Tuteria

Tuteria provides an online peer-to-peer learning platform that connects students with competent local teachers to learn any subject or skill.

Problem

Globally, conventional methods of education are transitioning from centralized to distributed, and from standardized to personalized. Such trends have resulted in better learning outcomes for students.

In Nigeria however, teachers struggle to provide high quality education as most often have 45-60 students in class which has led to poor classroom engagement and the attendant low performance, while millions of unemployed youths do not have access to teaching opportunities.

Tuteria bridges this learning gap. 

Solution

Tuteria provides an innovative online platform that connect students with the verified local teachers who deliver one-on-one lessons in any subject, skill or exam, in order to impact on their communities and earn extra income.

We help students find, evaluate, book and track lessons with competent teachers. For instance, someone looking to learn the violin or improve in Math can easily connect and book lessons with a pre-vetted instructor nearby who is offering one-on-one violin or Math lessons. 

How our solution is changing the world

Through this platform, we hope to 

• make personalized education accessible to millions of Africans to help them to achieve their learning goals 
• create a viable source of income and means of training for many teachers on the continent

Tuteria has grown into a thriving community of over 15,000 tutors and more than 5,750 students and increased learning outcomes by more than 84% having delivered over 110,000 hours of learning and transacted over $635,000; 70-75% of which is paid as income to teachers most of whom include school teachers, unemployed graduates, students, youths and some professionals who love to teach. 

Our vision is to ensure that there are no obstacles in the way of anyone who seeks to learn something important to them, and by so doing, also help teachers impact on more students and earn a viable income. 

Tuteria uses technology to make it easy to connect the best teachers with students to significantly improve learning outcomes.

If you wanted your son to learn Math. Before Tuteria, you’d have to ask people if they knew a Math teacher which could take a while to find one. Now you simply request a teacher and are matched with vetted Math teachers near you. 

You can book lessons with your preferred teacher, keep track of your son’s lessons; receive detailed feedback of what he learnt each day and on his progress. This is the first of its kind in Africa.

Tuteria is built on a robust technological backbone. 

Our web application is built with Django Python. We use other advanced technologies like ReactJS, Docker, GraphQL, JQuery, NodeJS and Progressive Web Apps which allows for fast deployment of solution that is very scalable across different platforms and users, and accessible to teachers and students in rural and urban communities even under low internet connectivity.

We've currently incorporating Artificial Intelligence to improve the process of matching students with the right option of teachers and optimizing the learning experience for students and teachers.

Our 12-month milestones are:

1. Teachers: we're looking to increase the number of active teachers on our platform to 40,000 from about 15,000 currently. 

We're building a high-quality, online teacher training platform tailored to the African market to help teachers learn new, 21st-century skills that produce better learning outcomes. We planned to have trained at least 5,000 teachers in 12 months.

2. Revenues: we plan to reach $250,000 in monthly revenue within 12 months which will help teachers earn more income to support their families.

3. Market: we plan to have commenced operations in at least 1 new African country

Tuteria operates a very scalable model which can be easily expanded into new markets.

Though we're currently operational in Nigeria, we already have close to 2,000 intending tutors from Kenya, South Africa, Ghana, Uganda and Egypt who have signed up to our waiting list to have a similar platform created in their countries.

Our 5-year vision is to build Africa's largest and most trusted peer-to-peer learning platform which helps millions of Africans significantly achieve their learning goals in almost any area of interest; while also creating a source of income and training for thousands of teachers across Africa.

Most of our customers and teachers are parents, working professionals, school teachers, youths and students. We use a mix of online and offline means to reach them.

We've acquired customers online via Facebook, Instagram, Google, YouTube, LinkedIn, High-traffic blogs etc., and offline via campaigns at malls, cinemas, religious organizations, schools, estates, radio adverts and word of mouth referrals.

Students can navigate to our website on their phones, call us directly or send am SMS message.

We've maintained a 60-65% customer retention rate by offering professional customer service that's focusing on achieving higher learning outcomes.

Teachers: Since we launched in January of 2016, about 52,175 people have applied to become teachers on our platform, but only about 15,000 have qualified to join our pool of teachers.

Students: we've also delivered over 110,000 hours of learning to over 5,750 learners in Nigeria which include K-12 children, youths and adults. Some of these students learn coding or other skills in small groups of 4-6 people.

In 12 months, we expect to have verified 40,000 active teachers on our platform, at an average rate of about 2,000 new teachers added per month - and trained 5,000 teachers on 21st-century pedagogy skills. 

We also expect to increase the number of learners by 10,000 over 12 months. We're currently optimizing our platform to enable us to serve much more students than our current capacity.

Within 3 years, we expect to have commenced operations at least 6 African countries and have a network of over 350,000 verified teachers and learners. We expect to have trained about 50,000 teachers.

Godwin (CEO) graduated First Class in Systems Engineering from the University of Lagos, has 9+ years tutoring experience and previously worked at ExxonMobil and Deloitte Nigeria.

Abiola (CTO), also graduated First Class in Systems Engineering, has 7+ years’ experience building enterprise software for Banks, and Telecoms, and was a top 10 finalist in Google Sub-Saharan Developer Challenge.

Other key members include: 
Peace (COO): First Class (M.Sc.) in Educational Psychology 
Segun (CPO & UX-Designer): First Class in Mechanical Engineering
Ndukwe (Tutor Success Manager): Graduate of Health Education, former School Administrator 
Kehinde (Human Resource): M.Sc. in Agricultural Engineering, former Assistant Lecturer

Tuteria is for-profit company with a very strong social impact culture.

Students pay 100% of the lesson fee to Tuteria at the start of the lesson, and Tuteria pays 70-75% to the tutor after lessons are completed. 25-30% is Tuteria's income. We also charge a one-time service fee of $8 for every request which is also an income to Tuteria.

While Tuteria has a very strong, social impact element in its core which creates earning and learning opportunities for tutors and students respectively, we also earn income with a view to building a suitable, profitable business in Africa.

I was a Solve finalist last year under the Workforce of the Future Challenge through MIT IIC. 

I'm applying again, primarily because I firmly believe that if selected as a Solver, I will be able to leverage Solve's network and resources to help Tuteria build a more robust educational company, as well as develop a high-quality teacher training program.

We believe teachers are the most important determinants of a child's education - and Africa lacks a structured system that trains teachers. We want to build that platform, and I being a Solver will help us do a great job.

In our quest to build an innovative teacher-training program for Africa, some of the challenges we've encountered include a lack of well-seasoned resource educationists to help provide guidance as we structure the training content and curriculum, as well as some funding and technical limitations.

I'm hopeful that through Solve we would be to connect with the right mentors, and possible partners to help us achieve our vision.

According to UNESCO, Africa needs 16.7 million new primary teachers by 2030 which our current institutions cannot supply. We want to decentralize teacher training, and Solve's network can help us do so faster.