Create Jira Ticket
This idea cannot be sent to Jira.
ANEPEN
Learn and share skills with people instantly
The Problem
Freedom is important concern for learners looking for learning online. Education Institutions give learners limited learning contents and disconnect them from the outside world. No easy ways exist to learn from distance or become a trainer.
The world is full of people, and there are others born everyday. They all need education to succeed and live better life. But the education providers out there, are less accessible, expensive and outnumbered. People are less connected and limited to education opportunities. Yet, we all believe that education is the key to success and better life. We are all seeking for financial success, to connect and share our success stories. But the available e-learning platforms are so much decentralized, forcing people to be logon many platforms for the same purpose at the same time.
Our Solution
With our platform users will be able to share all their digital learning contents instantly and save money when learning, make money when training and build connection when collaborating.
E-learning is now a game changing! Those with the best e-learning contents can tell you how they succeed. Since education solve big human problems and overcome the most difficult life obstacles, social learning defeat apathy by exciting people’s most useful time and interaction by grabbing users’ attention.
Our Mission
To make education more accessible, shareable and profitable.
Our Vision
To become the best social-learning platform that raises people’s educational and financial standards.
Product Overview
Using our search engine, users can search for learning series using filters like type, category, level, location, and price, or specific types of series like academics and business. Before publishing contents, users create their personal accounts, series centers and provide payout information. Learners require user accounts before purchasing or adding contents to their library. Trainers provide prices and other details for their published series, including series target audience, type, category, level, and benefits to series takers. Learners can chat with trainers or other learners through a secure messaging system and they can host a discussion or online collaboration about the series. Trainers can publish videos, audios and documents just from one single center, so neither trainers nor learners need to be on multiple platforms ever again.
In addition to learning, Anepen provides the following services:
1. Experiences. Learners may find their best local trainers, including education institutions, teachers, couches, and consultants by reviewing their training experience, contents and community reactions, such as number of subscribers, contents and learners’ interactions.
2. Training Job Marketplace. With Anepen, Education institutions that are looking to hire the best tutors for their institutions, will be able to publish their job vacancies in their centers for trainers to apply.
3. Learning Contents Production. Opportunities include Anepen to establish a referral program with local multimedia companies to help trainers produce high quality learning contents, including videos, audios as well as documents at affordable cost.
Our Target Market
We are B2B2C business model company that work with individuals and education institutions to share learning contents with learners. Thus, our main target market is Trainers. Our market demographics include teachers, lecturers, education institutions, consultants, motivation speakers, authors, couches and publishers, worldwide. We believe that great learning contents always deliver more knowledge, more skills and more financial growth.
Market Validation
We validate Anepen market by exploring the similar existing service providers who serve with different approaches. Udemy.com* is a global marketplace for learning and teaching online. They have 295 Million Course Enrollment. Slideshare.com** is a global marketplace for digital learning documents. They have 38 Million registered users. Audiobooks.com*** is a global marketplace for audio books. They had $2.1 Billion total revenue in 2017. All these records prove that the market for our platform is existing.
References:
*Source: https://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/LinkedIn_SlideShare
**Source: https://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Udemy
***Source: https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/audio-books/article/77303
Market Size
The increase in number of devices capable of supporting digital media along with increasing internet access speed, has provided consumers with an option to access the content of their choice be it education, information, entertainment or social activity instantly.
1. The E-learning Industry*
The global E-learning industry market size reached $107 Billion in 2015 and estimated to surpass $325 Billion by 2025 (Global research).
2. The Global MOOCs**
The global MOOCs market size reached $3.9+ Billion in 2018 and projected to be $20.8 Billion by 2023 CAGR of 40.1% (Global research).
3. Online Courses Enrollment***
Due to COVID-19 pandemic, 22+ Million students are taking online courses as alternative to their school shutdown in 2020 where still there is 24% of our total available market.
4. Our Trends and Promise
Over the past four months since the launch, we have 1000+ registered users, 500+ daily site visitors, 500+ series enrollment, 100+ created centers and 200+ published series. In next 5 years we expect to reach at least 1.5million local users and 3.5million global beneficiaries.
References:
*Source: https://www.elearningindustry.com/top-elearning-statistics-2019
**Source: https://www.marketsandmarkets.com/Market-Reports/massive-open-online-course-market
***Source: https://www.educationdata.org/online-education-statistics
Our Competitors
Our competitors are clearly segmented into four quadrants:
Affordable offline education service providers, eg. Government schools.
Expensive offline education service providers, eg. Private schools.
