequitable access to tertiary education: Among a student population of 1,95,52,979 in primary in Bangladesh, 20% dropout in elementary & 38% in secondary school (42% being girls!). 
• Retaining students in school: Drop-out rates are alarming in all 3 levels, primary, secondary & tertiary.
• Gender equality: 12% of female students in primary & 33% in secondary school cannot finish school due to early marriage & domestic chores!

The drop out numbers are alarming. If we can ensure access to quality education for these deprived population, they would be create a good career for themselves, allowing them to take care of themselves and even their families - hence, lowering gender inequality. Furthermore, they can also be valuable resources for the country. These empowered individuals can play a big role in creating economic growth for our country.

Our solution is to bring quality education to the doorstep of the children of our country - bring it at a click of a button & the command of a voice. We want to help educate all women. Even if they are at home due to societal or economic pressure, our platform can easily reach them at their homes. Moreover, our platform is also for the girls who cannot afford the existing educational institutions. Our affordable content can help them study from the ease of their homes, at very low prices.

As for our offerings, following are the services we are currently providing:

• Video Lessons: We offer comprehensive video lessons, covering the entire syllabus. These videos cater to both the learning styles – visual & auditory.
• Notes: We offer high quality notes, making learning ease for those who prefer reading notes.
• Worksheets & Quiz: Students can test their knowledge using these.
• One-to-One Sessions: Students can solve their problems with our subject experts from the ease of their homes!
• A few more options that children can learn from are Live Classes & Solved Question Papers.

Students can avail these with any device - mobile phones, desktops or laptops!

Our goal is to help educate everyone locally & globally, who may want to educate themselves. Our primary target are women & young girls. The reason being, as mentioned earlier - they are subject to drop outs due to social & economic problems. They are often drop out from school due to domestic chores or getting married off early. 

We have done a thorough research & visited a lot of deprived areas around Bangladesh where people are living under the poverty line. We spoke to them to find solutions which would help them the most. Since then, we have been working to provide contents to these deprived girls and boys. Moreover, we are also helping their economic situation by arranging job opportunities. We offer them coordinator jobs at schools we collaborated with.

We reach out to them, educate them and once they are done with their SSC Exams, we try to get them paid through coordinator jobs. This helps them to be financially stable & gain self-respect. This will help them to continue education as they are getting paid doing a job. This will reduce their need to drop out of school to earn elsewhere.

As mentioned earlier, a big number of girls in our country drop out early from school, due to domestic chores & early marriage. Helping them to educate themselves will empower the women in our country and reduce gender inequality. VAW's 2015 published study is an ideal example how women are subjected to different forms of violence around the world & how education declines the rate of violence & harassment. This objective combined with the problems & solutions we shared earlier is completely aligned with this challenge as we too are aiming to facilitate learning for girls & women.

Our goal is to establish a new way of learning that would allow students to grow up bold, creative & innovative. There are a few competitors in the e-learning sector, offering a way to learn online. Companies include Robi 10 Minute School & Durbin. However, our services, methods of teaching and the impact it is going to generate is very different from others. We are essentially trying to build an e-school, with a combination of effective services, which are as follows:

1) Video Lessons: We deliver video lessons which are comprehensive and helps students to concentrate on developing their skills, creativity & critical thinking abilities.

2) Notes: We offer high quality comprehensive notes, with the goal of making learning easier.

3) Worksheets & Quizzes: No assessment of learning is complete without evaluation. We are providing worksheets & quizzes for students to test their knowledge on the subject matter.

4) One-to-one Sessions: We provide one-to-one sessions, which allows students to clear their education-related problems with our subject specialists, from the ease of their homes.

5) Live Classes: We also provide live classes, which allows students to connect with our teachers at real time & interact to solve problems and understand concepts.

6) Resources:We provide additional resources like Solved Question Papers & Chapter-wise Question Papers to help them practice.

Additionally,as an e-school we arrange PTMs with Parents to give feedback. Our lessons are tailor-made for both self-paced students & students requiring guided learning.These services & methods sets us apart from the rests.

