Maqsad co-founders Taha Ahmed and Rooshan Aziz
Rising up in Pakistan, high-school mates Rooshan Aziz and Taha Ahmed, the founders of edtech start-up Maqsad, have been very aware of their luck. Aziz struggled with dyslexia however his mother and father have been capable of afford after-school educational help that enabled him to finish his schooling. Ahmed, in the meantime, benefited from a sequence of educational scholarships that gave him a headstart in life.
Quick ahead to the Covid-19 pandemic, Aziz and Ahmed have been each working in London, and watched with horror as Pakistan tried to maneuver to on-line studying, however discovered itself unable to scale up a expertise platform able to supporting massive numbers of scholars. The disaster acted as an impetus to launch Maqsad, which is at present saying a $2.8 million funding spherical because it reaches 1 million customers solely six months after its launch.
Maqsad goals to make schooling extra accessible to 100 million Pakistani college students by way of a studying platform delivered by way of a cell app. The platform affords instructing and testing, and might reply to queries. It seeks to disrupt the nation’s out-of-school schooling sector, which largely consists of pricey tuition providers that the majority households can’t afford.
“Maqsad affords an distinctive after-school studying expertise for college students at a fraction of the price of current alternate options,” Ahmed explains. “Our concentrate on scholar issues is on the core of our mission, and we’ve collected suggestions from over 20,000 college students and lecturers throughout Pakistan to make sure studying outcomes are being achieved.”
Definitely, the corporate has grown remarkably shortly. Since its launch final yr, the Maqsad app has been downloaded greater than 1 million occasions and is constantly ranked because the primary schooling app in Pakistan on the Google Play Retailer. The app offers entry to high-quality content material developed by skilled lecturers, but in addition makes use of synthetic intelligence instruments to supply personalised studying.
Aimed initially at college students aged 15 to 19 – usually making ready for board or college entrance exams – the platform goals to have actual influence in a market the place student-teacher ratios, at 44:1, are among the many highest on the earth. Maqsad – the identify is the Urdu phrase for “goal” – affords a freemium mannequin, enabling college students to entry a spread of options and providers at little or no value. Over time, it plans to supply extra content material aimed toward youthful college students.
From an funding perspective, the enterprise affords publicity to an schooling market that’s price $37 billion in Pakistan. Whereas different technology-enabled suppliers are additionally focusing on the market – together with Abwaab and Nearpeer – Maqsad regards its major rivals because the suppliers of bodily tuition centres. These are unaffordable for a lot of college students, it factors out, or just inaccessible for many who don’t reside in city places the place such centres are situated.
“This may be life-changing for college students,” Ahmed provides. “Many college students have struggled to get any personalised help with their schooling as a result of their households can’t afford after-school help or they merely can’t get to tuition centres.”
The corporate’s backers see a chance to drive social influence by way of a commercially-attractive mannequin. At this time’s spherical, which can convey the full quantity of funding raised by the corporate to $4.9 million, is led by Speedinvest and current investor Indus Valley Capital. It’s also backed by enterprise capital traders Stellar Capital and Alter International, in addition to quite a few enterprise angels.
“We first invested in Maqsad 18 months in the past, earlier than they’d a product or a group,” says Indus Valley Capital’s founder Aatif Awan. “We have been compelled by the imaginative and prescient Rooshan and Taha had for schooling in Pakistan. Investing once more in Maqsad is a no brainer as now we have seen them convey collectively among the finest start-up groups in Pakistan to construct a category-leading product that has helped over 1,000,000 college students.”
Philip Specht, a companion at Speedinvest, one in all Europe’s largest seed funds, can also be excited by the chance to drive social change. “We invested in Maqsad as a result of we see potential for it to the touch the lives of hundreds of thousands of scholars and disrupt the schooling ecosystem,” he says.