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Everyday, thousands of students in Singapore trot off to remedial classes on a mission to boost their grades. As a result, the tuition industry – as it’s called in the country – is worth US$810 million.
That’s how much parents shell out to tutors and tuition centers around the island, just so their kids can get into branded schools – or at least keep up with their peers.
The paper chase has benefitted tutors. In fact, many public school teachers – well-paid to begin with – moonlight as tutors to earn extra income. Some even leave the classroom to conduct tuition full-time, due to the better money and saner working hours.
Yet despite the buzz, the way tutors seek customers hasn’t changed. They rely on word-of-mouth, Google Ads, and billboard advertising to promote their services. Tutors also engage agents who charge commissions for referrals.
Entrepreneur Lai Weichang thinks there’s a better way. He’s started ManyTutors, an online marketplace for finding and joining group tuition classes nearby.
“We can tell you which of your neighbors are teaching tuition. You can just take a lift ‘downstairs’ to join a small group tuition every Sunday,” he says.
ManyTutors aims to make the industry more efficient. It helps tutors with marketing by exposing their services to a sizable audience – the site currently gets between 350,000 to 600,000 pageviews a month.
Weichang claims the site lowers the tutor’s customer acquisition costs. A google ad for tutoring services in Singapore costs about US$3.70 per click. It’s lower than loans and insurance for sure, but then again, what tutors can earn from each click is much less too.
For private tutors, listing classes on ManyTutors is free, though tuition centers have to pay. The site collects a fee from tutors for each student referral, which is half of what tutors charge students in the first month (that’s the standard rate in the industry).
ManyTutors also wants to help tutors make more money. They can start group classes on the website, and the whole point here is that they’ll be able to make more money than if they teach students one-to-one, which many tutors now do.
On the flipside, parents pay less by signing up their kids for group classes, though they get less individualized attention.
He knows his shit
Bigger plans
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