Our core technology revolves around our platform, which has been built on:

- Front End: Angular 5

- Back End: .net core

- Database: Mongo DB

- Hosting: AWS & Google Cloud

- Third Party Integrations:

* CI/CD Integrations - Bamboo

* Video Streaming Platforms - VIMEO

As for our Business Model, we segmented our customers in 4 main categories based on social classification. For students below the poverty line, we aim to provide them with free content which they can avail through projectors at institutions we will be partnering up with. As for Middle Class, Lower Middle Class & Privileged Class - they would require internet access and any device like Mobile Phones, Tablets or Laptops to avail our content. They can additionally view our content through school projectors if we partner up with their schools and provide digital classes.

Apart from Internet & a device to view our content, our operation doesn't rely on technology too much. We have a strong IT team to ensure high maintenance of our platform to ensure smooth operation.

Our solution does utilize a widely used and accepted technology as internet is used by majority of our country. According to BTRC, our internet subscribers have reached over 91 million as of January 2019. This has allowed our operations to be a lot smoother.

We started our work with Institutions with a pilot project at our first collaborated school – Natmura Pukuria High School (Banshkhali, Chattogram, Bangladesh). We offered our contents to them, using which they took digital classes. In a matter of 1 year, their average pass rates in SSC Exams increased from 73% to 92%! This success saw us working with two more schools in Kishoreganj & Tangail. We also launched a new service during COVID-19 called one-to-many sessions, which we are currently offering Stride International School.

Our field test with individual students is still in progress, with services like one-to-one/one-to-many sessions & courses. We have served over 200+ one-to-one classes to individuals around Bangladesh, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan & UK during the COVID-19 period.

I am sharing a couple of videos that highlights our work below:

1) Our work with Institutions: https://drive.google.com/file/...

2) Sample Lesson: https://drive.google.com/file/...

Learning must be more student-centered. Our target group is primarily students and on a broader level anyone who wants to learn.  Our framework of learning is student centered which is a lovely combination of self-paced and guided learning.

To measure impact, we have strict and interesting methods.

Our services are for Institutions & Individuals.

Both are tracked and evaluated for impact.

• Institutionally: According to the national student learning assessment at secondary education level, only around 48% and 41% of Grade 8 meet the grade equivalent competency standard in English & math respectively.
• To track individually: We want learners to learn “smart” by utilizing our services and expertise in artificial intelligence. We plan to make information available to students that is important/relevant to their studies. We want to add value to their experience by helping them identify their needs with regards to their education to enhance their learning pathway.

Therefore, we started rolling out these two subjects. To track impact, we have a few steps.

Our pilot project at Natmura Pukuria High School has proved to be successful. Their passing rate has increased from 73% to 92% after availing our services.  

This is work in progress and soon our platform will provide timely and meaningful personalized feedback to students on performance & assessment.

To make our theory of change a successful one we have some KPIs and metrics aligned with our goals and objectives.

Currently, we are serving over 35,000 people across 130 countries. Our goal is to serve 100,000 people in next one year & 1,500,000 students in next 5 years. We are using a Freemium model, that provides a combination of paid & free services. We want to serve this amount of students in countries that provide UK Curriculum & the National Curriculum of Bangladesh.

Within the next 1 year, we would like to spread our services across the country and facilitate education to those who are in need. We want to establish new ways of working together, fight gender inequalities and boost women empowerment.

Furthermore, we want to create a memorable classroom experience for our students. One size doesn't fit all. This why we are creating personal learning experiences for our students. We aim to enhance learning by utilizing technology, cross disciplinary expertise & transdisciplinary methods to innovate and imaginative solutions that input education and enhance learning.

We want to continue this mission. In 5 years of time, our goals would be as follows:

1) Make way for all: We want to enable increased participation for all deprived people of our country - starting from the women & girls unable to study, to the under-privileged people of our country. We want to do this by collaborating with key role players in all areas to facilitate educational programs in every corner of the country.

2) Build a community: We will amplify existing efforts from all faculties and divisions to maximize social impact like fighting gender inequality.

