Technology

Posted on March 11, 2019 by staff

EdTech firm launches ‘self-service’ function to platform

Technology

An education technology start-up set up by two medical students to revise better has unveiled the next step in its growth.

Dr James Gupta and Dr Omair Vaiyani were studying at Leeds Medical School when they created an intelligent learning platform called Synap to help fellow medical students revise for their exams by creating, practising and sharing educational quizzes.

Synap has expanded into other verticals meaning its technology can now deliver corporate training solutions across a range of industries including financial services, retail and transport.

Now the entrepreneurs have created a ‘self-service’ area on the platform where customers can personalise what they need with no input from the company.

“We think it’s going to fundamentally transform it, it’s a vision we’ve had for a while,” said Gupta..

“You look at what Slack has done to communication, what QuickBooks has done with accounting – we don’t see anything doing that in the training space.

“In different industries the SaaS cloud software model is taking over, there’s a huge adoption among small businesses in particular because the delivery from the cloud has meant they can get access to software that would be previously only be affordable to very large enterprises.”

The introduction of the self-service facility in the platform allows customers to create different styles of training to suit their audiences and can be delivered in five-10 minute sessions

The company is now looking to increase their headcount from five to 12 by 2020, and wants to increase their client base from 15 to 100.

“We want to be the world’s go to platform for online training,” said Gupta. “We think this could be a £100m business, we think we’re in a unique spot, there’s not a single dominant player in the cloud based training space at the moment

“We want to take it beyond that and expand into new territory, new market, and want to keep the base of that here in Leeds.”

Explaining the idea for the start-up Gupta told BusinessCloud:  “We were looking for a more interesting and engaging way to study, something that we could practice on the go that would tailor the learning experience towards us other than being locked in a library for hours staring at a textbook.

“I’ve always been interested in tech and always found a side project to distract me so I’m not too surprised in hindsight, although it was really hard.”