More states are now giving money to families who pull their kids out of public school, creating a pot that can be spent on online learning and microschool programs.



In September, Sandra Testo pulled her 14-year-old son, Keaton, out of his public middle school in Trinity, Florida—a response, she says, to years of bullying that had left him so anxious he ended up routinely hiding out in the school nurse’s office. Keaton now spends his days at home, completing his 8th grade coursework via Outschool, an online learning platform that offers live virtual classes for K-12 students. On Tuesdays, he attends a Christian co-op with other kids his age to study art and play basketball. “It’s been the best thing,” Sandra Testo says. “His demeanor has changed. He’s just so calm now.” Testo pays about $300 per month for Outschool from an educational savings account (ESA) funded by Florida.



Homeschooling is booming for a variety of reasons, but chief among them are dissatisfaction with public schools that spiked during the Covid-19 pandemic and $5 billion a year (and growing) of state stipends for families opting for public school alternatives. Those can include traditional private schools, online classes, homeschooling and microschools—networks of in-person learning “pods” with one teacher and a dozen to two dozen kids, often using online courses.



It all adds up to a growing parent-driven market for the edtech industry, says Michael Moe, founder and CEO of GSV Ventures, which backs educational startups. “Personally, I think the most exciting opportunity is in microschools, but homeschool, charter schools, low-cost private schools and virtual charter schools are all positioned well for this coming boom,” he says.



In 2019, before the pandemic, 3.7% of children aged 5 to 17 were schooled primarily at home either by parents or through virtual classes, up from 2% in 1999, according to a&nbsp;<a href="https://nces.ed.gov/pubs2023/2023101.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">survey</a>&nbsp;by the National Center for Education Statistics, which attributes that increase in part to information technology making home instruction more feasible. The NCES doesn’t have more recent data yet, but an&nbsp;<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/interactive/2023/homeschooling-growth-data-by-district/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">analysis</a>&nbsp;by the&nbsp;Washington Post&nbsp;found the number of homeschooled children has surged 51% since the 2017-18 school year. Meanwhile, private school enrollment rose just 7% while public school enrollment declined 4%. The big spurt in homeschooling came during the 2019-2020 and 2020-2021 school years, when virtual classes and mask mandates were widespread. Since then, as public schools have returned to (more or less) normal, homeschooling numbers have dropped some, but held on to much of their pandemic era gains. Notably, some of the students who fled public school for home during the pandemic are now enrolling in microschools.



A&nbsp;<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2023/09/26/home-schooling-vs-public-school-poll/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">poll&nbsp;</a>conducted in August for the&nbsp;Post&nbsp;found homeschooling has spread well beyond the Christian conservatives most associated with the movement in recent decades. These days, homeschooling families increasingly cite anxiety over school safety (including bullying and violence) as well as a belief that what is available online is better than the instruction in local public schools, with a majority now&nbsp;<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/tablet/2023/09/25/aug-1-10-2023-washington-post-schar-school-home-schooling-poll/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">using online live or recorded classes</a>.



This parent-driven opportunity is a rare bright spot for an edtech industry still struggling through the bust that followed its Covid boom. Funding for U.S. edtech startups in 2023 totaled $3.2 billion, down dramatically from the $9.5 billion raised in 2022 and $20.3 billion in 2021, according to data from Crunchbase. (In 2019, before the pandemic, the industry received $2.2 billion in investment.) The Covid-era funding frenzy came as three federal stimulus packages showered&nbsp;<a href="https://covid-relief-data.ed.gov/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">$190 billion</a>&nbsp;on K-12 schools—money was spent&nbsp;<a href="https://www.newamerica.org/education-policy/reports/k-12-federal-covid-relief-what-can-we-learn-from-doing-school-funding-differently/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">on everything</a>&nbsp;from beefing up technology for online learning, to making schools physically safer, to mental health supports and catch-up instruction for students. (Schools must spend their final Covid dollars by this coming September.)



As the federal windfall ends, new money to support the parent-driven boomlet is coming from state-funded educational savings accounts. Back in 2020, there were just four state ESA programs serving about 25,000 children and doling out around $100 million annually, says Joe Connor, founder and CEO of Odyssey, a platform that aims to connect state ESA programs with parents and education vendors. Today, 13 states have programs (some have more than one program, with different eligibility and funding) providing $5 billion a year to parents, he says. Those numbers are likely to grow. The National Conference of State Legislatures reports&nbsp;<a href="https://www.ncsl.org/state-legislatures-news/details/the-top-10-education-trends-for-2023" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">33 state legislatures considered ESA programs last year</a>&nbsp;and that it is now tracking nearly 100 such proposals.