3) Increase Social Equity: We want to ensure that TutorsInc. prioritizes our commitment to increase gender equality & social equity.

4) Continue: We want to continue development and strive to digitally teacher students around the country.

In terms of barriers, we do not have any technical, legal, cultural or market barriers. However, the one we do have is the financial barrier. We have been investing our personal funds to boost this project. We are running out of funds fast, which is preventing us from taking some crucial steps, such as the following:

1) Due to lack of funds, we are not being able to invest in our editing & animation team. Animation takes a lot of time and the resources are very expensive. Due to this, we are not being able to increase the speed and quality of content as much as we would have liked.

2) We also cannot expand our panel of educators. They require payments as well, which is a concern for us. Furthermore, we aim to groom up our teachers with the modern teaching techniques, which we are unable to do due to shortage of finance.

3) We are not being able to provide our teachers with the ideal equipment to smoothly teach students online. We would have liked to give tabs to our teachers, so that they can use it to take online classes and et an unmatched experience. We are not being able to do that.

4) We want to provide job opportunities for our students, especially the girls who are forced to drop out due to domestic chores & early marriage. Due to a shortage of finance, we are not being able to do this either.

In order to overcome these barriers, we would require funds. With the help of an inflow of finance, we will be able to overcome all the barriers we mentioned in the previous question.

1) With adequate funds, we will be able to hire more editors & animators, which will not only increase the speed but the quality of contents as well.

2) We would increase our panel of educators upon receiving the funds. We could also hire additional interns to support them in making the content richer than ever. Speaking of which, finance would also allow us to provide comprehensive training sessions for our teachers, who are one of the main stakeholders in our way of working.

3) We would be able to acquire all essential equipment for our teachers. Not just for our teachers, we could also buy better cameras, lighting and recording tools to improve our contents.

4) Finally, with additional funds, we would love to hire students, especially deprived girls, to be our coordinators and represent us at schools we work in.

We sincerely hope to receive this fund. The grant will implement our vision to see Bangladesh as a land having an educated population and champion our excellence and strengths based on strategies to boost our education system, become a leader in transformational, impact driven organization by expanding our services in this field, continue to build a well-rounded learning program & fulfill our purpose with teaching, engagement, practice efforts that increasingly result in positive social change.

We currently have a team of 12 full-time members. Along with them, we have 3 part-time employees & 20 part-time teachers.

Our team is fundamentally built on the foundation of IT Expertise, Sound Knowledge on Education and hard work & vigor of the Youth.

Our Chairman Sir, Syed Noor Alam is founder and former Managing Director of M&H Informatics BD Ltd. (Joint venture with a Swiss Company) – A global IT company, a concern of IQVIA (Quintiles & IMS Health). He is an entrepreneur & start up expert. He has been a success in the IT Sector of our country for 30 years now. He is the one who is running the entire operation of the company. To support him, I - Maryam Noor Yunus - am the Managing Director and the head of academics. I have CIDTT (Cambridge International Diploma for Teachers & Trainers) from the University of Cambridge & completed my TESOL from London Teachers Training College (LTTC). I am an experienced principal with demonstrated history of working in the education management industry. I have an experience of over 23 years in this line of work. Along with us are two freshly graduated young boys, who are looking after the IT & Operations of our company.

Along with our core team, we have a unique set of educators. We have a combination of senior & junior teachers. Senior teachers train the juniors and help them to grow into seasoned teachers.

We also have our team of animators, designers, content writers - in the form of professionals & interns - who tirelessly work to establish this organization.

We have partnered with schools as well as Industry giants like Banglalink & British Council.

We partnered with 3 schools so far, with 8 more in the pipeline. We work with institutions to provide digital classes. Along with our content which are used to take the digital classes, we also provide teachers training to ensure smooth proceedings.

We collaborated with Banglalink - one of the leading telecommunications companies in the country. We are working as their education partner. They assist us by taking our content to every nook & cranny of the country.

As for British Council, we collaborated with them to become a registration hub. Our website essentially provides contents for students to learn IELTS & also register for their exam.

We have designed our business model of providing value to to our target market based on Social Classification.

