My edtech startup shot for success. Here’s how it went.

I’m a first-generation entrepreneur.

Illustration by Tech in Asia’s Kathrinna Rakhmavika.

My family has no VC or startup or experience. I had some tough times wading through this new, complex maze.

My challenge was compounded by what I had read and heard: namely, that achieving success as a startup in the field of education technology (edtech) will be extremely difficult and painstaking. I agree that few startups in this field have achieved phenomenal success, but that doesn’t mean there can’t be billion-dollar unicorns in the near future.

Personally, I’ve always had a positive outlook towards life. Challenges and hurdles tend to bring the best out of me; in fact, I find life monotonous without any victories to be conquered. I thought that the opportunity is huge and vacant. Definitely worth a shot! What’s the worst that could happen? I lose hard-earned money, give up a few years of professional corporate growth, and face bouts of depression. I made up my mind (formed a partnership with my God) and ventured into edtech to start up.

The journey so far…

…has been absolutely phenomenal. I could never imagine that 60 minutes of my life could contain so many ups and downs. For starters, I decided to develop a service offering which solves a real-life problem through technology – rather than create a product first and then try to fit it into an artificial problem (this has been happening a lot these days).

I got down to conducting extensive market research: I contacted parents and students in my network. I also spoke to a number of teachers and tutors to understand their technology requirements. Then, I used a drawing product to design an offering not available in the country, and as per my research on the  Play Store, possibly not even across the world.

After a series of deliberations and brainstorming sessions with my co-founders, we developed WONK: India’s first tutor discovery and tuition booking app. Significant time had to be spent on technology and testing, as it was the first of its kind to be developed. The biggest challenge – now probably our biggest intellectual property – was to permit a user to book multiple classes over the course of the year so as to study the full course. Booking a one-off session is easy, but trying to slot 100 classes is tricky. We did our best to make the app as user-friendly as possible and enabled a tuition booking within three clicks.

Photo credit: Brad Flickinger/Flickr.

The app was launched earlier this year and recorded its first 1,000 downloads within the first two weeks – all with a low marketing budget. We’ve received good reviews on the Play Store; at the time of filing this article, our rating was about 4.6. Initially, being a startup, we took some time to build trust in our target market. The quality of tutors available on our application, convenience of booking, cost savings, and many other factors were the clear best-sellers attracting our users.

Then, to our joy, we received our first tutor booking. More trickled in over the course of the next few days – and then many, many more. We’re now a family of over 15,000, consisting of over 9,000 tutors from Delhi and Mumbai (the rest are students and parents.) On average, we’re growing at over 40 percent month-on-month – with negligible marketing efforts. The start has been exciting, the journey rollicking, and god willing, the success should be fulfilling. I am confident that, with the support of our community, India will soon have a huge edtech success story.

This was first published on LinkedIn.