Expensive online education service providers, eg. Udemy.com and Slideshare.
And lastly, Affordable online education service providers. Here we present Anepen where trainers train online and let users to search and choose to pay only for content series they can afford.
Our Competitive Advantages
1. First to Market
We are the first digital learning platform that enables users to learn, collaborate and socialization online from one epicentre.
2. Easy to Use
Our search engine enables users to search contents by type, category, location and level, time efficiency. User connection is simplified.
3. Centers and Profiles
Users browse centers to enroll their series and browse other users’ profiles to share their learning interests and connections.
4. Completely Centralized
We support trainers share all types of learning contents including video, audio and document series versus only video courses on udemy, so that users don’t have to log on many platforms at a time anymore.
5. Design and Brand
Our memorable ANEPEN brand name and simple logo gain share of people's mind. People always go back to service they remember easily.
6. Trainer Incentive
People enjoy more to use a service that benefits them. Thus our users can make more money over slideshare.com and audiobooks.com.
What Makes Our Solution Innovative and Unique
We're developing unique platform’s algorithms and AI-based features like search engines, content recommendations and notifications that will be help to analyze, filter and suggest learning series for users depending on their personal details. We now have a website and Mobile App versions for Android devices and we are looking forward to developing the IOS, Huawei, Desktop, Mac and Linux OS versions of the product by mid 2021.
Our uniqueness comes out of the ability to enable users to:
- SAVE MONEY WHEN LEARNING
- MAKE MONEY WHEN TRAINING
- BUILD CONNECTION WHEN COLLABORATING
Our Business Modal:
Our business is simply defined as a commission-based model. We take a 35% commission on each transaction in addition to the following facts: We charge $25 average fee all content produced by our referrals where private multimedia companies partner with Anepen to produce high quality video and audio series. We also charge $15 average price per series sold on the platform where series owners get paid their share monthly after the accumulation. Our revenue demographics include commissions (50%), advertising (10%), organization partnerships (10%), data sale (5%), value added services (15%), grant and investment opportunities (10%) with $1.03 million dollars in revenue projected by 2022.
Define three specific objectives that you would like to achieve with your proposal.
Our objectives within the next 12 months:
1. Product and Technology. First to fully develop the product from MVP to Beta version to support all kind of contents including videos, audios, documents and texts and impact at least 12000 people not only Tanzania but globally.
2. Community Base. Second, to motivate and inspire individuals and education institutions to share at least 4 series monthly and reach at least 2340 series publication and 500 collaborations goal among learners and trainers on the platform.
3. Brand and Team. Lastly to build highly professional team of at least 10 members to cover all departments, from software, marketing and multimedia to build strong brand recognition in the market.
What problems (particularly in value chain competitiveness and global disruption) are your community’s stakeholders facing due to the Covid-19 pandemic?
Problems due to COVID-19
The COVID-19 has resulted in schools shutdown. Over 1.2 billion children (With 60+% being girls) have been out of the classroom. Education has changed dramatically with distinctive rise of various strategies kept to solve the negative outcomes. Disadvantaged groups highly at risky include adolescent girls who experience impacts like early pregnancies and marriage a the moment. Economic stress on families put children, and in particular girls, at greater risk of exploitation, child labour and gender-based violence. Youths, especially those from marginalized communities and with disabilities, are affected by the secondary impacts of the outbreak.
What minimum viable solution(s) are you proposing to address the challenge(s) in your community?
1. Research suggests that online learning has been shown to increase retention of information, and take less time, meaning the changes coronavirus have caused might be here to stay.
2. Even before COVID-19, there was already high growth and adoption in education technology, with global edtech investments reaching US$18.66 billion in 2019 and the overall market for online education projected to reach $325 Billion by 2025.
Source: https://www.educationdata.org/online-education-statistics
3. With this sudden shift from the classroom to digital, I suppose that Governments and community in fact, should consider the adoption of online learning as the alternative solution to keep school students safe.
Share your story (your narrative)
For over two years, I’ve been working on a digital solution that is attracting many people everyday. This is Anepen, a web platform where users can share digital learning contents and save money when learning, make money when training and build connection when collaborating.
But why did I create Anepen?
Back in 2014 when I graduated from high school, our family had a lot of financial problems. So I postponed joining college to help my family. I became a high school volunteer teacher in my country. I taught students Mathematics and inspired them about life. Now, to every school I went, I discovered 9 of 10 teachers complain about paycheck insufficiency and students complain about teachers insufficiency. It was out of their complains when an idea fused in my mind. To create a platform that will connect learners to learning contents and trainers to financial opportunities! So that is how Anepen was started.
