How a former Googler is targeting one million Gulf users with learning app

Scoodle targets global students seeking tutorage across a broad spectrum of subjects, from Arabic to music and maths.

The UK-based start-up, which wants to help tutors become ‘influencers’, disclosed $760,000 in pre-seed funding in January this year. Twitter co-founder Biz Stone backed the round, alongside Tiny VC, IFG Ventures and a number of unnamed angels.

According to Scoodle’s CEO, Ismail Jeilani, the global coronavirus pandemic doubled the site’s metrics overnight. Activity on the online education platform site grew from 15,000 users in March to 30,000 users in April, he said.

“Around 7,000 students across the UAE and Saudi Arabia have used Scoodle’s educators and learning materials over 50,000 times in the region to date,” he told Arabian Business.

“By the end of 2021, we expect to have helped between eight to 12 million students globally.”

The Scoodle CEO said he expects an uptick in UAE and Saudi Arabia-based educators in the coming year, with at least 20 percent of the region’s one million learners benefitting directly from regional instructors.

Launched in late 2018, Scoodle lets students post questions, which tutors are then invited to answer to help boost their reputation and influence. Tutors also can create a profile, share learning resources and take tutor bookings.

The start-up is currently subscription-model based: tutors pay £10 per month for boosted listings. There is also a subscription option where students can ask questions directly to tutors for a more on-demand service.

London-based Jeilani, who previously worked at Google, predicted there would be a growing demand for international education as physical learning becomes more inaccessible due to the constraints of Covid-19. “This will include university entry exam prep, as well as core curriculum learning,” he said.

He said online education is one of the few industry areas where the global pandemic has accelerated business.

“So much learning is going online now that virtual education has become normalised,” Jeilani said. “As a result, we have ended out pushing feature sets much earlier.”

The entrepreneur said he is launching the concept of allowing educators to create their own brands on Google. Scoodle will offer services to help tutors market their online education videos and support them with a new $100,000 royalties fund, which will pay out to tutors per view.

“Now instructors can create video courses. We want to teachers to have millions of students following them – one-to-one teaching is great but you’re limited by the number of hours you are willing to teach,” he said.

“Now an instructor can be based anywhere and create a ten-part video course and earn an income any time a student subscribes to it.”

It was nearly 20 years ago but I can vividly remember my biology teacher, Mrs Andrew, dancing around the lab waving her hands about explaining photosynthesis.

We've introduced Video Tutoring so great lessons and teachers are not forgotten. https://t.co/DApbrhfNMA

— Scoodle (@ScoodleApp) December 3, 2020

Jeilani said the firm would pay tutors “royalties” in a similar fashion to music-streaming services like Spotify.

“The supplementary fund will help boost our content as we grow and allow us to amass more and more. The more courses the tutors create, the more they are able to earn,” he said.

“We have always been centred around how can we give distribution to educators and how can we educate millions of students around the world.”

Jeilani said the new business model would allow Scoodle to work directly with consumers rather than with schools.

“More and more people are comfortable paying for content subscriptions. There are billions of learners around the world and the best way to reach them is get amazing content from the best instructors around the world. The best instructors aren’t always the ones that are the most known,” he said.

“Initially we were focused on one-on-one teaching but Covid-19 has accelerated the trend towards online education,” said Jeilani.

The CEO said the trend towards online education is one of the most powerful cultural shifts to arise from the global pandemic.

“Parents have accepted that the best learning experience doesn’t necessarily have to be in person… this has allowed us to fasttrack our ambitions. Ten years of development in this space have taken place in the last eight months.”

Given the potential for online education growth in the Middle East, Jeilani plans to open an overseas office in Dubai in 2021 once the pandemic has subsided.