Nigenius

Teachers spend a lot of time, data and effort searching the web for resources to plan their lessons. Some teachers also lack the knowledge on how to research and access quality teaching resources. 

Nigenius is a smart website that helps teachers automatically generate quality lesson plans and teaching resources on their computers and mobile devices, based on their targeted teaching objective. We also connect our teachers to parents who need home tutors for their kids.

Using Nigenius teachers spend less time browsing the web looking for teaching resources and more time engaging student with quality teaching resources from the application.

When teachers use Nigenius, students are able to receive quality and equitable teaching resources, the teachers are also able to leverage technology to improve their teaching skills and content, schools are able to maximize teacher productivity. Finally, our teachers also get to earn extra income as home tutors.

From research, only 20 percent of teachers in Nigeria, actually harness the power of technology in the classroom to deliver quality teaching content to their students.  Most teachers are overworked and underpaid  and  spend a lot of time on the internet or textbooks looking for teaching resources for lesson plans.

Because of this, they are not motivated to harness the power of technology in delivering quality teaching resources to their students.

Most teachers also lack the knowledge of the right technology tools to deliver quality teaching content to their students.

At over 100 million, Nigeria has the world’s third largest population of youth under 15 years. Yet, in terms of quality education and enrollment rates, its primary to higher school system is ranked 120 out of 135 countries globally.

Failure to invest in quality education for this current and future workforce will lead to them turning to social vices, and this will be bad not just for Nigeria but for West Africa, and the world at large.

Our mission is to reverse Nigeria and  Africa’s massive education gap which threatens its economic growth and peace by using our solution to provide access to equitable and quality teaching resources.  

Nigenius is a smart website that automatically generates lesson plans and teaching resources on computers and mobile devices.

To use Nigenius, all a teacher needs to do is type in the topic, the subject, and the class and Nigenius will automatically generate a well-researched lesson plan and a stream of online teaching resources based on their chosen topic.

Using Nigenius, teachers are able to search categorically and specifically based on their specific teaching objective.

The online teaching resources include presentations, pictures, teaching videos, class projects, new innovative topics , URL's to online teaching resources, teaching web applications and teaching apps.

Nigenius uses smart search algorithms and smart suggestion algorithms to retrieve lesson plans and teaching resources from our database to provide the teachers with results based on their requests. The back-end database is built with MySQL and php, while the front end is built with angular.

Teachers can easily share the resources downloaded from Nigenius with their students virtually when teaching online.

Nigenius serves three key customers, Primary and Secondary teachers, Primary and Secondary Schools and Parents. 

Students are the basically the final end users of the product because they receive the quality education.

For teachers, Nigenius helps them overcome the challenges of time, data and effort when it comes to planning their lessons. They are able to gain quick and easy access to quality lesson plans and teaching resources, enabling them deliver engaging classes to their students. 

Teachers are also able to develop themselves professionally as Nigenius helps them improve their ICT literacy , and also their research skills by providing them with URL's to useful targeted teaching resources on the web. 

Primary and secondary teachers aren’t paid very much in Nigeria, so we also help teachers earn extra income (as much as $100 a month) by delivering after school home lessons to parents who need tutors for their kids.

For Schools, school management need to ensure that their students are being taught with quality teaching content, and also that their teachers are able to meet teaching deadlines and milestones on time. Nigenius helps schools maximize teacher productivity and also minimize school data costs spent by teachers when preparing their lesson plans.

For Parents, Parents want to see their child get good grades in school, most parents do not want to constantly find out that their kid or kids are always the at the bottom of the class. There is a large population of middle- and upper-class parents in Nigeria who are willing to pay as much $100 a month for home tutoring services for their kids. 

The one-on-one attention, the quiet and conducive environment without distractions provided by our tutors allows the child to concentrate more and freely express themselves to the tutor. This leads to significant improvement in the child grades and their ability to achieve key learning outcomes.

Nigenius was never built-in isolation, right from our ideation stage, we discussed with teachers and schools to understand the challenges that they faced and to get their feedback. 

We launched as a mobile app in 2018, did a pilot with 5 primary schools in 2019, got feedback and used to feedback to relaunch as a website in August 2021. 

We’ve constantly carried along teachers, schools and parents throughout our journey.