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In August 2022, Melissa Shah, a Gilbert, Arizona mother of three, used a state funded ESA to enroll her now 16-year-old son into a KaiPod microschool. He’s neurodiverse and excels at math, but struggles with writing and reading comprehension. “Being able to customize your child’s education allows both the child and the family to increase their quality of life,” Shah says. “My son is finally feeling challenged in math, but it took until 11th grade. He spent so many years being bored in this subject, but not until we moved to an accelerated online private school paired with KaiPod Learning did he really shine.” Her son is now making plans to attend college—something Shah doesn’t think he would have considered without the opportunity he’s now had to forge his own educational path.



While ESAs are clearly boosting the money available to parents, Amar Kumar, founder of Boston-based KaiPod, argues they’re actually a “lagging indication” of growing parental demands for more control over their children’s education. “The way I see it is—ESAs follow what’s happening on the ground. As more and more families are saying, ‘Hey, I want to tailor my child’s education the way I see fit,’ that’s when politicians come on board and say, ‘Okay, then you should be able to use your tax dollars to do that.’”



Since launching in 2021 with seed funding from Y Combinator and EO Ventures, among others, KaiPod has helped independent teachers set up 49 pods and has opened 19 of its own company-run pods across five states. About half its current students were homeschooled before enrolling, while another quarter left full-time online schooling to join KaiPod and the last quarter left traditional public or private schools, Kumar says. Each pod is typically made up of 12 to 14 students and one educator. The pod covers a range of school subjects—from math to reading to science—with each student following their own self-paced and family-selected curriculum. Tuition prices vary by pod. In Nashua, New Hampshire, a five-day, Monday through Friday plan costs $6,600 per academic year. In Rosewell, Georgia, the same plan costs parents $9,000 per year. Parents also have the option to purchase two, three or four-day plans at most locations.



If parents have not already settled on a homeschooling curriculum, KaiPod helps them construct one. “So they may choose an a la carte approach of curriculum—Khan Academy for Math or Lexia for reading or something else for science,’’ Kumar says. “And then they come to the Kai pod three, four or five days a week to do all the other things and have a safe place to work.”



Outschool, a San Francisco-based online learning service, has seen a surge in business from ESAs, with the number of users paying with the accounts growing six fold in 2023, reports founder and CEO Amir Nathoo. Over the course of 2023, Outschools’ weekly receipts from ESA funds increased from tens of thousands of dollars to hundreds of thousands, he says. Currently, about half of the 100,000 monthly users of the platform are homeschooled, while others use it to supplement their public or private education. (The service, which was launched from the 2016 Y Combinator class, raised $110 million at a $3 billion valuation in 2021, bringing its total funding to $242 million from more than two dozen investors.)



Tony Wan, head of platform at Reach Capital, an education-focused VC firm that has invested in Outschool, cites state funded ESAs as one of the most important K-12 education trends to watch this year. “We anticipate demand for ESAs to grow as parents continue to seek alternatives for their children who they feel are not well served by existing and local options,” offers Wan, whose firm has also invested in other companies that sell to parents, such as early learning and reading platform Sharpen and tutoring platform Preply.



“We’ve seen (the number of) prospective customers that ask about paying with ESAs and other government funding increase dramatically,” reports Felipe Izquierdo, Founder and CEO of San Francisco-based Quest, which uses online games to teach math to pre-teens. He sees this as a big area of growth for his year-old startup, which now has 500 customers. So too does Garrett Smiley, the cofounder and CEO of Sora Schools, a New York-based virtual accredited private middle and high school that expects to increase its enrollment to 1,000 next academic year, from 335 now.