So if you are a teacher, motivation speaker, author or education institution, you may signup or download Anepen app to share skills.
Please provide any additional relevant information that you would like to share.
Our objectives within the next 5 years:
In next 5 years, we want to equip at least 5million people at the best, equitable, quality - primary, secondary and college education with effective learning outcomes. Secondly, to ensure equal access for all women and men to affordable and quality technical, vocational and tertiary education as well as University. Thirdly, to raise number of young youths and adults with relevant technical and vocational skills, for employment, decent jobs and entrepreneurship. Also to ensure gender balance and equal access to education for people with disabilities and children in vulnerable situations and lastly to ensure that all youths and a substantial proportion of adults, both men and women, achieve literacy and numeracy.
Our challenges and barriers.
Our challenges in next one year include Partnership with other organizations as we plan to work with organizations to deliver and adopt our services to society easily. Secondly, Content delivery as we plan to work with individual trainers and education institutions to deliver more professional learning contents.
In next 5 years, our challenges will be Technical barriers like hacking, server failure when overloaded, creating and publishing harmful and dangerous contents due to increasing of traffic. Also, Security barriers: like Data theft, copyrights infringement, user privacy invading and people's information revealing among users and lastly, Service expansion barriers as we plan to scale globally using a referral model though some countries have complicated business policies.
Our barriers overcoming strategies.
We will overcome the Partnership with other organizations barriers by creating strong relationships and networks with other organizations and try to close deals faster and Content delivery barriers by hiring the highly professional staff to help direct and enhance the content production and publication.
For the Technical barriers, we will hire more professional and talented software engineers to work on the technical activities, the Security barriers by partnering with the most trusted organizations and create the user guidelines and terms of services and for the Service expansion barriers we will work with other countries service policies and regulate our user guidelines depending on the relevant countries.
Partners:
Our partners include Digital media platforms to help to extend knowledge about our solution and enhance our brand awareness . Secondly, Education institutions and organizations as the main targets required to publish education contents on Anepen. Thirdly, Online payment platforms to simplify the online transactions, Anepen must extend the payment opportunity to these opportunities. Financial organizations such as banks to help us in different manners including payment processes and funding opportunities. Social network companies to extend our online presence and reach more targeted customers, we shall need these platforms and lastly, Poverty fighting organizations to help us implement our mission successful.
Our Partnership Goals:
We are seeking for partnerships opportunities in order to boost our services expansion speed through shared marketing goals. Also to mentor and advise product development and strategic planning. To support marketing and communications that clearly distribute data. And to build connections to investors and mentors to progress their fundraising strategies.
Our Financial
We are looking for 12 months financing to reach out 2,340 series production and publication goal on Anepen. We have a $34,788 seed round calculated budget to cover costs, $12K+ initial funding raised over the past 12 months and $52K+ revenue projected in next 12 months. The funding raised will be used to:
1. Redesign, design and develop more new system features as the result of customer feedback.
2. Build and promote our brand in national and international levels to our potential customers, partners and investors.
3. Hire the best few more staff in the industry, measure metrics and learn from the feedback.
4. Build a strong brand recognition and expand the business operations all over the country and beyond the borders remotely.
Fundraising strategies and objectives:
Our fundraising strategies include Grants, the best option for most of start-ups to grow their companies until they start making money out of the business. Angel investors, the best people in industry with experience, finance and skills required to grow help a stratup succeed. And Venture capitalists, to be applied for growing and expanding the company’s operation boundaries.
The TEAM:
Our founders include the young enthusiastic youths with passion to change how education for women is admitted globally.
1. Lucas Damas: Business, Brand and Software Development
He is a Founder and CEO of Aneglobe Co. Ltd, IT and Software company since 2018. Co-Founder and CEO of Anepen with web development skills from University of Dar Es Salaam, and business management from TEF.
2. Joseph Japhet: User Interface and Graphics Designing
He holds a Diploma in ICT and Electrical Engineering from Dar Es Salaam Institute of Technology. He got experience in graphics deigning and designed the platform's user interface.
3. Straton Timotheo: Financing and Marketing:
He is a UDSM Bachelor graduate skilled in Education and Finance. He worked for NMB, CRDB, EQUITY and ACCESS Banks as a private equity firms financial manager for over 6 years.
4. William Damas: Multimedia Production and Investment
He’s skilled in Investment from Udemy, 2015 and Media production from Google online courses. Creates and takes over all the platform's digital contents including videos and audios.
