Martins Fidelis is the Co-Founder/CEO of DoLessons, a Nigerian edu-startup that connects academically distressed students in Nigeria to verified expert tutors for after school academic drills for more effective learning and better academic performance. In this Interview with Innovation Village, Martins tells us more about Dolessons; its unique offerings plus he has some words for prospective entrepreneurs out there.
Can we meet you?
I’m Martins Fidelis, the Co-Founder/CEO of Dolessons launched in May 2017.
Can you tell us about DoLessons and what it has to offer?
DoLessons is a supplementary learning and tutoring marketplace that connects academically distressed students in Nigeria to verified expert tutors for after-school academic drills to help students get better in learning, build self-study skills, raise grades and accelerate excellent performance in their test scores through individualized lesson options that are customized and tailored based on students’ learning pace, style and predefined schedules. We pre-certify tutors who are seeking tutoring opportunities to earn extra income for their free time, by asking them to take a Subject Evaluation Test to proof their proficiency in the Subject they intend to teach with us. If successful, the tutors are assigned a Subject badge in those subjects and are listed in the tutor listing page dedicated to their Local Government of Residence. When a student in same LGA or residence is seeking a tutor for a specific subject, pre-qualified tutors in same LGA of residence as the students are displayed for the student to select a tutor from the list after reading their profiles and availability timings.
What motivated the setting up of Do-Lessons?
I find fulfilment in helping students succeed in their learning goals in their most troubled times and demanding academic task, I enjoy doing this, it helps me sleep at night and I intend to do if for a living! The idea of DoLessons came to me when I was teaching in a High School in Port Harcourt as Head of ICT. During Open Day, many parents were always asking for extra lessons for their kids, with the goal of helping them get better, raise grades and develop self-study skills, especially in tasking subject concepts of Further Mathematics, Physics, Chemistry, Technical Drawing, SAT Preparatory classes, etc. So I thought of building a marketplace that will enable parents in 774 LGAs in Nigeria, book the services of tutors to come home or meet at a convenient location and help the kids improve and achieve learning goals. We started in Port Harcourt with 5 tutors; today we have over 5000 tutors in our database. I resigned and started developing DoLessons in January 2015 but launched in May 2017.
What has the traction been like since its launch?
Traction was slow for the first three months. We had few bookings only from my previous School. We tweak and iterated to allow every user in the marketplace to be able to sell their books and other learning materials on the online store feature we added. We also developed a Test Prep functionality that allows standardized test takers to practice for JAMB, WAEC, SAT, TOEFL, GRE and GMAT tests.
We implemented the subscription business model with a recurring billing functionality. We keep 25% of the cost of lessons taught by DoLessons’ tutors, 5% of the sales on online store charge a fee for taking a test using our diagnostic testing engine, bill schools and educational institution for advertising on our marketplace and charge a fee for hiring model teachers for both public and private schools who want to model their schools.
We have a few platforms like yours out there, what exactly is unique about the services Dolessons has to offer?
DoLessons is unique in several ways, hence the reason we really took a longer time building the platform. Firstly, unlike competing tutoring services, we allow tutor listing algorithm which list tutors based on LGA of residence allow clients to select their tutors themselves after reading individual tutors’ profiles. We onboard book vendors and sellers to be able sell beyond their immediate environment by creating a store on DoLessons to market their books and learning materials to DoLessons vast audience of students, parents, passionate educators and schools. Traditional bookshops without e-commerce technology infrastructure are leveraging our platform to list and sell their books online.
Our diagnostic Test prep enables tutors to set evaluation questions and answers to assess students after lessons to ascertain if learning has actually taken place and see if set objective have been met. In addition to engaging only verified expert tutors with history of helping students overcome learning charges, we also help students with Home work challenges within the month(s) of tutoring engagement. We are also very cost-effective even though feedback we get from our clients show 85% customer satisfaction with 30% month-to-month growth rate.
How does DoLessons work?
Clients book the services of verified expert tutors on https://dolessons.com that have been certified to teach with us by creating a student account. Client pays for lessons online and selects a tutor from the list of certified tutors in the client’s LGA of residence who have passed a Subject Evaluation Test to teach with DoLessons. After completing the booking, the tutor is auto-notified via email and SMS of the booking, the tutor confirms the booking and receives client’s contact details. Where there are no tutors in the client’s LGA of residence, the client use a tutor request functionality to post a tutor request and stating his/her availability timings for the lessons, which is usually 3 times a week, 2 hours per session. Pre-qualified tutors are auto-notified of the client’s request via email and the job is sent to a job board where all tutors in the client’s State of residence can view the request and apply to teach the student. The first tutor that applied who has passed a Subject Evaluation Test, who is in same State as student and who same gender as indicated by client takes is the job. The job is actually visible to all tutors in that state.
Tutors create account and organize their profiles on DoLessons. Tutors take Subject Evaluation Test in subject they want to teach with DoLessons and go through background checks, if successful; their profiles are sent to their various LGAs for listing by the database engine.
What are the challenges encountered and achievements recorded so far since DoLessons launched?
As we continue to explore on-demand tutoring request from our esteemed clients, we are poised to surmount the following teething hindrances:
- High Capital cost (particularly rent, office equipment and software development cost)
- High marketing cost, with respect to customers brand acceptance and recognition.
- Lack of Online learning resources (software technology and functionality to seamlessly delivered live-online lessons at real time).
- High Shipping cost for products bought on our store, delivery logistics challenges and confusing shipping addresses complexity.
What advice do you have for prospective entrepreneurs out there hoping to build something like you have done?
To entrepreneurs, please build fast and launch, iterate and tweak the idea with respect to customers’ needs. We took almost two years to build DoLessons because we wanted a perfect system, but while we were still building, some competitors were taking the market. In fact, Tuteria actually launched while we were seven months into building DoLessons. As at when we were entering the market, they have already gained a good size of the market, and when pitching, people were will ask “how about Tuteria?” of course because they gained brand recognition before us. So build fast and test run your idea.
What are the future plans for DoLessons?
Our growth projection is to serve 5000 tutoring hours daily by December 2018. We are working towards that, we hope to achieve this target. Currently we are doing an average of 200 tutoring hours monthly. We plan to onboard all book sellers and vendors in Nigeria by December 2018 to start selling their books and other learning materials on DoLessons. We are talks with some exam bodies to partner and create more awareness on how test takers can take practice test on DoLessons before their actual test.