While ESA proposals have engendered big political fights in some states and so far have only been adopted by Republican controlled states, they seem to enjoy broader public support than the older private school voucher model. In a July&nbsp;<a href="https://hunt-institute.org/resources/2023/12/2023-across-the-aisle-report-cutting-through-the-noise-parents-and-voters-want-real-world-skills-safe-schools-and-literacy/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">survey for the Hunt Institute of 1,300 likely 2024 voters</a>, 56% of respondents said they support spending taxpayer dollars on education savings accounts, compared to 49% who said the same for vouchers. (The Hunt Institute, which is affiliated with Duke University’s Sanford School of Public Policy, has received funding from the foundations of Amazon founder&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/profile/jeff-bezos/?sh=33966241b238">Jeff Bezos&nbsp;</a>and Microsoft cofounder&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/profile/bill-gates/">Bill Gates</a>&nbsp;and his ex-wife&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/profile/melinda-french-gates/">Melinda French Gates</a>&nbsp;and from Meta cofounder&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/profile/mark-zuckerberg/?sh=65dcd7a3e06d">Mark Zuckerberg</a>&nbsp;and his wife Priscilla Chan.)



Which students qualify for ESAs, how much they get and what parents can spend the money on varies widely from program to program. Montana and North Carolina have launched accounts just for students with special needs. New Hampshire established its ESA in 2021 for families with 350% or less of the poverty rate (a household income of $105,000 or less for a family of four). The accounts are not popular with teachers’ unions. The American Federation of Teachers-New Hampshire sued to block the program, claiming it violates the state constitution because it is partially funded through the state’s lottery program, whose earnings are earmarked exclusively for state aid to education. In November, a Superior Court judge&nbsp;<a href="https://www.doj.nh.gov/news/2023/documents/20231115-howes-v-edelblut-mtd.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">dismissed the lawsuit</a>.



West Virginia’s Hope Scholarship program, launched in 2022, and recently upheld by the state’s Supreme Court, provides accounts (equal to the state’s per capita contribution to local public schools) only to students who had previously been enrolled in public schools or are just starting kindergarten. This year, the accounts provide $4,489 to eligible students to pay for tuition, homeschooling curriculum and other expenses for individualized education. But the legislation could eventually make the accounts more widely available.



That’s in line with a trend toward wider eligibility. Arkansas, for example, launched ESAs this year with eligibility restricted to certain students, such as those with disabilities or fleeing the lowest ranked public schools, with total participation capped. The accounts are equal to 90% of the state’s per capita student funding for the prior year for public schools—that translates to $6,600 this year. But by the 2025-2026 school year, the state plans to make the accounts available to all students who want to leave public school.



“Generally, states want to make sure that the programs are up and running and that there is no fraud, waste and abuse before they expand the categories,” Connor observes. “But I think if you step back, generally the policy is to empower parents. And historically what we’ve seen is an expansion of what that means rather than a contraction.”



Arizona’s “empowerment scholarship accounts” were first established in 2011 for students with disabilities. For the 2022-23 academic year, children with disabilities were eligible for up to $43,000 in ESA funding, depending on their disability. But in 2022 the state made smaller accounts (now ranging from $6,000 to $9,000, depending on how much state aid would have been paid to a public or charter school system if the student had been enrolled) available to any non-disabled resident K-12 student regardless of family income, so long as they’re not enrolled in public schools or publicly funded charter schools. Parents can spend the money on private school tuition, curriculum, home education or tutoring, to name a few things. (This is separate from Arizona’s tax-credit subsidized voucher program for private schools and families can’t qualify for both.)



Connor’s Odyssey works with ESA programs in Idaho, Missouri and Iowa, and operates an online marketplace where parents can purchase pre-approved educational services for their children. After the programs are up and running, he sees a spike in interest from education vendors who want in on the action. “Once money actually starts flowing to the parents, and parents are purchasing things, we typically see that is when vendors—some tutoring centers, afterschool programs, music programs—get very interested in it, because now it’s a potential source of business and revenue for them,” he says.

Serious Mother Helps her Children To Do Their Homework in a Living Room

Will Homeschooling Parents Save Edtech?

The Nairobi-based co-founder of Craydel, an online career guidance platform, speaks to FORBES AFRICA about its ambitions to democratize higher education and scale across Africa. But first, more on what sparked his entrepreneurial journey.



Manish Sardana is in the midst of a busy day, opening yet another office, a bigger one, in Nairobi’s upscale Westlands area when we catch up for a conversation on Craydel, the edtech startup he successfully co-founded in Kenya in 2021, at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic.



“Right now, we have five offices – three in Nigeria and two in Kenya – and about 70-odd employees and we are growing rapidly,” the platform’s 43-year-old CEO says about the growth of what was once “just an idea in his head”.