Nigenius was built with teachers in mind, to provide them with quality  lesson plans and teaching resources hence helping them to adapt and improve their pedagogy. 

The lesson plans and teaching resources generated are based on the teachers targeted teaching objective, hence helping teachers personalize their instruction material. Our lesson plans can be downloaded as word documents and can be personalized by teachers.

Finally, teachers can share the teaching resources such as pictures, videos, presentations, activity sheets, and online resources with their students virtually while teaching online in the new normal.

Our product is online and fully operational. We launched as a mobile app in 2018, and also relaunched as a smart website in 2020 after getting useful feedback from a pilot with 5 schools in 2019. We currently have over 500 users on our platform, and over 100 home tutors registered with us. Our numbers are growing steadily.

We also have over 450 lesson plans downloaded and over 300 online teaching resources downloaded from our application till date. 

We initially started with a monthly subscription service; however, we changed that and made all our teaching resources free to use after we discovered the subscriptions were not bringing in revenue. 

We generate revenue by collecting commissions on the home tutor fees paid by the parents for online or in person tutoring services delivered. This is now our new business model. 

Nigenius was built as a smart digital assistant for teachers. It works with teachers to overcome the challenges of time, data, and effort when it comes to lesson planning, and searching for teaching resources for their students.

If a teacher were to search for resources for a particular topic on a regular search engine, that teacher would have to browse through lots and lots of web pages to actually get teaching resources targeted to their teaching and learning objective.  

Using Nigenius, teachers are able to search categorically, by subject and class, and specifically by topic, and receive a lesson plan and a stream of teaching resources targeted to their specific learning objective.

Teachers can save time and data by gaining quick and easy access to the resources,  spend less time browsing multiple pages, and more time engaging their students with creative teaching resources from the application.

Another innovative aspect of Nigenius asides providing the teacher with a well-researched,  quality lesson plan, is our unique blend of teaching resources that we provide to a user once they do a search.

Our teaching resources are divided into these four categories below.

• Teaching with Multimedia tools and Computer applications
• Innovative, Resourceful and Motivating Topics
• Project Execution and Creativity
• Innovative, Interactive, and Effective teaching.

Applying these four components, teachers embed STEAM skills, the 5 c’s ( Creativity, collaboration, communication, critical thinking, and career readiness) and strong ICT literacy skills into their students as they prepare them for the future. 

We currently have 500 active users on our platform, consisting of teachers, educators,school administrators and general users. 

We do also have 100 home tutors registered on our system as well. In the next one year we plan to serve 5,000 teachers, and have 2,000 home tutors registered with us.

In the next 5 years, we plan to serve 25,000 teachers across Nigeria and Africa. These 25,000 teachers will be able to ensure quality education is delivered to 500,000 students across Nigeria and Africa.

We are currently serving 20 parents with home tutor services, in the next one year we plan to serve 1,000 parents across Nigeria, and in the next 5 years 7,000 parents across Nigeria and Africa.

Progress Measurement:

• Growing user base: As our users grow, it gives us validation that we have a solution that people actually want to use and solves a problem.

• Number of lesson plans and teaching resources downloaded: This means that users are on the solution, searching for content, finding it and downloading it for free.

• Number of Tutors signed up: A growing home tutor base means more teacher available to deliver home tutor services  for parents. We encourage our home tutors to use Nigenius to deliver quality teaching content to their students.

• Tutoring service revenue: As our tutoring revenue grows,  we will be able to help more teachers earn more income as they teach.

• Tutoring Service Profit: As our tutoring service revenue increases, so will our profit from commissions. We can reinvest some of this profit in content generation, marketing, entering new markets.

• Website Analytics: Our number of active visitors, locations, and bounce rate.

Our team consists of three co-founders, a CEO, CFO  and a CTO. Our CTO is part time and has a 9 to 5 job. 

We’ve worked with third-party contractors at different stages of our journey. 

We also do regularly work with interns remotely as contractors for content upload and research. 

1. Kelechi Uchenna : CEO/Co-founder:

Project Management Professional (PMP)

Certificate in Entrepreneurial Management

M.Sc. Environmental Engineering

I’m an Environmental Engineer. I have over 6 years’ experience training and working with primary and secondary school teachers in teaching with tech . My experiences working with teachers is what lead to the idea to build a smart website that would work with teachers to reduce their work loads and give them access to quality teaching resources. 

