Learners & Yearners

Bangladesh currently faces stiff competition for foreign investments and the country's outdated teaching methods in colleges are failing a generation of young people to make any impact in the fields of coming generation such a AI and IoT. If this crisis is not proactively tackled then a bleak economic outlook for this country looms large.

We at Learners & Yearners have come up with a grand vision to transform millions of lives in this country by equipping our young generation with the  skills of tomorrow to tackle some of the biggest challenge that this country and world faces through technology.

Bangladesh currently faces stiff competition from other South Asian countries for foreign investments in IT sector due to a number of factors. Firstly, the country's educational establishments are lagging behind in curriculum design which deprive students from visual learning and creative thinking. Secondly, there is a skills gap that exists in today's graduates who are usually devoid of in demand skills to secure a job and make an impact in industry. Furthermore, the lack of public interest in the most demanding fields of the future compounds the problem further and could result in an innovation vacuum that other nations will be capitalizing on to fill in for foreign investments, massively hurting Bangladesh's economy in the process.

According to information from the following article (http://www.newagebd.net/article/67866/ict-sector-would-create-10-lakh-new-jobs-by-2021) there will be one million new IT jobs by 2021. Considering the fact that IT is still in its infancy in Bangladesh, even a modest CAGR could mean an exponential growth in our IT sector, amounting to more than 2.5 million jobs by 2025. Since a large portion of these jobs will be related to fields which we will be teaching, our startup could be serving a market size of more than 1.5 million people.

Our major customers will be college students of Bangladesh while corporate professionals will constitute a significant customer segment. We aim to consult with students utilizing a combination of surveys and interviews to extract pain-points in studying for formulating strong value propositions that will form the basis of how the course notes are designed. We aim to partner with major IT startups, SMEs, corporates, and conglomerates to comprehend their needs and precisely decipher the specific skills they demand from graduates. 

We at Learners & Yearners are aiming to tackle the above crisis with our robustly designed IT courses which are not only going to equip Bangladeshi learners with highly sought after IT skills but these courses could also make them creative problem solvers, enabling them to make a profound impact in industry, either by securing jobs or through entrepreneurship, thereby alluring foreign investments which will drastically improve country's economic outlook.

We at Learners & Yearners will provide affordable world class IT training courses in the most demanding fields of AI, Machine learning, Data Science, Analytics, and IoT to our tech-enthusiastic learners from Bangladesh, comprising mostly of college students. As our company grows, we will roll out career tracks in each of the aforementioned fields and each of them will comprise of several related courses.

All of our courses will be supplemented with comprehensive visual notes incorporating extensive rich media. For each course, we will additionally provide practical case study (assisted) exercises for experiential learning. Learners experience in going through the course will be further augmented with diversified graded assessments to access competence.

All our in-person IT training courses will be supplemented with equivalent online courses adopting sketchpad animated lectures for revisiting course content.

We will also host an online alumni community for our graduates in order to keep them informed of the latest developments and job opportunities related to AI, Machine learning, Data Science, Analytics, and IoT.

Learners & Yearners is different from competitors because we invest a significant amount of time in design thinking exercises for designing our curriculum. Prospective learners know the detailed learning outcomes before paying for our courses and each course segment is matched to a learning outcome. Our courses are supplemented with comprehensive visual notes incorporating extensive rich media that deliver information in bite size chunks for facilitating our learners to absorb information and be engaged with the curriculum. The courses will incorporate real-world, open-ended, case study exercises for experiential learning, many of which with major design component. Learners will also have access to source-codes, packed with assisted exercises, which are well-commented for them to review with ease and reuse in production codes in their professional career.

Learners can evaluate their competence through a combination of diversified graded assessments aligned with specific learning objectives such as:

• Objective (quiz, crosswords, word search)
• Subjective (short answer questions graded against a rubric of key points)
• Summative Assessments (programming assignments graded against a rubric of key points)
• Informal Assessments (practice quizzes)

Our courses put strong emphasis on mathematical foundation and fundamentals. For instance, our minimum viable course on classical Machine Learning not only shows practical implementation of Machine Learning models using advanced, opensource frameworks/libraries used in industry but also teaches their implementation in bare-bones libraries.

Furthermore, our learners will also have access to best answers to tough interview questions which will help them best prepare for securing job.

Activities: Each course will be delivered in classroom and online, in synchrony, within a reasonable timeframe during which learners will require to go through assisted case study exercises in between sections and as well as diversified graded assessments throughout the course for evaluating their competence.

Outputs: Learners acquire strong foundation including any mathematical underpinnings in the topic the course deals with and learn to implement innovative solutions using industrial frameworks in challenging real-world problems. They graduate by becoming creative problem solvers and visual learners. They will also be able to ace tough interview questions with ease.

Short Term Outcomes: Our graduates either secure jobs or create jobs through entrepreneurship and make a profound impact in industry by developing innovative and transformative business solutions at the cutting edge of technology.

Long Term Outcomes: They make our country proud of their achievements which will in turn inspire the coming generation to enter more into STEM fields and at the same time allure foreign investments that will create more high paying jobs in Bangladesh.

We are currently not serving any people as our minimum viable course is yet to be launched. We aim to teach around 400 students in the first year post-launch which will generate a significant amount of revenue to partially or fully repay any seed inventors or Venture capitalists and also allow us to hire new personnels for developing our eLearning LMS platform and growing our business.

We have also set a milestone to train a cumulative sum of around 5000 learners within five years post-launch as we grow our business and scale our training centers around Asia.