At a time when most startups are battling to survive and retrenching staff, Craydel is hiring rapidly and on its way to profitability in 2024, he adds. On the cards: expansion to more markets such as Ghana, Uganda and South Africa. The investors are keen and Sardana is optimistic.



“When you are building something that has a real vision trying to solve a real problem, you get people gravitating towards you,” says Sardana of his platform that dispels misinformation and biases for students and guides decisions on college and course selection.&nbsp;Craydel is building the tech infrastructure to empower African learners to search, match and apply to their best-fit higher education institutions.



In 2021, Sardana, along with his co-founders <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/john-nguru-38677638/?originalSubdomain=ke" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">John Nguru</a> and <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/shayne-aman-premji/?originalSubdomain=ke" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Shayne Aman Premji</a>, secured $1 million for Craydel in a pre-seed round led by Enza Capital, a private venture fund that invests in early-stage tech startups across Africa. Subsequently, they secured another $1.5 million to grow the platform.



Craydel – a play on the word ‘cradle’ – &nbsp;hand-holds students wanting to pursue higher education – from graduation to post-graduation to PhD – at any point in their student or professional career. In fact, 50% of their postgraduate enrolments are working professionals looking for a career change, says Sardana.



The tech startup has 380 direct partnerships with universities so far and seeks to democratize access to tertiary education, in turn, addressing the low gross enrolment rate, of about 9%, in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). This includes working professionals who have not been to college before, for want of access to capital and resources.



Two years in, Sardana says they have figured out the formula for success.



“We know that if you do X, Y and Z, you are going to be successful. That equation is very clear to us now.



We want to show that we can build a real unicorn out of Africa, creating real impact.”



But there’s a reason why Craydel may as well be on its way to savoring billion-dollar success in the future. Sardana has a track-record of building and scaling successful businesses from the ground-up.



His penchant for entrepreneurship had its humble beginnings in India, and followed him to Africa, a continent that he now calls home and one that has “given so much” to him.&nbsp;&nbsp;



“I owe it to Africa,” he explains of his mission to expand opportunities in education.



“One of the things I realized early on in life is to observe things around me… What I love is looking at ecosystems and how things work, and understand how it is broken, and use technology to disrupt that ecosystem. There&#8217;s also a theory I use, which is called ‘perpetuators versus agitators’; wherein perpetuators perpetuate an ecosystem because it benefits them, while an agitator can really shake this up from the outside and create a better, more efficient ecosystem,” says Sardana.



‘Serial entrepreneur’



His first tryst with entrepreneurship was at the age of 10. From a middle class home in Delhi – with three rooms and 16 family members – Sardana was born to parents who worked in the government and instilled in him a love for reading.



He engaged this by creating “a sharing concept or library with a common pool of books and comics from everyone in one place”, renting books out to friends and relatives. The venture failed, but not without him realizing how much he enjoyed the process of creating it. All through school and college, he found enterprising ways to make pocket money, becoming “a serial entrepreneur more out of necessity than anything else”.



His parents allowed him these entrepreneurial bouts, so long as he was going to top his class, study economics and go on to become a civil services officer. Whilst studying for an economics degree in Delhi University’s Hansraj College, Sardana was also teaching students. But disillusionment set in.



“I mean 90% of what I studied two years ago, I had no recollection of, and I could not see how that education was going to ever help me in life. And especially because I had kind of exposed myself to building businesses, I did not see any practical application of what I was studying.”



Along with a couple of friends, he soon set up his own publishing business – a college magazine in Delhi University that proved to be very popular on campus. He hustled, spending nights at the printing press and knocking on advertisers’ doors during the day, thumbing through the Yellow Pages directories and traveling across Delhi on his dad’s scooter. This was in the year 2000.



“My parents said I have got to stop this and do my master’s degree,” says Sardana. His mom filled out a form to the prestigious Delhi School of Economics. Some of India’s greatest economists such as Nobel laureate Amartya Sen and former Indian Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh have taught at the institution. &nbsp;



Sardana cleared the entrance exam, quite by default. “I really did not study for it. The only way I cleared the exam was because I was teaching my classmates and charging them money for it. So I would [conduct] private tuitions for my own classmates, and in the process of teaching them, I would kind of learn myself.”



Very soon, he realized it was all theoretical economics and he had no passion for it. It didn’t challenge him enough, so three months into the course, he quit.