Our first segment is the under-privileged people of our country. We provide them with guided education, at free of cost. We provide them with video lessons with the help of attendants. We provide them with virtual tuition, worksheets & quizzes. They study through projectors or tabs provided to them.

After that we have Middle Class & Higher Middle Class. We provided them with both Guided & Self Paced learning. Our method depends on the type of student we reach. We serve them with the National Curriculum of Bangladesh (Both Bengali & English Mediums. In some cases, we also offer this target segment with UK Curriculum, based on their requirements. They avail our contents through their schools or personal devices like Mobile Phones, Tabs, Laptops or Computers. We serve them with Video Lessons, worksheets and virtual tuition, live sessions, Question Bank & Solved Question Papers. We provide these to them at reduced rates.

Finally we have the Privileged & International Student Community, who are usually self-paced learners. They avail our UK Curriculum along with services like Video Lessons, worksheets and virtual tuition, live sessions, Question Bank & Solved Question Papers. They too avail them through their personal devices like Mobile Phones, Tabs, Laptops or Computers. This target group is charged premium prices. This helps us to offer the previous target groups at free & discounted prices.

Our path to financial sustainability can be described in two folds. One is our existing revenue model. Our existing revenue model is divided into three parts. The first is our subscription model, where we charge individuals who want to avail our content from the platform. Then we have the lease model, which is charged to the institutions we are working with. They pay us on a monthly basis, for access to our contents, using which they take their digital classes. Upon payment clearance, we provide them with access for the month. The third is the advertisement model, which we will be incorporating soon.

The other path to financial sustainability would be through grants. We are applying for grants whose vision & mission are aligned with ours. Receiving a grant would boost our operations - as is the case with most start ups aiming to make social impact.

We are applying at SOLVE because we believe our vision & mission are aligned. We have been self-funding the entire project, due to which a boost in the inflow of finance would allow us to take this initiative to the next level. With the funds we will do the following with ease:

1) With adequate funds, we will be able to hire more editors & animators, which will not only increase the speed but the quality of contents as well.

2) We would increase our panel of educators. We could also hire additional interns to support them in making the content richer. Speaking of which, finance would also allow us to provide comprehensive training sessions for our teachers, who are one of the main stakeholders in our way of working.

3) We would be able to acquire all essential equipment for our teachers and overall team.

4) Finally, with additional funds, we would love to hire students, especially deprived girls, to be our coordinators and represent us at schools we work in.

We sincerely hope to receive this fund. The grant will implement our
vision to see Bangladesh as a land having an educated population and
champion our excellence and strengths based on strategies to boost our
education system, become a leader in transformational, impact driven
organization by expanding our services in this field, continue to build a
well-rounded learning program & fulfill our purpose with teaching,
engagement, practice efforts that increasingly result in positive social
change.

1) Product/Service Distribution: As mentioned earlier, we are providing contents for both National & International Curriculum. While we are reaching nationally through our collaboration with Banglalink, we could really use Solve's help to distribute this content around all the countries that avail UK Curriculum & the National curriculum of Bangladesh.

2) Funding/Revenue: We could really use this fund to invest in the right areas of the business. We have mentioned earlier how the funds would not only help us to improve our contents but also go a long way in helping us to achieve financial sustainability. Upon receiving the funds, we can continue stronger in our quest to change the education sector & champion women empowerment.

3) Marketing, Media & Exposure: We believe that our work will impact the lives of children and women. All this needs, is marketing - with which Solve can really help us.

In times like these when we all are locked in our homes due to the pandemic, we need to put competition aside & come together in meaningful collaboration to fight this battle. We believe in partnering up with relevant companies whose vision & mission are aligned with ours.

We would very much like to collaborate with Solve & its members to help us provide education to the under-privileged, reach our contents to those girls who are forced to drop out due to domestic chores & early marriage. We would like to collaborate with anyone who believes in what we believe and can help us implement it. Global NGOs and other educational institutions with similar mindset would be ideal for such collaborations.