5. Benjamin Fernandes: Advisor
Benjamin is a Co-Founder and CEO of NALA Money, a 2018 Y-Combinator funded mobile application that helps users perform and control their mobile transactions.
6. Isaya Yunge: Advisor
Isaya is a Co-Founder and CEO of SomaApp, a mobile application that connects users to international scholarships.
SITATION LINKS:
Link to Anepen website: https://www.anepen.com/home
Link to Anepen brand story:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WRFVA6D1tHM
Link to Anepen investor pitch:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZYOEvNu-iVM
Link to Anepen Facebook page: https://web.facebook.com/anepentanzania
Link to Anepen series: http://www.anepen.com/series/27
Link to Media interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9W7iu3MjPcc
Link to The Tony Elumelu grant funding: https://gallery.mailchimp.com/5f02da89231e2dd...Partners_1_.pdf
Link to Anepen presentation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HmCU4S1Cg6U
Your Final Proposal for challenge
yes
Hi Lucas,
It is a good initiative. How are you going to reach vulnerable women in rural areas, with limited internet access? Will the registered users be able to afford especially in rural areas? Do you issue certificates?
Are you offering any extra benefits for women? There are so many online education platforms on the market right now why would people be interested in buying your course from your platform? I would like to know what is your competitive advantage.
Hello, I hope this meets you well. Are the women to re-organise resources that are already available on Anepen platform? Or develop, organise and share? For free? And if so how do you generate your content? Is their an age limit for women on your platform? Women in Africa or across the world? Maybe an open source approach might be more viable ? Business model pls ? Thanks
Hello Lucas am so excited about your initiative. It looks so much for women and girls as I can see in most of platform solutions, women are just left behind. But if yours is well implemented, hope girls will get the relevant education smoothly and those women out there with no employment but have training passion or career, this will be their best suitable solution to go after.
After saying that, I have few questions for you.
In one of your comment, you said that, for women in rural areas to benefit from your service, you have planned to partner with cellular network companies to supply the network services in their places. Right, now here are my questions regarding that point:
1. What if the rural ares has no transportation service in case of roads?
2. Will this plan of partnership be implemented worldwide?
3. And if yes, What are the strategies will you undertake to convince other countries in your partnership plan.
Thanks and good luck.
Hello Lucas,
Congrats for bringing this might solution for women.
Think it is better to sticky to your plan.
I have few questions to ask you:
1. For a trainee buying a series on Anepen platform, will it be downloadable or not?
2. If yes, what about the content ownership rights of the trainers who publish them?
3. If NO, how will the user have access for it after they purchase?
4. Where will the purchased series be located for the user to access them?
5. Also if No, does it mean that users will have to use internet every time they login on Anepen for accessing the purchased contents?
Let me know from you. Also wish you good luck with your suitable initiative.
Hi Lucas,
I'm from Mindanao, Philippines and I've come across your idea and found that it's very useful here for people in Philippines because here are so many unemployed women. But I'd like to know,
How am I going to benefit from your initiative in my country?
What plan you putting for people with low/no understanding of using Electronic devices like Phones, tablets and computers for such service?
Hi, hope you're doing well.
I'm excited to see an initiative like this for women and girls.
As a woman, I would like to ask you:
You say users will purchase the premium series published by women trainers using your platform.
1. Now who will host that money from the user which actually belongs to the series owner?
2. Is it your company or the women with a series purchased?
3. If your company, how are you going to share that benefit with women in your platform?
4. Which means of transaction methods are you going to use to benefit those women trainers as you claim?
5. What about the trust between your company and the trainers' money?
6. Is their any legal contract they will sign with your company for financial safety?
That's it. Thanks for your nice initiative and plan. Wish you good luck.
Hi,
Congrats for good solution.
But how are you going to help those women in rural areas who have no even ability of buying those electronic devices like smartphones?
What also about those places with even no power supply?
Will this idea be viable over there too?
Thanks and wish you success on your initiative.
Thank you so much brother for the hard work, consistence and persistence until to bring this initiative to life. Atuallly, it wasn't that easy but you did it.
So congrats for that attitude.
We wish you all the best.
hello, hope this finds you well.
You said that using Anepen platform, individual trainers and education institutions will be able to teach or train online.
No, how can education institution with multiple number of teachers or trainers teach in it?
Will each of the teacher create their own centers?
If in they all teach in one center, then how will students recognize and interact with the teachers of the relevant studies?
Thanks. Wish you the best.
Hi Lucas,
Your program really inspires me.
I like the fact of the shared revenue model it has.