After that, he tried to rekindle the magazine business but had to close it down. He also authored an economics textbook for class 12 students. A year on, he went on to do his MBA at the FORE School of Management and was subsequently hired by advertising agency FCB Ulka. Before long, he felt “jaded” in the industry doing marketing campaigns. But Sardana was also closely watching from the sidelines the big renaissance unraveling in India’s technology sector.



“That was in 2004-2005, the internet was coming up, Amazon was becoming a big thing and Google had come up. I saw the power of technology really changing and transforming ecosystems and got really excited about it,” he recalls.



After that, he worked four years in a successful edtech startup called Vriti, and the company managed to raise a total funding of $35 million.



“It was a lot of money at the time… Eventually, I sliced the part of the company I was running and set up as a separate company. I sold my company to a financial investor. So that was my first successful exit, which I was really happy about.



“And then, after seven years, I needed a break, I was very much done. Startups can also be an emotionally-draining experience, you know, especially when you are just married and have kids.”



A six-month break ensued, during which time he also helped his wife set up her bakery business, delivering her cakes door-to-door in their black Maruti Esteem car.



That was in 2014 when Sardana’s Africa rendezvous was just about to begin.



‘Owe it to Africa’



One of his former bosses who had been following his journey in the technology space told him about an opportunity in Africa with multinational communications company, WPP to focus on the digital marketing side of the business.



Within 10 days of receiving the offer, Sardana was on a plane to Kenya, his first trip outside of India. It took him three years to settle down, to understand the market and the consumers, and he was promoted to Managing Director for WPP-Scangroup in SSA.&nbsp; &nbsp;



He won a lot of business for the company but the entrepreneur in him was beginning to surface, again. He built a marketing automation platform called Optimus for the company, which is when he met and worked with his current co-founder and CTO, Nguru.



He presented the product to the board but it didn’t work. He presented it to one of their clients, Barclays in Kenya, and thereby to the bank’s leadership in South Africa, who were very impressed and gave him a chance to deploy it across their markets, which he calls his “first lucky break”.



“Once Barclays happened, you know, success creates more success. Suddenly, at WPP, the guys woke up!”



Sardana says Optimus was also deployed by leading African entities such as Kenya Commercial Bank, Equity Bank, the Old Mutual Group and Airtel.



The epiphany after that was inspired by his wife, whose bakery business was also doing well.



“She said to me ‘you know, you guys keep building all this sophisticated technology for large blue chip companies, but what about building something to help small businesses like us scale’?



“That was my first moment in Africa when I said, ‘okay, I&#8217;m making a lot of money for myself, am building a lot of wealth for my organization and for my clients, who are very rich people to start with, but we are really not doing anything of any significance, of impact, using our skill sets, and our insights for the large masses, the small business sector. If you understand Africa, it&#8217;s really run on the back of very micro SMEs.”



This led to the creation of Optimus Mini for small businesses. Eventually, that platform was called Goby – “the smallest fish in the world”. He explains the philosophy behind it.



“The big fish eat the small fish. So we wanted to empower the small fish to fight and compete with the big fish, by giving them access to all the technology and resources they needed. It was essentially e-commerce-as-a-service platform, allowing small entrepreneurs to upload their product pictures and prices, and it will set up an entire e-commerce shop for them online, integrated with payment gateways and logistics partners to deliver the products.”


<div class="wp-block-image">
<figure class="alignright size-large is-resized"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="682" height="1024" src="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/Manish-Sardana-image-supplied-682x1024.jpeg" alt="" class="wp-image-60328" style="width:335px;height:auto" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/Manish-Sardana-image-supplied-682x1024.jpeg 682w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/Manish-Sardana-image-supplied-200x300.jpeg 200w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/Manish-Sardana-image-supplied-768x1153.jpeg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/Manish-Sardana-image-supplied-1023x1536.jpeg 1023w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/Manish-Sardana-image-supplied-1364x2048.jpeg 1364w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/Manish-Sardana-image-supplied-scaled.jpeg 1705w" sizes="(max-width: 682px) 100vw, 682px" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Manish Sardana; image supplied</figcaption></figure></div>


It really was just Nguru and Sardana developing it at that point.



“John is an exceptional technology guy, he&#8217;s amazing. I would come up with a product design, the user experience, the strategy, the business side of things and he would build the technology. Technology was always my handicap – I always regret not learning to code. I have all the stuff in my head but can’t build. I tell John he completes my handicap,” says Sardana.



