Nearpeer says it has 3 million enrolments, but not how many were paid
The Lahore exam preparation company has grown from a student lecture library to a platform it says counts 442,466 active students. Half its enrolments sit in two exam categories, and its revenue is unpublished.
Nearpeer, a Lahore exam preparation platform, says on its website that students have enrolled 3,065,297 times, and that 442,466 of them are active. Those are large numbers for a Pakistani edtech company. The same site prices courses from Rs2,000 to Rs70,000, and the company has not said how many enrolments were paid. That gap between an enrolment and a customer is the central question about Nearpeer, and its own figures let a reader measure how wide it could be.
Two graduates and a library of student lectures
Nearpeer was started by Ammar Ali Ayub, now chief executive, and Shahrukh Swati, now chief operating officer, who both graduated from LUMS in 2016. Umair Latif is listed as the third cofounder and chief technology officer. A February 2017 report puts the founding in November 2015, and the company's own timeline says the founders joined the LUMS Center for Entrepreneurship incubator and launched a first working product in August 2016. The idea was an online lecture library in which students who had mastered a course taught it, in place of professional teachers. By February 2017 the company counted about 22 jobs for such young lecturers.
The 2017 figures are the clearest early numbers the company has given. It offered 55 courses, with almost 100 more planned. It had about 2,500 paying customers and about 6,200 online users. Its CA Final crash course sold 200 seats at Rs5,000 each, which is Rs1 million from one cohort. That month it placed in the Momentum 2017 startup competition and took a six figure dollar investment from Ali Aziz, the founder of Shopistan. The amount was not disclosed.
A new exam every year
The company's timeline shows the pattern of growth: a new exam category roughly once a year, delivered in the same lecture format. SAT preparation came in January 2017, entry tests in March 2018, CSS civil service exam preparation in October 2018, ACCA in June 2020, and FSc and O and A Level courses in March 2021. The company reports more than 12,000 entry test enrolments in the first year and more than 20,000 in the first FSc and O and A Level cohort. Students pay for each course, a model a September 2021 industry report described as pay as you go at a discount to the market. The site now accepts Easypaisa, JazzCash, cards and bank transfers, and offers a buy now pay later option. The launch figures can be set against today's table. The 12,000 entry test enrolments in the first year are 18 percent of the 66,567 the site now lists for that category. The 20,000 in the first FSc and O and A Level cohort are 3.5 percent of the 572,759 now listed for FSc, Matric and O and A Level combined (540,022 plus 32,737). If those company figures are comparable, volume per category has grown several fold since launch, which fits a platform that adds courses each year.
Where the enrolments sit
The magazine's own analysis starts with the homepage, which breaks enrolments down by category. The nine course categories it lists add up to 2,514,536 enrolments, 82 percent of the 3,065,297 total. The remaining 550,761 are not accounted for on the page, so the headline number includes something the category table does not show.
Two categories dominate. CSS and PMS civil service preparation has 1,013,031 enrolments across 80 courses, and MDCAT medical entry test preparation has 611,776 across 25. Together they are 1,624,807, or 53 percent of all enrolments. The MDCAT figure works out at about 24,500 enrolments for each course, against about 12,700 for CSS and PMS, 5,300 for FSc and Matric (540,022 across 101 courses) and 4,100 for CA (233,390 across 57). A business whose volume depends on one or two exams is exposed to those exams. A change in the MDCAT format, or in how many seats medical colleges offer, would reach a fifth of its enrolments, because MDCAT is 20 percent of the total.
The overall ratios are simple. The homepage figures give 6.9 enrolments for each active student (3,065,297 divided by 442,466) and about 6,170 enrolments for each of the 497 courses. Neither says anything about revenue, because the company does not say how many enrolments were paid or at what price. A sensitivity calculation shows the size of the unknown. One percent of the enrolments is 30,653. If those had each paid Rs2,000, the bottom of the range in the company's own FAQ, revenue would be Rs61 million. At Rs15,000, the top of that range, it would be Rs460 million. The spread is 7.5 times, and nothing public gives a basis for choosing a paid share. Course prices on the same site run as high as Rs70,000.
The money raised
Nearpeer's timeline records a $500,000 pre seed round in June 2021. In September 2022 the venture firm SOSV named Nearpeer in the first cohort of its Orbit Startups programme, ten companies that each received initial funding of about $180,000. The company has not published a breakdown of what it raised from whom.
A comparison sizes the claims. Tracxn estimates that Pakistan's 42 funded edtech companies have together raised $7.58 million. If both the $500,000 and the $180,000 are counted, Nearpeer's $680,000 would be 9 percent of that total. Maqsad, the best funded, has raised $4.9 million, about seven times as much. These are tracker estimates and not audited figures, but they place Nearpeer as a modestly funded company with an unusually large claimed reach.
From students to the state
In January 2022 Nearpeer announced on its own blog a partnership with the Federal Board of Education to digitise learning for more than 500,000 students and instructors. The post says the work supports the board's new exam model, which is based on student learning outcomes, and that Nearpeer is free for all students taking part in the system. It quotes Ayub on why the company chose that route.
“It doesn't make sense that the parents spend fees on schools in the morning and on academies in the evening.”
The post does not say who pays Nearpeer for a service that students receive free. A free offer to students suggests a state or donor payer, or a funnel into paid courses. The two models behave differently. A consumer course business earns when a student pays Rs2,000 or more, and its risk is volume. A contract business earns when an official signs, with slower cash and a single large buyer, and its risk is that buyer.
What has not been shown
The company says its team has grown from two people to more than 200. For a business with 442,466 active students, that is about 2,200 students for each staff member.
Students who cannot afford a full academy fee gain most from a course priced from Rs2,000, and graduates who earn as lecturers gain a first job. The exposed party is any investor reading the headline enrolment figure as customers. The homepage read 3,065,297 enrolments on 7 November, and a later reading against that date will show how fast the counter moves and, with a published paid share, what it is worth.
