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The Spark | Ignite / Connect / Achieve www . the sparkng.co m BOTTOM LINE EdTech - Social Enabler Technology is now building bridges and connecting students to tutors in interesting ways. By Godwin Benson Inspiration I had a personal experience in 2005 which formed the initial idea for what has now become Tuteria. Being an A grade student, I was hired to tutor a man’s son in Math for N6,000 per month at the time. They lived about 15 minutes from my house, but had been looking for a teacher for several months. This was my first paid tutoring experience. I prepared so well, and taught his son much more than was agreed which was evident in his, almost instant, improvement in his Math assessments. Sadly, at the end of the month, I wasn’t paid any money despite all my attempts to collect my payment. So I thought about what I could do to ensure this didn’t repeat itself to me or any other tutor, as well as help students quickly find the very best teachers nearby to help them master the subjects, topics and skills they need help with. That idea is what has evolved into Tuteria, which is an online platform that connects people seeking to learn any subject or skill with high-quality local tutors who can teach them what they wish to learn. Getting Buy-In Well, before we launched, we spoke with a lot of people to try to understand what their concerns or reservations might be for using a service like ours. This helped us a lot in planning the initial version of Tuteria to incorporate some of the feedback we received. However, after we launched, we continuously made changes to our business model, design, operational processes, etc., to reflect the way people were actually using our service. At the early stages, I personally called every customer to reassure them that they could trust us, while responding to any questions or complaints they had. So we kept iterating based on user feedback till we progressively built a service that people loved to use. We paid a great deal of attention to tutor competence, thorough verification and safety as well as excellent customer support which has won us a lot of trust with our thousands of customers nationwide. Exploring New Frontiers grown a lot in our understanding of the needs of the markets we serve. We’re currently exploring new business models and target markets which I may not be able to disclose now, but in a couple of months, we will see a brand new Tuteria well posed to lead the market in Africa. Bridging the Gap Education technology is a burgeoning industry in Nigeria with a lot of room for immense growth and impact. Over the to bridge the gaps inherent in our current educational system. These gaps range from finding innovative ways to educate millions of out-of-school children; helping students make the right career choices; providing world-class education for teachers; providing educational financing services to parents, school owners, students; helping children master a topic they didn’t understand in class; teaching kids 21st century technologies like programming, robotics, AI etc., helping people practice and prepare for exams etc. There are an infinite number of possible edtech businesses that can be created to serve these markets. So the industry is very young and growing, and we expect to see more activity in the education space in the nearest future. And yes, I have always been a business-minded person. My first business was shoe-making where I made leather shoes by hand and sold them to my friends in 2002. I was in JSS 2. At other times, I helped manage my mom’s and grandma’s businesses which gave me more exposure to dealing with customers, basics of bookkeeping and the science of exchanging value for money. For Aspiring Edtech-preneurs I don’t think anyone should start a business in education with the aim of making it as prominent as other industries. Each industry has its time and season, especially in Nigeria where we’re still in the early stages of internet-technology driven businesses. First we saw a wave of Ecommerce and logistics, with the likes of Jumia and Konga, and now we’re seeing increased interest in payments and financial services. Following strongly is Agric-tech, healthtech and edtech. obsessively focus on meeting the needs of their customers and providing superior support without compromising on quality and user experience. With time, we’ll also see more interest in edtech businesses. How It Began Both co-founders funded Tuteria from our personal savings initially. I previously worked at Deloitte and had saved most of my salary which we used to cover most of the initial setup costs like internet, fueling, hosting, marketing etc. We also endeavoured to keep our expenses as low as possible. Neither of us took a salary until Tuteria started getting revenue. That’s also when we hired our first Also, we’re fortunate to have received a number of grants from supporting organisations including Facebook, Tony Elumelu Foundation, MIT, Harvard Africa Business Club and the Royal Academy of Engineering. These grants helped us make tremendous progress as a company. However, our greatest source of funding has come from our thousands of customers who use our service every single day. Growing Organically Versus Getting External Funding I personally prefer to have achieved some measure of organic, increasing and repeatable growth before seeking out VC funding, especially in a place like Africa. - preneur would have to assess the level of capital required for the business to start would be best - loans, equity investment, friends and families, VC funds. Etc. Also, beyond the funds that VCs (or investors generally) bring into the business, other invaluable, non-financial support that can help drive the success of the business in terms of access to market, industry expertise, navigating regulatory bottlenecks, distribution etc. “Entrepreneurs looking to start a business in education should obsessively focus on meeting the needs of their customers and providing superior support without compromising on quality and Tuteria as a brand has grown a lot over the years. We have received more than However, these will take time as each industry is unique. So entrepreneurs look- 50,000 requests from clients and over 45,000 tutor applications. We have also 06 ing to start a business in education should user experience.” @the sp ark ng