In three months, they had 3,000 merchants signing up, deeming the platform a success. This was while they were still with WPP-Scangroup, when they had the reach, the capital and client access afforded by the company.



When Covid-19 struck in 2020, e-commerce took off and so did Goby. Leading brewer AB InBev approached them to sign on for “a B2B version of the product” to take orders online and deliver alcohol. Diageo, too, came along.



But the time had come for Sardana to go on his own, even if it meant giving up a lucrative salary and the comfort of a full-time job at WPP.



“Working with Manish was always magical, a journey into the future,” remembers Serah Katusya of that time, when she was the Managing Director at Mediacom, a sister agency at WPP-Scangroup; she is now the CEO of Belva and founder of WildMango.&nbsp;“He challenged and inspired with the same energy. He paved the way for many of us into tech, into thinking and building business solutions.&nbsp;He was definitely an agency leader decades ahead of his time.”



By the time he left WPP, Sardana had enough confidence in his abilities to build and scale real businesses. He wanted to build something in a very different space, specifically, in education.



“I think that was a very big inflection point in my life… that I was wasting all my knowledge, talent and experience building things for big companies, and I wanted to solve real problems on the ground. So that kind of gave me an exceptional amount of clarity… seeing the lives of ordinary Kenyans, doing fascinating things with very little resources and transforming their lives became a real thing.”



‘A cradle for young students’



Sardana’s research showed that there were government subsidies and funding for primary education but there was not a lot of momentum in higher education.



“The higher education infrastructure in sub-Saharan Africa is extremely weak. The problem is that in most schools, the career counselor is essentially a teacher with the least amount of workload…. This entire industry is run by agents who don&#8217;t understand career counseling; they essentially push students to universities, and make money.”



According to Craydel, more than 16 million African students spend $30 billion on higher education each year.



As a continent with the youngest population in the world, Africa presents tremendous opportunities in this regard, and Sardana was quick.



“We wanted to build a cradle for young students in Africa, for them to get all the nourishment in terms of the right advice, the career counseling, the psychometric assessment, and the right technology to get them off on their own feet.”



Whilst they were setting up the company, and during the pandemic, Sardana met Premji, the third co-founder, who is now Craydel’s CFO.



“Shayne is Canadian, but like me, stayed in Africa for 10 years. We stayed on the same street in Kenya but never knew each other. During the pandemic, he was changing houses, and walked into our apartment building. That&#8217;s how we met. He had a lot of experience in investment banking, and was doing extremely well in his career…



He is also impact-driven, so said he wanted to quit his job and join us full-time… he was extremely instrumental in raising our first round of a million dollars,” says Sardana.



For now, the trio is looking forward to what lies ahead. Their “vision and impact story” is shaping up.



“We&#8217;re in a good space now, and really excited about building this journey,” concludes Sardana, as he sets off to launch the company’s brand-new office, surely, one of many more to come.

Craydel co-founders John Nguru, Manish Sardana and Shayne Aman Premji; image supplied

‘We Can Build A Real Unicorn Out Of Africa, Creating Impact’: Kenya Co-Founder On Building An Edtech Startup 

Isaac Oladipupo, the CEO of Afrilearn, co-founded the edtech startup with Gabriel Olatunji-Legend in 2019 with a bold vision: to provide affordable, world-class education for Africans anywhere.



For millions of children and young people in Africa, access to quality education is often limited by factors such as poverty, conflict, distance, and lack of infrastructure. To address this challenge, Afrilearn CEO, Isaac Oladipupo and co-founder Gabriel Olatunji-Legend drew inspiration from their own experiences to create something innovative.



According to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), 98 million children in sub-Saharan Africa are out of school, and many more are enrolled in schools that fail to provide them with the skills and knowledge they need to succeed in life.



Revolutionizing education in Africa with a gamified learn-and-earn feature, Afrilearn provides curriculum-relevant class notes, exam practice, animated video lessons, and a personalized learning dashboard that enable elementary and high school students (ages 6-18) to study easily and “achieve exam success in a single sitting”.



The inspiration behind Afrilearn came from the founders’ personal experiences of the educational challenges faced by students in Nigeria and across Africa.



“Imagine a world where every child, no matter their background or location, has full access to quality education and the tools to prepare them for lifelong success. That vision is what inspired the birth of Afrilearn,” Oladipupo tells FORBES AFRICA.



