Short Summary

Hi, I am Daniel. I worked for more than 20 years for the United Nations as Systems Architect and always had a great passion for software development and coding. I retired early not long ago and could now relax without having to work. Before I started working for the UN I developed a management system for a private school and since then it has been on my mind to do it again but this time with a much larger scope.

I am planning to build a software that is able to manage all aspects around the management of educational institutions – from primary schools to universities.

This software will be comprehensive in it’s functions and will contain modules for student management, finance, health, communication, attendance, library and more.

Further, to make this product stand out from similar products that are currently available on the market, there will be:
– an integration of school management, learning platform and web conferencing
– aggregation of data, which makes it interesting for groups of schools or for ministries of education of a city or state.

Your gain: 7% of future yearly net profit will be distributed among donors. 

Timeline: At the end of the fundraising campaign (September 2021) start of development. September 2022 initial roll-out of 50% of targeted functions and begin of marketing campaign. September 2023 deployment of finalized product.

Details

Background

My two daughters are in private school and the system their school is using is a patchwork of different applications and systems. There is no proper billing system in place and the invoices are sent manually by an admin staff. Communications are usually sent twice with the same content – there is no concept of “family grouping” in their system. Absences are never notified – ideally they should be instantly. And I have reasons to doubt that the system is compliant with European GDPR regulations.

At the same time there are many applications that are available on the market and that are able to do certain things well, but are not comprehensive. Some are comprehensive but not intuitive, and others again are not designed for large amount of traffic. And most were not built e.g. with the visually impaired in mind.

These are just a few reasons that convince me that a newly designed and structured system has great potential.

Education.zone system

The system will be build with functions that cover most aspects needed to manage a private or public school successfully. These include modules such as:

– Student administration (registration, enrollment, attendance, assignments, assessments, grading, class/timetable scheduling)
– Finance
– Health Records
– Library
– Housing
– Reports and Analytics
– Communication
– Human Resources

The system will be offered as an online service and will be built for high traffic demands. Each module will be developed as a standalone service to be ready for future scalability and high availability.

Potential and what is in it for you

The market is decisively big for such a product. There are competitors in this field but most software solutions in this area work for individual learning institutions. While Education.zone can also be used for single institutions, the aim is to offer this product as a solution for city, state or even national administrations as well as large school groups. As far as I know the only country who has successfully undertaken such a project as an e-government solution is Saudi Arabia (Noor software).

As an example a single region in India has approx. 900,000 primary and secondary schools, 8000 high-schools and colleges and 700 university. Imagine if the ministry of such a region would be able to detect where the schools with most student absences are, they could address the problem more efficiently. Or if they were able to see, based on crowd assessments, where the most talented children in the region are, then they could target these children with special education programs. Or if they at a glance would be able to see how the vaccination programs are being developed among children.

The plan is to roll-out the software during the first year in China, Russia, Ghana and Nepal, because of personal connections I have in these countries. There is also the possibility of collaboration with some of the United Nations agencies (e.g. school feeding project of WFP).

The goal is to have 1,000,000 registered children by the end of September 2024.

How your funds will be used

The funding goal is 625,000 CHF plus fees (5% indiegogo, 2.9% bank transfer fees). This will cover the first 3 years and will be split into these parts:

200,000 CHF (Sept 2021-Sept 2024)
This amount is divided in:
– 120,000 CHF for myself (3,300/month). Even though I have a pension and do not need to work, the reason for this is that we live on a farm and if I dedicate my time on this project, I will need to hire workers to do the farming job.
– 80,000 CHF for external developers, designers and quality/usability testers

400,000 CHF (Sept 2022 – Sept 2024)
Marketing. Besides having a strong web-presence, the goal is to initially start the campaign in 4 selected countries. 

25,000 CHF (Sept 2012 – Sept 2024)
Legal fees

The funding is fixed – the project will only start if funding is secured. The share for Marketing and Legal if requested, could be held on escrow account for 1 year until the marketing campaign starts.

Timeline

The development will start at the end of the fundraising campaign.

Sept 2021 – Sept 2022
Development of 50% of targeted modules.

Sept 2022 – Sept 2023
Development of rest of targeted modules.
Start of marketing campaign in selected countries.

Sept 2023 – Sept 2024
System improvements and bug fixing.
Continue with marketing campaign.

Sept 2024 ->
Either more external funds will be needed for marketing, or the project will be able to sustain itself at that point.

Risks

It’s a product and there is always the risks that it cannot be sold. A lot will depend on a good marketing strategy. For the product itself, I do guarantee that the system will be user friendly, stable and fast. I have over 25 years of experience in software development and on request, I’ll be glad to provide references.

The biggest risk is, if something would happen to me before the product is released. For this case I would sign an agreement to make sure that my wife would return all unused funds to the donors (in proportion to the donated amount).

/* end */