The COVID-19 pandemic definitely changed our lives to some extent but there is one sector that got a big boom during this time. Yes, the ed-tech sector! Students were sitting at home and institutes and universities took around a year to adapt to online education. But let’s face it, there are some tasks that the introduction of technology will make the working of a college or university easier.
This is exactly what team Teach Us is trying to do. With the Teach Us app, students, parents, teachers, and also the principal can get access to real-time information. You will be updated on everything from the admission process until the day of the results on the Teach Us app. This will include timely notifications about important messages, attendance records, analysis of a student’s performance, etc.
Team Sociobits connected with the co-founder of Teach Us, Mr. Jaimin Shah, to know more about Teach Us and how it is planning to revolutionize the ed-tech industry.
Team Sociobits: Could you tell us how Teach Us was born?
Co-Founder: During my days as a college professor, I’ve realized that half of the time is invested into all those non-teaching and administrative activities which can be easily minimized with the help of technology; These manual processes were actually affecting my teaching and creativity due to the lack of time for any lecture preparation. Well, that was the point of my life when I discontinued teaching, not because I lost my love for teaching but because I wanted to liberate all the faculties from manual processes.
With the sole purpose of empowering the teaching staff through technology, I began to ideate Teach Us, a solution that can cater to our audience. This is how the idea of the Teach Us App was born. I immediately shared this idea with my closest friends Shreekant Pujari, and then Chintan Vyas, (also the co-founders) and they both were enthusiastic enough to start the adventure with this idea. This is where we formed a company Think Monk. A company that is going to think about simplification of HEIs- Higher Education Information Systems like a monk.
It was June 2018, when we launched our first beta after a lot of hardships in the development. The app received a great response even before we launched the final version.
Team Sociobits: Which issues are you trying to address through Teach US?
Co-Founder: Initially, we were focusing on liberating all the teachers from doing non-teaching activities. But after meeting 200+ college principals, we’ve realized that the problem is big, manual processes create scattered data which eventually weakens the informational flow and makes the role of the principal redundant. This affects the entire college. Imagine this problem begin faced by thousands of principals and thousands of colleges.
Along with this, we identified that most colleges are cash-strapped. This means, that even if we create a solution to solve their problems if it’s expensive, no one is going to use this.
So, the bottom line of the problem is – Most colleges have no funds but they want good technology to simplify their processes and empower them with real-time analytics. And we think that this is exactly how we built Teach Us.
Team Sociobits: How has your journey been so far and can you point out some of the challenges that you faced in your journey?
Co-Founder: No startup can say that their journey has been an easy ride, and we are no different. It’s been challenging every moment. But, at the end of the day, we are working for our dreams, working for a mission, and this is so satisfying.
The biggest challenge was technology. We ideated something related to tech and the three of us were management graduates! It has been extremely challenging to first find a good resource who can help us build the product, and at the same time, understand the tech by ourselves. But we were lucky enough to get very good resources in tech who helped us thoroughly to build the product. The technology is the backbone of Teach Us because we know that through the app we can lift a big weight off teachers, principals, and students’ shoulders.
Another challenge is the industry. We always feel that we’ve hit the most difficult industry in the country. We are dealing with colleges, where users are different and decision makers are different. And they are always so occupied with some or the other thing that it becomes a task to get even a single appointment for 30 minutes. On top of that, they take new decisions only between April to July, which is the beginning of the academic year. You can’t sell anything after that. And the last challenge is, that they don’t have funds most of the time.
Team Sociobits: Who are the potential competitors of your company and why would users choose you?
Co-Founder: Like every industry, we also have competitors. To name a few, Teachmint and CollPoll are our direct competitors. But, users and universities can note that the target market of these companies is cash-rich colleges. On the other hand, Teach Us wants to focus on the development of cash-strapped colleges which are way more in our country.
Another thing is, that we are specialized in academic processes which nobody is, that’s the reason why all of our clients love to use our App.
Team Sociobits: Do you have any immediate goals set to be achieved this year? What is your roadmap for the future?
Co-Founder: With the COVID-19 coming to an end and education going offline again, this year, we are looking to roll out new features and also onboard a lot of new institutions. We can look to catapult our growth in these circumstances because our product is a masterpiece in the physical model of teaching-learning.
For the future, we are on a mission to democratize the technology to even the smallest of the colleges and make a standardized process to run any institution. Teach Us has apt features and we can develop on it as we go forward but as of now, we’re looking forward to achieving this in the next five years.
Teach Us and its co-founders seem to be certain about what colleges and universities need and their application has been created in a way to solve their pain points. Teach Us, essentially aims to be the fourth wheel of a college, wherein it can help the other three wheels; teachers, students, and the principal. Through Teach Us, communication and data segregation can become seamless for everyone.