“When my exceptional co-founder Gabriel Olatunji-Legend and I struck out to build Afrilearn in 2019, we observed that for most young Africans, quality education is largely unaffordable, inaccessible and boring. Having personally witnessed the severe educational challenges faced by students in Nigeria and across Africa, resulting in high level of illiteracy, poor school grades, and failed dreams – we recognized the need for an urgent solution. We realized that technology offered the best opportunity to solve this challenge for generations to come, and Afrilearn was created to bridge this gap,&#8221; says Oladipupo.



One of the unique features of Afrilearn is that it offers both free and subscription-based accounts for its users. This means that students can access most of the platform’s content without paying anything.



However, if they want to enjoy exclusive benefits such as downloadable class notes, instant homework help with detailed explanations, coding lessons, live classes, personalized learning plans and much more, they can opt for a paid subscription.



“Our commitment to inclusivity led us to introduce free accounts, ensuring that no child is left behind due to financial constraints. Today, Afrilearn is widely renowned as the free, fun and effective app for the best school grades, uniting learners from top private schools, public schools, underserved communities, and even homeschoolers. We have evolved into a driving force for educational equity, turning learning into a joyful journey and transforming lives one lesson at a time.



“Revenue generated from subscriptions helps us continuously improve and expand our offerings, ensuring that Afrilearn remains a sustainable and impactful platform,” says Oladipupo.



Support from notable organizations, including United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), the African Union (AU) and the Kingdom of the Netherlands, has enabled Afrilearn to further develop its content library, ensuring that it aligns with the national curricula and meets the highest educational standards globally.



“It has facilitated partnerships with schools and non-governmental organizations (NGOs), enabling us to reach even more students in need,” says Oladipupo.



He adds: “Beyond financial assistance, the backing of these organizations has also bolstered our credibility and reputation, attracting more educators and experts to collaborate with us. This network effect has elevated Afrilearn’s influence in the education sector, amplifying our mission to provide free, world-class education for Africans, anywhere.”



However, more support is needed to introduce more advanced courses and specialized subjects to cater to the diverse interests and career aspirations of students globally.



Oladipupo envisions the platform’s role in shaping the future of learning: “Every child deserves the opportunity to experience Afrilearn and our ultimate goal is to serve the world. We will continue to expand our content library, covering a broader range of subjects and topics.



“To this end, we are actively seeking collaborations and partnerships with educational institutions, governments, and organizations. Through strategic alliances, we aim to reach more students and expand our impact on the education sector. We envision a future where access to quality education is no longer a privilege but a fundamental right for every child.”



Oladipupo recalls with fond memories, some success stories of users, including students, teachers and parents: “I remember Adeola, who cleared her West African Senior School Certificate Examination (WASSCE) in one sitting and is now pursuing her dream of becoming a software developer. A teacher, Abdullahi, shared with us how he experienced improved classroom engagement and student performance after using Afrilearn’s resources. The Osagie family, homeschooling their children, consider our platform a valuable educational partner tailored to each child’s learning needs,” he says.



“The joy and transformation we witness in the lives of students, teachers, and parents motivate us to push the boundaries of educational innovation further. Afrilearn’s impact extends beyond the classroom, empowering individuals to realize their full potential and become agents of positive change in their communities.”

Isaac Oladipupo; image credit Afrilearn 1

Beyond The Classroom: Nigerian Edtech Entrepreneur’s Aim ‘To Serve The World’

BY RIDHIMA SHUKLA



Yussouf Ntwali’s edtech company has grown from idea to impact, changing the recruitment landscape in Rwanda.



IN THE BEATING HEART of the impeccably-green city of Kigali, in one of the most sought-after commercial zones, past a small gate and a garden is a shared space for home-grown Rwandan startups.



Entering the first building, a double- storied structure marked BAG, a white board reads ‘Training, Problem Solving, IoT and Education’.



Inside, there are more white boards in the middle of a large room, which looks like a cross between a classroom and a workplace, buzzing with youthful energy and the start of something bright and new.



Across the foyer is the office of Yussouf Ntwali, the 21-year-old CEO of BAG Innovation, an edtech company into innovation and social impact, one of Rwanda’s most popular tech companies today.



Since its inception, the company has grown from an idea to a real impact firm. Ntwali, who started out as a curious 17-year-old volunteer, climbed the ranks to becoming the Chief Operations Officer (COO) and now the CEO.



