Raadaa Partners International LTD

Raadaa.com; Publish, Store, Share, Access and Monetize research.

According to a study by (The World Bank and Elsevier 2013), Africa has been noted to produce only 1 percent of the world’s research output. The report shows that the quality and quantity of that research though very small, is improving. Between 2003 and 2012, African researchers more than doubled their outputs, producing papers on subjects ranging from HIV, to cancer to climate change to ageing. A significant number of the peer-reviewed articles received international citations, a measure of the importance and quality of the research (The World Bank and Elsevier). However, the big problem is storing these research in a secure platform and making them easily accessible to the public. Over 90% of research in developing countries by scholars (students, lecturers, researches) are left to rot away in the shelves of libraries because there are no platforms for them to be kept and made easily accessible to the world. Hence, on the shelves of our libraries lies in waste the efforts and passion of people to change the world locked up inside A4 papers on library stands.

Raadaa.com is therefore solving this problem by creating a platform for individuals and organizations to store, publish, share, access and monetize their research papers. Apart from these, Raadaa.com also provide various edutech software such as plagiarism checker, surveys and data gathering tools, researchers assistants and partners connection to enable researchers connect with one another and reviews their project for efficient and effective scholarly endeavors. Raadaa also provide monetization of research for researchers thereby boosting researchers moral and their ability to produce more and better research.

Information and knowledge are powerful tools to the development and of a nation and when effectively disseminated to the masses, is capable of making tremendous impacts. Raadaa.com therefore brings about a great change to the world by making knowledge and information available to the public.

Raadaa.com in addition to free access and upload of research papers provides monetization of research on the platform with the individual researcher having the option of monetizing their research output, plagiarism checker to ensure quality, reviews and rating platform for users to improve their works. There is also “Raadaa Insights”, an innovation with which users can create, share or access surveys, polls, data repository and analytics, and online examination. This all-encompassing features, makes it stand out among other already established website making it a disruptive project.

Raadaa.com as a platform is on its own a technology based project. We employ technology in making researches and knowledge available to everyone. Without technology, making these researches available to the public will be done manually and this will be almost impossible. More also, all the services provided by raadaa.com: such as the Raadaa.com platform itself, plagiarism checker, monetization platform, polls and surveys platform etc are all technology based and this makes technology an integral to our solution.

Within the next 12 months, we aim to have over one million users and more than 800,000 quality research papers uploaded on the platform. We aim also to increase the number of organizations and Universities using our platform to over 500 and help these institutions open up their research via our Open Educational Resources Technology. With our Raadaa.com/insights platform, we are also aiming to build the largest open data platform for individuals and organizations to access mass driven and open data for their various researching needs both for academic, market research and even policy making.

Our vision for the growth of raadaa.com is to setup a sustainable/credible platform that will be the number one place for research and data hosting, storage, monetization, and gathering initiative. This will be achieved by building partnership with premium universities and renowned organizations and through our Open Educational Resources Technology, open their researches to global community for free access and use.  Specifically, we intend having over 10 million users and over 8 million quality research papers within five years and building a large data bank of primary/open data for access by individuals and organizations seeing it’s a challenge in Africa.

Presently, Raadaa.com uses various channels including social media platforms, word-of-mouth marketing and traditional marketing channels to reach its customers and beneficiaries. And we retain them also by providing quality services and improved products to them.

Raadaa solutions and products are deployed through the Raadaa.com website which is the main channel through which our target audience and customers access our products. And our communities and users access the products by visiting the website.  

We have over 34,900 active researchers in more than 54 countries and over 20 universities and other higher institutions on our platform and they have been able to upload and access more than 8800 quality research papers. We have rendered services like OER (Open Educational Resources) package, plagiarism checker services, digitization of offline research materials etc to some of our partners. Currently over 2,000 materials from the university of Nigeria Nsukka, have been made open for free to the public via our OER package. This has added to their level of openness and presence in webometric ranking. 

In 12 months’ time, we expect to reach over 200,000 researchers and over 500 organizations then over 2 million users within 3 years. During this time, efforts will be made to retain individual users on our platform and make organizations utilize our APIs to access our platform/services from their own website.

Raadaa.com is a solution to a great pain point for our users including Universities in Africa and we expect growth in the number of users as researchers get to know about our services. We also hope to innovate and add more features to meet the needs of our users.

Presently, raadaa.com is a team of 14 vibrant and ambitious young individuals comprising of 2 founding members, 11 full-time employees and 1 part-time employee. Among these are represented individuals with strategic skills like high level of computer programming skills which includes cross platform proficiency (Windows, Linux, Unix and Android) and fluency in over 10 scripting or programming languages including PHP, Java, SQL, Python and JavaScript and utilizing libraries and frameworks such as Apache Lucene, Laravel and Magento., unbeatable marketing skills, articulate content development skills, communication skills, managerial skills, to mention but a few.

Raadaa.com runs on three basic models:

Advertising: We generate revenue by advertising for other brands and companies on raadaa.com. Premium Membership: Raadaa.com also makes money through premium subscriptions by both individuals and organizations.

Commissions from copies of books sold via the platform: Raadaa.com also generate revenue via commissions on copies of books sold through the online book selling platforms we set up for account owners.

Another strategic model is grants and funding from organizations, institutions etc.

This model helps for long term sustainability seeing that new products and services are generated everyday making adverts inevitable. We already have strong affiliation with some renowned institutions deploying our products making our premium subscription sustainable and with our strong marketing team, we are sure of more partnership and expansion.

Our biggest motivation is that we are solving a critical problem that pains our target audience which is evident in our traction. So far, we have been working on lean budget and have limitations in executing our strategies and hiring the best talents to execute our different plans. Raadaa.com has enormous potentials and can grow big like many of the trending tech companies because of how it is uniquely positioned to meet a dire need for mass audience. We believe that SOLVE was raised to help startups like us in mentoring and other ways

Raadaa.com is beset with nagging challenges which we seek relief from. The major barrier we have is resources for scaling and expansion which involves, renewing and expanding our hosting space due to increasing traffic, users and data, hiring more and better talents to handle different aspects of our business and reaching more market through traditional and digital marketing to effectively execute our marketing strategy. Again, we also lack highly qualified technical support, mentorship and access to strategic partners and relevant contacts that can help us grow our business. SOLVE can help us by creating a platform for meeting these needs.