www .the sparkn g .co m The Spark | Ignite / Connect / Achieve WIRED IN Artificially Intelligent Finance The traditional world of finance is undergoing a revolution. by Olusola Amusan F intech refers to technology solutions for re-inventing traditional finance. The word like most buzz words after the dot com boom has become an entire industry worth more than $3 trillion. More than ever before the leaders in finance are becoming technology adopters With gartner predicting that most financial service providers will become technology providers of the future. How possible? As customers demand more speed and accuracy, finan- - vices that meet this demand. Innovative technology solutions that keep them as market leaders and companies of choice. The Technology department of most banks, insurance companies and security exchanges are getting bigger than core operations. We believe this is happening because they are hiring more software engineers, IT infrastructure managers, Data Analysts, cyber security experts (to wade of cyber attackers), big ticket innovate for the consumer space. Cybersecurity and the new threats to global finance With cyber theft and online marauders becoming such big threats for corporations and now nations, investment in technology to drive the fintech industry is increasing now more than in the past two decades. Issues may range from theft of user passwords that cost a few thousands of dollars to major breaches in firewalls and sensitive data that is worth billions of dollars. Increasing incidences have ensured that the Chief banks call for stricter measures in user authentication and customer sensitization. In a recent study where more than 254 companies surveyed globally, it was discovered that financial institutions suf- fer an average of 125 intrusions a year each costing an average of $900,000. The paradox of this is that as we look for more advanced ways to serve the customers better to create ease of service and access, the more we create room for new threat. Researchers have argued that this is a necessary evil. Many of them positing that we cannot deny consumers new and improved service because we are afraid of Malicious attacks. While examining my thesis for my graduate research, I considered how social attacks is now made possible through social media. The closer financial services (loans, retail banking and investment) come close to social media, the more the need to massively invest in advanced technology to protect user information from malicious users. This is the fuss about cyber security. The field of cyber security is greatly influenced by our knowledge of computers and human behavior. It is about how we study patterns. These patterns allow system engineers to design software that can identify pattern through a methodology called pattern - cient, system engineers must automate the learning process and enable machines do the same, allowing software to learn the patterns and predict more complex scenarios than humans would ever do. This deep neural networks can detect forgery by imitating and creating deep fakes in digital signatures and testing themselves with this deep fakes to gain strong resistance against future attempts by humans or other malicious software. The Market Size In 2018, the International Data Corporation IDC estimated the investment of financial institutions in the US in AI systems at about $4Billion. This is an isolated statistics of the US alone, without considering all other investment in technology. The IDC further postulates that this spending may go beyond $77Billion by the year 2022. That is a huge market any software company looking to select a niche should consider. Some knowledge of computers and human behavior.” of the popular use cases of AI in Fintech, include Insurance underwriting, debt collection, fraud and crime detection and credit scoring. Anyone would agree these are fundamental operation areas for many finance practitioners. AI is being used for processing claims in the insurance sector, identifying malicious patterns and building new resilience, determining who banks should paying back. Some more mainstream ways business in the Finance space apply Artificial Intelligence is in Customer Service management. Advancements in Natural Language processing and cogshelf customer service tools available at companies now invest in building their own chatbots to get closer to customers. Chat bots allow individuals to converse with natural language with a computer with a body of knowledge and perform simple or complex task. Advance use of AI will be in Algorithmic trading and business intelligence. At the core of it most of the problems AI seeks to solve in finance are Big Data Problems. How do we collectively analyze millions of lenders, their assets, collaterals and spending patterns over a period of time to make tiny improvements that can save us millions of dollars. Lending is founded on the credit worthiness. AI is helping banks and other companies - ing the applicant’s credit score analyzing thousands of data points for those with past credit history and using what is called alternative data for new lenders. Alternative data is founded on an applicants digital footprint or social capital. The use of alternative data has helped companies like Lenddo, ZestFinance and Social Lender to help hundreds of thousands access loan without credit history and lenders approve 50% more applicants. The three companies all claim to use AI to analyse over 10,000 data points from an applicant’s social presence, geo location, smart phone data to decide who is credit worthy and who is not. @the sp ark ng 07
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