Edustripe is Fast-becoming the Edtech Startup That Provides Schools and Students With Innovative Learning Tools in Nigeria

The opportunities in the edtech industry in Nigeria are yet to be fully unearthed.

In the face of these, an edtech startup like Edustripe.com, co-founded by Babajide Esho, is playing a significant and enviable role in digitising the Nigerian education system and ensuring seamless delivery of online education. This has never been important as Nigeria continues to battle COVID-19.

Edustripe has deployed its edtech solutions in schools across Nigeria and has even partnered with ULesson to boost content offerings.

In this EXCLUSIVE and interesting chat with CEO and co-founder of Edustripe.com, Babajide Esho, the resilient gentleman tells Innovation-village about his edtech startup, how it is providing schools with innovative learning tools, and his post-coronavirus plans for Edustripe. Excerpts

Can you share your startup concept with us? 

Edustripe is a School Management Software with our stripes the pillars the company is built on representing Finance, Learning, and Lifestyle. We help Schools and Parents Manage Educational Fees, Access Loans, Monitor Grades, and Track Educational Activities, and Create Custom Teaching Plans. We help to improve already existing educational systems making them more efficient, fast, and 100% stress-free. Our tools are built into one simple, flexible, and reliable platform.

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What prompted you to establish Edustripe.com?  

What prompted us first to start Edustripe was the gap we spotted in the market that there wasn’t enough of Education technology companies helping users solve problems that cut across every aspect of their daily life experiences.

We also believe that it is possible to live in a world where all children can succeed through access to high-quality teachers. We believe that all teachers deserve to work in environments where they are well trained and have empathetic leaders supporting them.

To achieve all of this will be a herculean task, but we aim to do our small part by providing educators and parents with great tools and a community that supports growth, learning, and progression hence the reason for starting Edustripe.

Tell us about the moment you decided to become an entrepreneur? What did you have to do to be where you are today? 

My decision to pursue Entrepreneurship was influenced by seeing how startups I worked with like PropertyPro.ng, and Jiji.ng had grow into businesses creating value for different types of people through high impact projects. This love of building a business from ground-up to the point where it’s self sufficient to impact lives really was what drove me into entrepreneurship.

It hasn’t been a smooth sailing ride as I have had failures such as a previous  Edtech attempt Skoolkive and Digital Media platform ThatBlueBook. I’ve also had to gain invaluable work experience from top firms like GTBank and Transsion Holdings where I have also expanded my network.

Educational institutions have been closed since March in Nigeria due to the coronavirus pandemic. What role has Edustripe.com played to ensure students continue their education online?

The unexpected closure of schools in March really impacted things for us. First, our team started working remotely without any in-person meetings or consultations. Seeing there was an increased need for Digital learning we decided to focus on also creating virtual educational content that could keep learning ongoing which we have tried to do with our V-Engage programme.

We have also been able to secure partnerships with Ed-Tech platforms such as ULesson as we try to improve our content offering to our users and we are still researching and reaching out to more partners to keep learning ongoing despite the pandemic. 

Do you think Nigeria is ready for online learning considering the perceived low internet penetration in the hinterlands?

Nigeria isn’t fully ready for online learning because of the many challenges it faces in fully implementing online learning in homes and its schools. For many, the cost of accessing the internet in Nigeria is still on the high side and so some students find it a challenge to afford.

The government should make Internet connectivity a priority for higher education to be able to leverage on the promises and opportunities ICTs present. Generally, there is still a lack of awareness amongst the population, especially parents, of the effectiveness of e-learning. Many parents still feel that traditional learning mode is better.

ASUU said online learning cannot work in Nigeria. What do you think about this statement?

This statement is very wrong and in hindsight of the many benefits that online learning could bring to Nigeria. Every year, over 1.5 million students write JAMB exams and meet the cut-off marks for the schools they apply to.

However, only a little over 500,000 of them get admitted into universities, and simply there isn’t enough space. Students in federal universities are familiar with sardine-like situations in lecture theatres that are filled at over-capacity.

Some of these problems can be solved with online learning which can help reduce crowds in our schools. Although facilities are functional at most Nigerian universities, but inadequate because of the high population of students in our federal and state universities.

What are your post-coronavirus plans for Edustripe.com especially as schools are gradually reopening?

We would be working more with School administrators on how they can digitize their school processes through our exciting features. We shall also be doing more education awareness with parents on how our products help them achieve their various educational goals for their children. We would also like to continue to develop more educational content to appeal to a wide range of students.

How will you describe the reception so far? 

Reception has been very encouraging as we have been able to work directly and indirectly with over 500 Parents and 60 schools with our different products.

We graduated our first cohort of 50 students in our TechTeens Summer Bootcamp where we introduced teens to different technology concepts and we have seen increased need from Parents for more virtual content to keep learning ongoing with the current pandemic.

Capital and funds are key to starting a business? How did you go about funding Edustripe.com?

Our initial startup capital was $2500 which was money our team had saved up from executing freelancing contracts for a few clients.

As graduates of the 2019 Startup School program by Y Combinator, we also got strategic AWS Funding of up to $3,000 and other key resources that have been used to grow the business.

Many startups fail in their first five years. What measures are enshrining to ensure that Edustripe.com is here in the next 5, 10, and 20 years? 

To ensure we are here for the next 5,10,20 years our focus has been on building a process oriented and customer centric organization before anything else.

We want to ensure that we are implementing the right processes that would ensure we grow into a successful business.

Building a customer-centric organization would also ensure that we are building in with our customers in mind and also providing the necessary support in ensuring that they are using our solution as a tool to help solve their daily problems which is why we constantly are doing different research work to understand our users better. 

What is your money-making model like? Who do you think are your competitors? 

We currently make money from subscription fees from Schools and Parents for our different range of product offerings. We also charge commission fees from transactions using our channels. Our competitors include platforms like Edves and Schoolable; even a merger of these platforms doesn’t represent a 1% market share of the total addressable market in Nigeria so we believe there’s still room for more Ed-Tech players to emerge. 

What are the challenges of running your startup? What are your future plans? 

Access to data was a huge challenge when we started as there wasn’t enough relevant information on key figures we needed such as numbers of student enrollment over the last 5years or an updated number of privately owned schools in Nigeria. There has also been a reluctance of some school admins to digitize learning in their schools because of trusting the old manual systems better.

What advice do you have for budding entrepreneurs? 

One key advice I would like to share with other entrepreneurs is to focus more on the execution of their idea instead of romanticizing the said idea as there is no such thing as a great idea but executing their idea differently is what would determine the survival of this idea as a business.