I’m also a certified project manager which has helped me successfully lead and execute all our key projects, from  the mobile app to the new website application and the promo website. From my experience gained in Entrepreneurial management, I’ve learned how to set up, manage  and run an enterprise successfully. 

2. Obianuju Uchenna : CFO/ Co-founder

Double master’s degree in  international development & International affairs

Masters in French & Russian

Obianuju is an ex-Goldman  Sachs investment banker, has over 6 years’ experience working in international financial companies , and also speaks 6 languages.

She is extremely skilled in strategy, consulting, financial markets, and financial models. This is why she is our CFO. She is an amazing individual who brings a lot to the table.

3. Samson Odele: CTO/ Co-founder:

Java Programmer

Web Developer

S.E.O Expert

IT Security Expert

Samson is an accountant by training. He has over 10 years’ experience working in the technology industry. He has worked as lead developer in a number of tech companies in Nigeria, particularly EdTech Startups. 

Our team is a diverse one. An environmental engineer, an investment banker, and a software developer. The three of us have a combined 20 years’ experience across our industries, and this has proven to be greatly beneficial to the company.  

Obianuju Uchenna, is a female so this makes us gender diverse as well. Some interesting information, the lead contractor web developer who worked with us when we relaunched as a smart website in 2020 , who built the front-end application is a lady, an exceptional young female software engineer.  

A good number of our interns who work in content creation as well are women, and the ratio of women to men among the interns is a 50 /50 ratio.

We will continue to build a leadership team that is equitable, does not discriminate, carries everyone along in the organization along, and listens to both internal and external feedback. 

As we grow and hire more people, we will ensure that we hire as many women as we do men, and from as many diverse backgrounds, religions as possible. 

First and foremost, MIT is a world-renowned University with a good number of the brightest minds on the planet. 

The MIT Solve program has worked with thousands of startups globally and have helped them scale by provided them with training, expertise, access to networks, mentorship and funding as well. 

The MIT solve ecosystem is a highly beneficial ecosystem for startups and this is why we want to become Solvers.

We want to gain mentorship, training, exposure, learning and expertise, from its diverse networks of founders, tech companies, faculties, investors etc. 

We will also be able to gain access to new technology concepts that can help us improve our solution and scale our business. 

We will also be able to learn how we can penetrate new regional and international markets from the learning and expertise we will gain from the ecosystem.

We need partners and support in the following areas.

1. Business Model (product-market fit, strategy & development) : As a young startup, with a product, we do want to consistently improve our product based on feedback from our customers, so we can serve them better. We constantly engage with our customers and record the feedback that we get. We need  training, mentorship, and assistance on the best ways to transform this feedback to positive changes or upgrades to our business model and product to give more value to our customers. 

2. Public Relations (branding/marketing strategy, social and global media): We understand the importance of branding, marketing and sales to the growth of a company. This is why we seek knowledge to learn ways that we can tell our stories better, deliver better campaigns on social media, and increase customer engagement on our posts, and sales campaigns.

3. Product / Service Distribution (e.g., expanding client base) : For our company to grow , we need to learn how to distribute our services to more customers efficiently, and we need to also learn how to efficiently create sales funnels that deliver. We want to be able to build a sustainable customer funded business, and this requires growing our user base, giving our customers value, and also gaining access to new markets. 

Microsoft: The Nigenius web application automatically generates lesson plans  for teachers and these lesson plans  are created in Microsoft Word format. 

Nigenius also provides the teacher with a stream of online teaching resources which  consists of a unique combination of online resources comprising of a stream of information of which, teaching with Microsoft office applications (PowerPoint, Word, and Excel) occupies a significant amount of the online resources. 

With regards to the fact that Microsoft applications play a major role in the composition of Nigenius content, this is an avenue for partnership and collaboration.

Google: The Google search engine and the Nigenius website have something in common which is the fact that teachers go to them to search for teaching content. 

Google gives you a vast range of resources, while Nigenius enables the teacher to search more specifically and categorically by class, subject and topic. 

Teachers spend a considerable amount of time searching for content on google, to solve this problem Nigenius could be integrated into the search engine as an extension to enable faster, more specific, and qualitative teaching resources when teachers and educator carry out searches on the search engine.