The combination of women and technology will bring the social impact that can change the communities globally. We are creating lessons for school children and are taking these to the girls and women of our country, Bangladesh. Many a times the girls and women are left uneducated as 12% of our girls are married off before they finish grade 5 and 33 % of the dropouts in secondary school do that because they have to do household chores.  We believe that education can be done anywhere, anytime. Unfortunately gender discrimination in our society sees the boys getting privileges more than girls. Therefore, if we get this grant we want to buy tabs and phones and give these out to only girls and women with our lessons and links to other platforms that help to learn. Our target is to encourage them to learn using these devices. If we win this prize we also want to build a team to teach robotics and coding from grades 1 to 12 and organize workshops for girls only to encourage them to use and learn from technology. These girls only workshops will do wonders for our female population as due to the social norms, free mixing especially in the rural areas is still a thing of the future! Therefore, the girls only workshops will encourage the girls to come and join us and this in return will give us an opportunity to help them learn.

In several studies, when children were asked to draw a mathematician or scientist, girls were twice as likely to draw men as they were to draw women, while boys almost universally drew men. Persistent, subconscious images of male mathematicians and scientists that start at the earliest ages is one explanation why girls enter STEM fields at dramatically lower rates than boys. The irony is that girls perform as well as boys in math. A study, in the US shows nationally, math test scores for girls have been consistently equal to or within two points of boys in fourth and eighth grades. In science, girls perform on par with boys. But in higher studies, something happens, the girls do not pursue STEM studies as much as boys do. In many places,girls are brought up  believing that STEM is not for them. We want to break their shackles and set them free.

A 2008 study from the National Academy of Engineering asked people if they wanted to be engineers:Girls were twice as likely as boys to say no. But when asked if they would like to design a safe water system,save the rainforest,or use DNA to solve crimes, the girls answered yes! This proves that girls are just as capable in STEM learning as boys.

In order to enhance STEM learning in women and girls we want to create lessons and apps where science and maths can be learnt in a way that appeals female minds to move towards engineering and technology!

Ours is an e learning platform. Here anyone who comes can learn. Learning is done in two ways. Self paced and guided.  The self paced learners can avail our pre-recorded video lessons and gather knowledge or learn from them. Guided learning is when students are assigned a tutor and they learn from them.  An adult can improve their literacy from our platform using these videos and connecting to us for guided learning.  We have many mothers, house wives, teachers, office executives connecting to us to learn and improve themselves, mostly in order to enhance in their present career or for boosting self confidence. You will be happy to hear that people from all walks of life connect  to us to learn. Mostly there is a huge demand for spoken English and executive English and we have completed these courses with many. If we win this prize we want to reach out to more and let everyone know that we are here for them.  Creating awareness is important so that people reach out to learn and part of the fund will go there.  The lions part of the funds is going to be used to bring more teachers and tutors on board, train younger teachers and groom them up for future teaching, we want to keep special rates for housewives because they are subject to humiliation the most if not educated or when not able to speak in English. We want to introduce courses for technical training to build skilled resources.

We are working towards enhancing the quality & reach of education through out the world. We want to work with Education because it is one of the most fundamental aspects of a person's life. We are currently working with both the UK Curriculum and the National Curriculum of Bangladesh - both reaching and touching millions of lives across hundreds of countries. Ours is an e learning platform, which has already been used by people in 130 countries & counting. Here anyone who comes can learn. Learning is done in two ways. Self paced and guided.  The self paced learners can avail our pre-recorded video lessons and gather knowledge or learn from them. Guided learning is when students are assigned a tutor and they learn from them. Students under the UK Curriculum & National Curriculum of Bangladesh can avail contents at the click of a button or a command of the voice.

Furthermore, you will be happy to hear that people from all walks of life connect  to us to learn. There are many adults who seek classes for spoken English. We also have many mothers, house wives, teachers, office executives connecting to us to learn and improve themselves, mostly in order to enhance in their present career or for boosting self confidence. We will also be bringing career development courses, to increase our reach of students across the world.

Keeping these in mind, making high quality contents & taking it to people al around the world requires a lot of money. This fund would allow us to do so and help us to impact millions of lives around the world.