As now days we see that everyone starts a platform to benefit their companies only. But yours is lil bit different apart from your description.
This is nice model and better as all Education Institution can start online training centers on one single platform so that students won't get problem on getting their best options.
My one question is that: When you talk about freedom of price setup for your series, means you can put any amount. Now what about currency?
Will there be a specif currency that all users will use?
What if everyone will put their own currency?
Nice initiative Sir.
Luck on you.
Be the next unicorn.
Nice initiative Sir.
Luck on you.
Be the next unicorn.
Nice initiative Sir.
Luck on you.
Be the next unicorn.
Thank you for good initiative.
Let's see how high it can fly.
Hello,
What level of students and education institutions does your project serve?
Hello Lucas,
This idea seems relevant.
What is the key innovation does it include actually?
Does it involve any kind of AI application for the existing contents?
Only that. Best wishes to your application.
Hi Lucas,
Congratulations for nice idea.
Hope it's going to help us to expand our skills.
Hello,
Your model looks similar to platforms like udemy.com or lynda.com.
These are the giant companies.
Now, what makes you better than they?
Congrats.
The idea has been progressed to the next milestone.
Nice work to to seen our fellow Tanzanian guy dares this so much like this to put his idea before a crowd. It means so much to us that if you can try, then you can do it. Congrats Lucas for a good platform.
We are all believing that, the best idea is that which focuses on improving other peoples lives. And yes yours has shown up the guts.
So wish you all the best friend.
Meet you on the top.
The idea has been progressed to the next milestone.
Status labels added: Community feedback received, Expert feedback received
Status label removed: Expert feedback received
Hello Lucas, there are very many learning platforms at the moment especially in light of the Covid19 pandemic, how is yours unique. Would be great to emphasise on this.
Hi Lucas,
I love the initiative and idea, here are some questions that I had:
As an all male team, how will you appeal more to your consumer than similar initiatives led by women?
the understanding of your competitors and problem is clear but have you conducted any market research with your target consumers and what feedback have you had from them?
Apologies if I have missed it, but how are you funding the launch costs?
The platform functionality is great, how do you plan to develop the brand to appeal to more consumers? Have you had any feedback on your brand from your consumers?
How willing are teachers/students to pay for your service? Are they the best people to be targeting at this stage? of those users on your platform have you got demographic data that can give an idea of who is already using the platform?
Is the content on your website regulated? So how do you ensure quality from your trainers?
Good Luck!
Sukhveer
Users tagged:
Hello Lucas,
Great idea very doable.
Quick question.How are you planning to interlink the content learned through Anepen website with real life employers who are seeking certain qualifications and how practical are all the concepts to users who have no educational background in rural areas to be able to generate their own income ?If they get access to the materials how will the follow through done by the trainers ensure they get the access of the products without internet connection?
Wishing you luck
Best Regards.
Status label added: Mentor feedback received
It's been late since I left from Dar to Tanga when the schools opened in June.
But I still work on my Anepen Center.
I shared the platform with my students over here and are enjoying my teaching online.
The only thing you guys should do is just finish to build the platform on the Trainer's center. As it lacks some features to monitor series statistics.
Nice to see you in this international contest, by the way.
Win it to help us out.
The idea has been progressed to the next milestone.
Hello ! Lucas
I would like like to share the following with you:
I was about to share a quote that came in my mind a few seconds ago. Suddenly I remembered what Prof. Dr. Günter Faltin wrote." simplicity is a good principle. Complexity is the entrepreneur's enemy. If you believe that "paring down" and "simplicity" are too basic, not impressive enough, and not at all grand, then remember Leonardo Davinci: " Simplicity is the ultimate perfection".
It came to my mind that my quote had already been said by others, several times and in many different ways. But when did they say the quote, did they use the same words as mine, what were the circumstances? How the author did grew up? Was he black or white? A man or female, and many more questions. When I realized that the combinatorial analysis still offers unlimited scope, I silently breathed a sigh of relief. The market is never saturated for entrepreneurs, it requires a dose of simplicity to innovate and propose a sustainable solution while using available material, inclusive what others already used.
Support us with votes and comments, thank you.
What is your learning solution for the majorities who can not access digital lifestyle?
How do you screen trainers? To ensure professionals on board.
You describe a lot about your business model not the solution. Recall the challenge question. Focus should be on the solution. Also, include details on how various stakeholders within your community can come together to help you promote the accessibility and availability of your product.
Users tagged:
Status label added: Expert feedback received
Status label added: Submission completed
Status label added: Idea under jury review
The idea has been progressed to the next milestone.