Portfolio Spotlight: Sohopathi
Startup: Sohopathi
Vertical: Edtech
Market: Bangladesh
Currently fundraising:
Seed Round
$400,000, with 40% already committed
Minimum Cheque Size: $50,000
Impact: Addressing United Nations Sustainable Development Goal
4 Quality Education
8 Decent Work and Economic Growth
10 Reduced Inequalities
The lowdown: Why Accelerating Asia Invested
Team: A team with the right mix of skills, experience and networks to turn their mission and vision into reality.
Revenue Model: Ability to rapidly expand top line while ensuring profitability.
Traction: Growing rapidly given the market has a strong need for the product. Sohopathi has recorded revenue of over US$35k and more than 40,000 paid learning hours.
The founders have a vision to rapidly change the Bangladesh landscape for years to come and have already made significant strides in doing so.
The problem
Most South Asian countries are recording rapid economic growth, however, their human resources aren’t developing fast enough. Countries like Bangladesh also suffer from a 1:60 teacher to student ratio which has several ripple effects on the education system and the economy as a whole. The lower student to teacher ratio results in only 20% of the students qualifying for college and a mere 7% of the student population getting into university.
About Sohopathi
To help strengthen the education landscape in Bangladesh we invested in Sohopathi.
Sohopathi is an online crowd sourced learning platform that focuses on high personalisation and lower costs to ensure students in Bangladesh get the education they deserve. Sohopathi aims to build a solid educational foundation in Bangladesh which will allow the country to further accelerate economic growth. Because of its smart business model, Sohopathi has the ability to generate solid returns for its investors.
The Business Model Advantage
Sohopathi is built on two pillars:
A crowdsourced platform: The crowdsourced platform allows students to solve their doubts by asking questions to their peers or in a community made up of students and teachers. By building a community, Sohopathi can hold group classes which allows students to learn from the best teachers at affordable prices.
Personalised tutoring for students. Sohopathi also allows students to get access to one on one paid classes by charging them higher fees. The personal classes increase the level of personalisation which in turn can help several students with their coursework.
The Large Market Size:
The local tutoring market in Bangladesh stands at $2 billion today and is expected to grow to 30 billion dollars in the South Asian region by 2026. The large market will allow Sohopathi to acquire more high paying students who require personal classes. The large addressable market holds the key towards rapid revenue growth and profitability for Sohopathi.
A Solid Revenue Model:
The current revenue model will drive both growth and profitability, it allows Sohopathi to monetise both group and individual learning sessions. The group learning sessions have the ability to drive revenue growth because it is affordable for students and over time the higher paying individual learning sessions will pad margins and help increase profitability.
Strong Traction:
Sohopathi has seen strong traction in its home market. Over the last 12 months they have generated over US$35k in revenue and conducted over 40,000 paid hours of learning. The traction gets further accentuated by a very favourable LTV-CAC ratio of 8:1. We expect the traction to significantly improve in the years to come.
A Team Built For Success
The founders have years and years of experience in the coding and teaching industries. The founders have worked across several global giants like Samsung as software engineers and have a cumulative experience of 13 years in academia. The 4 co-founder have complementary skill sets which are in tune with what Sohopathi needs for success.
Sohopathi has a lot of things going in its favour. Right from a large addressable market to the ability to grow exponentially, Sohopathi can generate large multiples for early investors like Accelerating Asia. The founders have the requisite skill sets needed in the industry and the market is large enough for more than one company to succeed. A combination of the factors mentioned above made us believe Sohopathi is a good investment.
Accelerating Asia VC Fund II invested into Sohopathi which was selected for Cohort 5 of our flagship 100 day program. During our last recruitment round Accelerating Asia received 550 applications from 30 countries and we have with 2000+ startups per year.
To invest in startups like Sohopathi alongside us and learn more about our portfolio, reach out and tell us a little bit about yourself here.
Disclaimer
In making an investment decision, investors must rely on their own examination of startups and the terms of the investment including the merits and risks involved. Prospective investors should not construe this content as legal, tax, investment, financial or accounting advice.