With no university degree or background in technology, Ntwali’s badge is his unwavering enthusiasm and unapologetic approach to learning on the job, which he reiterates during our interview.



Now resident in Rwanda, he spent his early years in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, born to a Rwandan father and a Congolese mother.



After spending his formative years in 



Lubumbashi with his parents and three siblings, Ntwali moved back to Rwanda in 2007. Accustomed to the Congolese school curriculum, he was bilingual and spoke Swahili and French. To his surprise, Rwanda favored English.



“I spent the first few years in Rwanda without studying Kinyarwanda or English. But, around the age of 10, I began to pick it up.”



An extrovert brimming with confidence and with a penchant for conversation, Ntwali picked up the two languages quickly.



“I always like the challenge of learning new things, even as a child, I pursued everything with the same passion,” he says.



Apart from his professional zeal, he loved rap music, and for a while, even thought he was going to become the next Jay-Z. Ntwali spent a few years focused on music and was selected for a national competition in Rwanda.



But when it came to academics, he couldn’t be tied down to the conventional.



After high school, he instead opted to attend workshops and training sessions in business management and entrepreneurship.



Instead of going to university like most of his classmates, Ntwali made music, also working as an assistant manager at his father’s chain of barber shops. This is where he first faced the day-to-day challenges of running a business and realized the gaps in his own skill- sets as well as in others.



After months on the job, thanks to his brother – another entrepreneur in the family – he was motivated to attend an entrepreneurship event in Kigali unaware of the several early stage creative startups he was about to encounter.



Ntwali was 17 when he met the founder of BAG Innovation, Gabriel Ekman.



“He spoke about the lack of skilled youth in Rwanda and the gaps in training. How most students had degrees but did not know how to use them. Employers had employees that did not perform and I thought ‘yes! I have seen this’!”



Intrigued and excited by the social impact model illustrated by Ekman, Ntwali approached him to find out more and the two instantly connected on their shared energy and desire to solve problems.



Ntwali joined Ekman in his tiny workspace with a laptop and began to work on improving the recruitment, training and selection ecosystem of Rwanda.



Making use of simple tools like Facebook and interpersonal skills, the two would approach small companies in the country to learn about their challenges. After acquiring a fair understanding of the challenge, the two would brainstorm on solutions, but not alone.



“If a coffee shop told us they struggled with pushing higher sales, we would advertise to students on Facebook to solve the problem for the shop, to sell more coffee.”



Once they had worked out the solutions together, the group would offer them to the coffee shop. This was a social impact exercise that built the foundation of BAG Innovation.



After a few successful attempts, the two began training the students with the best solutions and preparing them for various job scenarios. By connecting the students with the shops/companies, they would not only offer solutions but a pipeline of potential employees.



This led to companies coming forth and asking to employ the students trained and acquired by BAG Innovation.



“When we noticed that our services were gaining demand, we sat down to chart a monetize-able model for our business.”



Ntwali joined the company in 2018, by which time, the company had reeled in many contracts and was able to pay off bills and expand operations.



When asked what differentiates them from a HR firm, he says: “We complement each other. We are not looking for the right candidate for you; we are creating the right candidate for a job. We are working with the same social impact model but one that is scalable, sustainable and profitable.”



Even though BAG Innovation makes its money from companies that hire talent through them on a per-person basis, its blended model of offline and online interactions for tackling specific challenges within a firm and the ability to offer a range of employee portfolios to choose from is their differentiator, they say.



“Those who do not perform in our trainings, we offer them further programs to learn from and improve while keeping them out of our talent pool, until they match the required standard.”



Ntwali’s ability to pitch his company’s unique model, ideas and potential to others has won him a few cash grants.



From the African Union startup challenge to the Hanga Pitchfest, he is now a name in the startup community.



“We have used the money from these competitions and grants to scale up operations and improve our marketing and sales team.”



As the non-technical founders of a tech company, a lot of BAG Innovation’s funds have gone towards outsourcing their IT services.



Just last year, they hired an engineer to lead tech and a full marketing-sales team to support the founders in bringing more clients.



“I always function like a COO – I like to work closely with the team and know everything that happens in the company, that’s how I learned and grew.”



Ntwali has a spring in his step as he walks around the office, saying hello to his colleagues and stepping out the main door to stop and stand next to the sign, Bag, beaming with pride.



As a 21-year-old business head, he has enough reason to smile.

Tag: EdTech

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