Edkasa started with YouTube videos for matric students and built an exam prep app around them
The Lahore edtech was founded in 2017, raised $320,000 in April 2021 and sells monthly subscriptions as a digital alternative to private tuition.
Edkasa's website lists two prices for its exam prep app. One subject costs Rs899 a month. The Exam Package, which covers four subjects, costs Rs3,599 a month. Four single subjects at Rs899 come to Rs3,596, so the package costs Rs3 more than buying the subjects separately. There is no bundle discount, and the price list is the clearest view available of how this Lahore startup expects students to buy.
Edkasa sells to students in grades 9 to 12 who are preparing for board exams. Its site lists five subjects, Physics, Chemistry, Biology, Maths and English, and says it holds more than 4,500 video lectures and more than 15,000 quiz and multiple choice questions based on past papers. Most public information about the company dates from April 2021, when it announced a $320,000 pre seed round, and the figures below carry that date. The website carries a 2020 to 2021 copyright line, and the company has not published a current student count.
From YouTube to an app
Annum Sadiq and Fahad Tanveer founded Edkasa in 2017, after noticing that about half of Pakistani high school students do badly in standardised tests. Sadiq, who leads education delivery, is a graduate of the Lahore University of Management Sciences and a Fulbright scholar. Tanveer, the chief executive, studied at the same university and at Harvard. Muneeb Ali, who also runs OneByte, a firm that helps startups build products, is the chief technology officer.
Before building an app, the team tested simpler products, including a YouTube channel, and also published on Facebook. The founders said those platforms gave them little control over the student experience and that social media was not scalable. The app is their answer to that. Before the equity round they had received grants from D Prize, USAID and Spring Accelerator, and they had been through the i2i Accelerator, which is run by the investor that later led the round.
“Education is the biggest bridge between the world that we have, and the world that we want.”
What the app contains
The Android app is on Google Play and covers all twenty boards of intermediate and secondary education. Most videos are in Urdu. A new student takes an opening quiz, which sets a study path by exam, subject or board. Leaderboards, which show how a student ranks against peers, were planned. Signing up is free, many videos and quizzes are free, and a monthly subscription pays for the rest.
Edkasa positions the app as a digital alternative to private tuition and to traditional academies, at a lower cost, with smaller towns and villages in mind. The company has not published what those academies charge, so the saving cannot be checked.
Reading the price list
The magazine's reading is that the four subject package follows the way Pakistani science students study. A pre medical student takes Physics, Chemistry, Biology and English, and a pre engineering student takes Physics, Chemistry, Maths and English, so four subjects cover a whole course. A student who needed all five listed subjects would pay Rs4,495 on single plans, which is Rs896 more than the package. For the usual four subject student, though, the package is a convenience and not a saving.
The sums for revenue are simple. Each 1,000 subscribers on the Rs3,599 package bring in Rs3.6 million a month, before app store fees, teacher pay and marketing. The same 1,000 subscribers on single subject plans bring in Rs899,000.
Two features of the model follow from the price list. First, a monthly price suits a product that students need before an annual exam, so the magazine would expect subscriptions to bunch in the months ahead of the board papers and lapse afterwards. Second, the free tier means the 55,000 students are a measure of reach and not of customers. The company has not said how many of them pay, and that conversion rate is the number that decides whether the model works.
The numbers the company gave
At the time of the round, Edkasa reported 55,000 students and work with more than 40 schools. For 2020 it reported 1.3 million hours of video viewing and more than 250,000 queries answered by its teachers. These are measures of use, not of income, and no revenue figure was given. The company said it ran a profitable business, a claim that has not been independently verified.
The $320,000 round
The pre seed round was led by i2i Ventures of Islamabad, with Walled City Co, Zayn Capital and strategic angel investors in Southeast Asia taking part. It had closed some months before the announcement. The money was for launching the app and building the team, and the founders expected to raise again within 8 to 12 months, in a round about ten times larger.
Kalsoom Lakhani, cofounder and general partner at i2i Ventures, said the firm had known the founders since Edkasa was part of its accelerator and was bullish on edtech in Pakistan, especially exam preparation.
The founders put the problem at more than 14 million secondary and higher secondary students who lack access to quality education. They named Out Class, a website that sells courses individually or in bundles, as a competitor, and said Edkasa differs through its app and its narrower focus. They also pointed to India, where high school exam prep has produced several unicorns, and said Pakistan's market is at least one fifth the size with fewer apps.
What is not known
Edkasa's pricing today may differ from what the website lists, and its current number of paying students is not public. The sources reviewed show no seed or later round since April 2021. The founders' own timetable put the larger raise at 8 to 12 months after the announcement, which meant by April 2022.