If Learners & Yearners gets funded then we aim to hire a top digital marketer in the first year of operation for organizing both offline/online promotional activities and executing an effective sales funnel and digital marketing plan to attract a large learner base from our target customer segments and convert them, with high efficiency, to paying customers.

We also aim to hire a top Business Development Manager in the first year for growth hacking and scaling our business. We require to hire two software developers (both frontend and backend) as well after approximately six months from start of operation to commence development of our gamified eLearning LMS platform. We will also start designing and developing courses on Deep Learning and Computer Vision.

We aim to teach around 400 students in the first year after launch of our first minimum viable course on classical Machine Learning which will generate a significant amount of revenue to partially or fully repay any angel investors or Venture capitalists.

Within the next five years after launch, we plan to develop around 20 more comprehensive courses related to Natural Language Processing, IoT, and Business Analytics and a career track in Data Science and IoT. We have set a milestone of training a cumulative sum of around 5000 learners within five years of post-launch as we scale our business by opening new training centers both nationally and overseas in Singapore and Hong Kong by partnering with instructors from those nations.

We have identified a number of barriers that currently exists which are holding us back from accomplishing our goals. Firstly, there are a lack of top equity-based accelerators which can support us through seed funding, startup consultancy, and industry networks. Once funded, we aim to use the  capital for buying studio equipment, hiring personals for offline/online marketing, growth hacking, and developing our eLearning platform, and rent rooms for accommodating employees and learners. There is also a lack of top Venture Capital firms in Bangladesh to fund our startup for scaling locally and overseas after first year of operation and going through the seed stage.

Secondly, there is a general lack of interest in the field of Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, IoT, and Analytics from both academia and industry which needs to be bridged. The lack of programming skills present in students from CS/EE/STEM backgrounds to make use of any Machine Learning related programming framework also presents a hindrance for our growth.

Lastly, the outdated learning attitude present in the general city population in this country may prevent prospective learners from transitioning into a new kind of teaching.

We will relentlessly pursue funding from accelerators/incubators and venture capital firms from Bangladesh and abroad for executing our business plan until we receive our desired capital. To combat the general lack of interest in the aforementioned fields and coding skills gap in students we will organize offline promotional and outreach activities in the form of hackathons, inter-university programming competitions, and networking events to inspire and raise the interest level of college students in AI, Machine Learning, IoT, and Analytics.

To tackle the problem of outdated learning culture we are aiming to organize seminars in order to educate our prospective learners and the general audience about the benefits of adopting super-learning techniques achieved through visual thinking and eliminating sub-vocalization.

There are currently two people working part-time for this startup i.e. me and my cofounder.

We, the cofounders of Learners & Yearners, are UCL-educated, hardworking, and talented Data Scientists with years of experience in Applied Statistics, Data Science, Deep Learning, Big Data, and Cloud Technologies. Moreover, I have a year of experience in Silicon Valley at Cisco where I developed IoT edge devices and am also equipped with the right mix of technical and business skills for succeeding as a startup founder. My cofounder is, furthermore, an expert in specialty skills such as Computer Vision, Natural Language Processing, and Google Cloud Platform.

We are great teammates who can work together in scrum projects as a well functioning unit by utilizing division of labor in pre-allocated tasks based on strengths for maximizing productivity.   

Our current business model is based on converting, with high efficiency, a large proportion of tech-enthusiastic learners from our customer base in Bangladesh into paying learners through offline/online promotional activities and providing them (mostly middle class college students) with affordable world-class IT training courses delivered in classroom and online for generating high revenue. We aim to utilize lean analytics to measure KPIs and test business hypotheses for guiding better decisions, for improving business focus, learner retention, courses in successive iterations, and value propositions, and also for giving insights into new market opportunities.

Our financial plan is based on our assumption of achieving desired levels of course sales and raising just enough seed funding and venture capital to execute our business plan. Our first-year revenue, post launch of our minimum viable course, is projected at 150000 USD which will be more than sufficient to turn greater than 80% profit in the first year. This revenue will generate a positive cash flow to keep the business running strong and allow us to further grow our business by hiring personals for offline/online marketing and promotional activities, growth hacking, and developing our eLearning platform.

As long as we keep our expenses (marketing, renting, salaries of employees, equipment cost, etc.) reasonable, we should not find it difficult to achieve that revenue goal.

The Financial Plan for Learners & Yearners makes the following assumptions: 

• That we will be able to carry out market research and consult with academia, industry, and student body for extracting top value propositions and accordingly design our curriculum utilizing Design Thinking methodologies.
• That we will be able to convert, with high efficiency, a large proportion of tech-enthusiastic learners from our customer base in Bangladesh into paying learners through offline/online promotional activities and provide them with affordable world-class IT training courses delivered in classroom and online for generating high revenue.
• That we will able to innovate our subsequent course offerings through lean analytics and feedback from customers.

We are applying to the Tiger Challenge for raising just enough seed fund to meet the aforementioned expenses for executing our business plan of hiring personals for offline/online marketing and promotional activities, growing and scaling our business, and developing our eLearning platform. We expect Tiger IT Foundation to provide us with strategic support such as growth hacking, bootstrapping, IP, overseas expansion, hiring and industry networks as well.

We aim to partner with major IT startups, SMEs, corporates, and conglomerates in Bangladesh to comprehend their needs and precisely decipher the specific skills they demand from graduates. We also want to work with academic institutions to identify the skills gap which exists in college graduates today.