Year: 2019 • Amount: $125K • Round: Pre-Seed
Transtutors help students improve their skills in various subject areas by providing online tutors to help them solve their problems and complete assignments.
About Transtutors
- Product Type: Marketplace
- Business Model: C2C
About the Transtutors Deck
- Funding Year: 2019
- Funding Round: Pre-Seed
- Funding Raised: $125K
- Investor Type: VC
Transtutors is essentially an online service which is essentially “pay per answer”: students contact Transtutors’ website with a question and receive an answer from a pool of ‘experts’ fairly quickly for a small ($6 fee). Their actual pitch is linked above in the YouTube video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ScEUzVb2lZo ). And as far as an elevator pitch goes, it was reasonably decent. They certainly hit all the key talking points, speaking on return of investment and asking for a million dollars for a 10% company share in what was very much a ” shark tank” styled program. My initial thought was that Transtutors’ was something largely focussed in India, but it seems to try to pitch itself around the world as a solution to any student seeking an answer for any problem. The ‘sizzle’ in their pitch acting comes from their commercials, link below. Ultimately, they are selling themselves as a convenience for peace of mind service. Stressed out students can reach out to experts and get answers immediately, rather than dealing with the problems of research and struggling to find answers. This allows them to continue on with their life and their part-time jobs and their social life. With a growing online learning market, this may have seemed a prophetic pitch at the time (2015-2019) However, I recommend you watch the videos before you continue with my commentary:
Commercial 1
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nQg_PJ18i7I
Commercial 2
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_cPNBbG4z5o
I have decided to go a little bit against the grain here. While our assignment asked us to find something that is compelling, I have found one which is compellingly flawed.
First, is the market. The idea that students cannot look up most of their answers on the Internet is ridiculous. Having a pool of experts available is great, but in order to answer specific assignments oh, you need to know the assignment itself and potentially what can the instructor/professor wants. For Championship – specific information by people in specific fields ( doctors, lawyers, physicists,…) sounds nice but, would these people be a part of Transtutors for such a small remuneration? As a university Professor, I am well aware of the competition for a number of gray-market essay writing sites where students can acquire “sample essays” which they would submit to University as their own original work. Transtutors’ website seems to be a lesser version of this at best.
The second problem can actually be seen through their commercials.
Their first commercial (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_cPNBbG4z5o ) uses animated figures and you can tell that even though they are speaking in English: the English is imperfect. This immediately makes me wonder about their Market: is it India, or is it around the world? If it was India, why not use Hindi or Tamil? if it is around the world, why not correct the English? Any international student picking up on this mistake in the language would immediately question the quality of the service provided: if you can’t trust the commercial to speak properly, can you trust the answers professors are giving you? The commercial then goes on to elaborate on the income structure of the company. The easiest way to make money within the company, is to have referenced other people to work in the company under you – allowing you to take a percentage of their earnings. This has all the earmarks of a Ponzi scheme or a pyramid scheme.
Their second commercial (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nQg_PJ18i7I ) clearly states that they are aiming for an international market – or at least students with international ambitions. Just read the tag underneath the video: “Studying in the States was his dream, until he knows about the academic reality. Let’s hear out how Linus survived and grades up his scores!” Watching the video again presents potential customers with confusion. It doesn’t clearly state what the company offers to them. Further, Linus is clearly lip-syncing. Honestly, with this poor level of proof-checking for language and a vague confusing message to the audience, Transtutors’ does not Inspire any confidence in me whatsoever.
Linus – “Transtutor’s site is yet another saviour for me in my research.” …. Sorry Linus. I don’t think so.
I personally would not invest in this company as well. The issue is that information is increasingly free, especially information from established curriculums. I could post a question on Quora, Reddit and get it answered for free. There is an abundance of videos on YouTube that teaches well. Websites like Chegg are direct competitors. The main issue, however, is that this platform is outcome focused. There’s really no point in knowing the answer if the purpose was to learn how to get there. The income structure, as you said, is so low that anyone that’s actually qualified is probably out making more money elsewhere. It all just doesn’t really make sense.
I would not invest in this in this venture. Although the market for additional education services I believe is high, the increase in AI chatbots I believe will totally replace this market. Furthermore, education tutoring chatbots are designed not to simply be a ‘pay for answer’ model but instead guide the students through the process to gain understanding rather than a paywall for answers. For example, Khan Academy has introduced their chatbot Khanmingo that is available for a variety of subjects.
They did get correct the Pain Point of students looking for answers outside the classroom and that they are, at times, willing to pay for it. Even outside of AI probably overtaking this market, the pitch did not show much in the way of differentiation – the market has many question and answer bank websites such as Study.com.