Private tutor app by Vietnamese developer goes viral in US
Private tutor app by Vietnamese developer goes viral in US
An education-based app developed by a Vietnamese firm has climbed to the top ten most downloaded apps on Apple’s App Store in the U.S. as of early 2016.
GotIt! is an app that connects learners with a study expert who offers them step-by-step help through their homework.
“Users can raise detailed questions in English on GotIt! via their smartphones,” Dr. Tran Viet Hung, the brain behind the application, explained. “Once the question has been loaded onto the network, the system will automatically connect the user with an available study expert in the field related to the question in just under ten seconds using our algorithm. The most suitable expert will ‘claim’ the user and spend around ten minutes talking with them to guide them through the problem.”
Dr. Hung’s idea for the tutoring app can be traced back to 2011, when he was still a doctoral fellow in computer science at the University of Iowa in the U.S.
He used to work as a private tutor at the time to provide for his studies, and he soon realized that the demand for private tutors was very high, citing an estimate by Forbes magazine which indicated that the global private tutor market would exceed US$102 billion by 2018.
In order to realize his idea, Hung began participating in as many contests as he could to collect prize money, and was eventually able to save around $60,000 to launch his first startup, Tutor Universe.
Tutor Universe is an online platform that connects tutors and students and provides tools for online tutoring and payments. Users are charged 20 percent of the value of each transaction.
“Tutor Universe quickly proved a success as it balanced the need and demand between tutors and learners in a faster and more convenient way than traditional tutoring,” Dr. Hung said.
“However, the product’s market was quite saturated at the time. InstaEdu, a similar service that was established at the same time as Tutor Universe, was acquired at a relatively low price, which led us to evaluate that if we held on to Tutor Universe, it would only be a mediocre company without much potential to grow into a giant,” he explained.
With that in mind, Dr. Hung and his team began working on a change in strategy in October 2013, shifting their focus to the mobile app market that eventually resulted in GotIt!
With the establishment of many websites that provide a similar service of answering users’ questions such as Quora, Question, Question2answer, and others, Dr. Hung focused his app on minimizing the time it takes for a question to be answered to compete in the market.
“Most websites require users to wait for a long time before receiving answers to their questions, while GotIt! connects users with study experts in almost an instant, and the users will receive detailed explanations from the experts,” Dr. Hung said.
Explaining how GotIt! was able to attract so many talents who used to work for tech giants such as Google and Oracle, he said, “If you look closely, you will see that talent prefers long-term values to short-term ones. They always want to dedicate and challenge themselves with new things and make a big impact, rather than just caring about income and regular benefits. That is what I placed most emphasis on in my discussions, which were mostly successful but in some cases took as long as three months.”
GotIt! currently boasts a network of 40,000 study experts across the globe who provide answers to questions mostly in the fields of math, chemistry, and physics.
In the future, Dr. Hung said, GotIt! will expand its expertise to social sciences, communications, and others to offer service to a wider user base.
In order to become a study expert, one has to pass a knowledge test compiled by GotIt! and take a training course to grasp the procedure and method of interacting with users.
The experts are required to follow three mandatory steps in handling any question, which are providing hints, engaging in in-depth discussion, and finally providing the answer.
“The quality of experts and the lessons is crucial, since a bad encounter may prevent the user from using GotIt! for good. Besides, what we aim for is to provide assistance for learners to acquire knowledge, rather than merely making profit out of the product,” Dr. Hung said.
GotIt! currently offers new users 12 free sessions in the first two weeks of registration, after which the users will be charged a nominal fee for each session.
“For the time being, we are operating on money from investment funds such as Guy Kawasaki, Hong Ge, Kinzon Capital, and Intel Capital, rather than from users,” Dr. Hung disclosed.
According to Marc Yi, director at Intel Capital, GotIt! has a growth rate of 40 percent a month, with much potential for further development.
“I was immediately impressed by GotIt! since it was such an amazing app that was able to attract so many talents. I believe GotIt! will continue to thrive and provide effective assistance to millions of learners across the globe,” Marc Yi said.
Despite the app’s initial success, Dr. Hung is still concerned about not being able to facilitate the participation of Vietnamese experts.
“Vietnamese students are excellent in their professions but lack English proficiency, and the problem-solving methods for math problems in the U.S. are different from those in Vietnam as well, so we haven’t got much chance to work with Vietnamese experts. I’m asking some doctors and masters who’ve worked abroad to come to Vietnam and provide training courses for those who would like to get on board GotIt!,” Dr. Hung said.
