Zucate is a cloud based interactive education technology platform in the K-12 segment. It was founded by Moitreyee Goswami & Roli Panday. It provides visual learnovation for building nascent concepts with an enhanced support from a network of school teachers for doubt clearing. It customizes the concepts based on the learning curve of the child which we derive from our strong analytical platform. Zucate intends to provide multilingual support for all subjects in the K-12 segment.
The brand is binding various stakeholders of the Education Ecosystem. The approach is more on holistic learning and hence Zucate has platforms for all the subjects and is trying to devise the content in various formats like concepts notes, mind maps, tests& exams in various formats, revision guides and so on and so forth for that little extra learning help.
Moitreyee shares about her company in a candid conversation with Shubhangini Aggarwal, BWDisrupt.The beginning Being a medical professional, entrepreneurship is something that got embedded early in my mind. I always had the passion to start something of my own in life. I guess I didn’t have the desired skills and courage, then, to build anything. With a good amount of experience coupled with my management background, I feel this is the right time to start my own venture in the education sector. Education is something that is close to my heart and that is where I think I have the potential to reach the masses as well as excel.
FoundersI’m more inclined towards the business aspect and hence I guess I’m the Business Founder. My role has been more into Market Research, Corporate Development, Liaison with Stakeholders, Strategic & Promotional Planning, Web-Development and Content Writing & Blogging.
Roli Pandey is the technical brain of Zucate and hence we have designated her as the Technical Founder. Her role as a technical founder includes Business Development, Technology Development, Social Media Marketing and Financial Management.
FeaturesZucate is a Nasscom 10000 Startup and a Microsoft Bizspark plus Startup. We are a women only founding team with 3 year plus experience in the education sector working towards the aim of fundamentalizing learning for all.
Our interactive visual content in multilingual format with a focus on primary & secondary education (K-12) is optimally priced to cater to the needs of one and all. Also, we are building a nexus of school teachers as they understand school students’ requirements better than anyone else.
ChallengesChallenges are a dime a dozen when you have a startup.The task in hand is very big and the way we have thought of devising a solution to the pertinent problem of learning and accessibility facing the education sector is daunting. The biggest challenge for us is to manage the workload. It would have been a lot easier, had we been able to put together a team but then resources are limited for entrepreneurs. There are days which are very difficult given the effort that needs to be put in 24/7. It takes guts and a huge amount of discipline to say “no” to everything that comes up, but because you’re resource-constrained it’s necessary for survival.
The differentiation factorAlthough we are going by the subscription model to start with, our subscription starts at very minimal amount of 100/- to 150/- INR. It is like recharging your account and then pay very meagre amount for each service offering. This makes it feasible to start the trial of our services at very low cost. We have planned to offer pay as you go in our offerings. The customers pay for the services they opt for and they necessarily do not have to buy packages and services that they don’t want. We have not packaged our services as per our convenience. Let the buyer decide what they want and package it as per their will.
Clientele and Expansion plansThe primary and secondary schools students are our primary customers. Apart from that even teachers and tutors availing our services is a small but not an ignorable chunk of our customers.
We have a few milestones in mind that we would like to accomplish in the next 5 years.
1. Pan India Outreach: Pan India outreach in the first 5 years is quite an important milestone that needs to be achieved. This will ensure penetration of educational roots in the rural parts of India. Students in rural parts constitute almost 85% of the student population in India. Honing raw untapped talent in rural India is very important. This way the footprint of social impact through education can be etched without geographical and economic constraints.
2. Government Collaboration: Another milestone that we through Zucate would really like to achieve is to be a part of National Digital Literacy Mission (NDLM). We would like to associate ourselves to be grass rooters in imparting primary and secondary school education through digital medium. We through our approach of taking primary and secondary education beyond conventional teaching would serve the dual purpose of school and IT education at the same time.
3. Reaching beyond Indian Geographical Boundaries: Since learning and ICT knows no bounds, our wish in the first 5 years is to definitely reach beyond Indian geographical boundaries. We would like to onboard international teachers as well. This ensures a very rich educational experience for all our users.
Marketing PlansMarketing is what defines the path of a startup’s journey. A good detailed and thorough plan must be in place beforehand. A startup can never stop building its audience. The audience needs to be built around very good user experience. Our basic plan lies around 3 principles of ATTRACT, ENGAGE AND CONVERT. We have devised our marketing plan on this simple mantra. Our customers are going to be a part of our story and hence our marketing plan revolves around simplicity in creativity.
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This is Meghna Shukla. She lives in Delhi. She is an engineering graduate and currently pursuing MBA from Jaypee Business School. She has a work experience of 2 years in content development. She loves to read and write.
