Tutopiya takes travelling out of the home-tutoring picture

Singapore

NUHA Ghouse was a tutor in Singapore when a student at Marlborough College in Johor Bahru asked if the sessions could be held online.

At the time, she could not, and so tutored the student over the phone in 2017 and last year. Seeing the gap in the market, she founded Tutopiya, an online tutoring business that she describes as "Skype but with whiteboards".

Fresh from pre-seed funding and incubation by Spaze Ventures, the startup recently launched its platform in Singapore and is looking to raise S$2 million in Series A capital over the next 12 months to fund the outfit's regional growth.

Through Tutopiya, students and tutors interact through a virtual whiteboard and engage in video conferencing and online messaging within a single Web page.

Tutopiya accepts students aged eight to 18, and covers syllabuses for the Primary School Leaving Examination (PSLE), O and A Levels, International General Certificate of Secondary Education (IGCSE) and International Baccalaureate certification programmes.

The idea for the business was borrowed from the old model of one-on-one tuition, but that model entails tutors travelling from home to home, which is inefficient.

"There was a gap in the market for high-quality online, one-to-one tutoring," Ms Ghouse said.

Rates on Tutopiya start at S$20 an hour for packages of 10 to 30 hours of one-on-one lessons; Ms Ghouse said this rate is "at least 20 per cent lower than home tuition rates".

For comparison: Tutopiya charges about S$250 for 10 hours of one-on-one lessons for Primary 6 mathematics. Popular teaching centre The Learning Lab charges S$420 for eight hours of Primary 6 mathematics in a group setting.

Tutors on Tutopiya's platform are employed by the company, and are paid according to their qualifications and the academic levels they teach.

Controlling the quality of the teachers is integral to Tutopiya's branding, Ms Ghouse said. "We're not a normal marketplace where anyone can sign up and teach. What we offer is focused on quality as opposed to just driving volume and quantity."

Tutors looking to join the platform must make the cut in Tutopiya's vetting process, which comprises tests of language and communication skills, IT skills and online teaching competency. Tutopiya also puts them through training during their stint as tutors.

Ms Ghouse said: "Education is a long-term relationship with your teacher. So we provide the same tutors for the long term and we invest in our tutors."

She said Tutopiya offers its tutors a more efficient means of earning a living. By teaching online, tutors do not waste time travelling to their students' homes. That time they save becomes "teaching time", so their skills are more intensively used, which enhances their income.

Since Tutopiya's soft launch last September, it has acquired more than 200 students, the bulk of whom attend international or local Singapore schools. There are about 60 tutors.

This encouraging start has given the company the confidence to look further afield. It plans to use its Series A proceeds to expand in eight overseas markets where it has scored early success - namely the United Arab Emirates, the United States, China, Australia, Indonesia, Egypt, Sri Lanka and Malaysia.

Another growth area for Tutopiya lies in the expansion of its subject and curriculum variety. The platform will be looking to offer tuition in computing, along with humanities subjects such as geography and history, and more language subjects, including Chinese, Malay, French, German and Spanish.

The platform will also hire tutors to teach specialised curriculums, such as those for college admissions tests and the Australian High School Certificate.

Ms Ghouse said: "The great thing about our platform is that it is very easily scalable; it does not restrict us to a single market."

Asked how the name Tutopiya came about, she replied: "I combined the word 'tutor' and 'utopia' with the intention of creating a tutoring utopia. It coincidentally also rhymes with (the Disney movie) Zootopia, so our students would remember it well!

TUTOPIYA AT A GLANCE

Founder and CEO: Nuha Ghouse

Business: Online tutoring platform

HQ: Singapore

Backers: Spaze Ventures, an undisclosed amount (pre-seed)