Connects2

Want to get entitled as 'Tech savvy' in your high school? Want to pay your college fees without spending hours in McDonalds? Our app "Connects2" is a perfect one stop solution for you.

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Inspiration

Our team has been heavily inspired by the trend “Atma Nirbhar” which means “self-sufficient”. That’s the reason why we came up with a start-up plan or in other words a community that will connect the enthusiastic school students to the college students with interest in certain domains (be it from basic coding to advanced concepts of IoT, ML, and AI). As a result, it will not only help the one learning but also the one teaching. It will give a cutting edge to the school students over the others. Not only this, the college students, who are in their final years and struggling hard to get placed, this will be a sigh of relief for them as they have a source of income.

Design and usability:

  I.We have kept SHNEIDERMAN’S 8 GOLDEN RULES in mind while designing our app:
  1. Strive for consistency
  2. Cater to Universal Usability (Enable frequent users to use shortcuts)
  3. Offer informative feedback
  4. Design dialogs to yield closure
  5. Offer error prevention and simple error handling
  6. Permit easy reversal of actions
  7. Support internal locus of control
  8. Reduce short-term memory load
    II.Not only this we have used the KLM model. The KLM is a practical design tool that can capture and calculate the physical actions a user will have to carry out to complete specific tasks. The KLM can be used to determine the most efficient method and its suitability for specific contexts

Future Possibility:

  1. Firstly we will start with our own college. But if we succeed in the future, we will extend this concept and also pursue it with other schools and colleges like SRM, Manipal, etc. These colleges are even more crowded than VIT. This can be applied not only in colleges but in large societies where hundreds of people are victims of the recession. Getting a decent job is always a concern in such communities. Therefore, the best way to do this is to use the app.
  2. After the success of the app in our business incubation cell we may go large scale where we may enable incentives to our employees with good office space in our IT hub in Bangalore.
  3. Now we are mainly going for basic languages like c++ or java. Later we may add more courses that teach the subject more in-depth.

Solution of the problem:

  1. We connect with freshers who to needful students who want to learn new skills.
  2. Creating a virtual classroom experience.
  3. Devising a curriculum that contains well-defined course material.
  4. 24*7 Community Support.
  5. Live doubt clearing sessions.

Originality:

This is the first app which provides both live classes and recorded lecture so that they can learn in their own pace at a relatively lower amount. This amount is afforded by students from any classes of society. We will also strictly follow ICSE or any State board syllabus so that it can help students to cope up with their ever piling school homework.

How we made:

  1. Conduct user research and conducted user interviews.

  2. Gathered feedback.

  3. Created a user-focussed prototype using Figma.

  4. Used Firebase to store our data.

  5. Used agora APT to conduct live classes.

  6. The backend is built in Node.js using firestore as the database and firebase authentication for handling the authentication of users. The service is deployed to the google app engine and CI/CD pipeline for the backend is supported by Cloud build. Postman is used for internal API documentation and testing of the routes.

Tools and Technologies:

  1. Flutter
  2. Nodejs
  3. Expressjs
  4. Google OAuth
  5. Firestore
  6. Cloud build
  7. Google App Engine
  8. Obviously, GitHub

Business plan:

Refer the Images Uploaded in the Image Sections To get to know about our Business Plan

alt text

Key Points:

1.Student Mentors will be rated from time to time through feedback received from mentees as well as from assessments.

  1. Course Price will be set according to the ratings of mentors.
  2. Mentees get to choose their desired course and the mentor for that according to his comfort by choosing the appropriate time and price for the course.
  3. Live Sessions will be conducted and recorded videos can be available depending upon mentors.
  4. 24*7 live assistance from our side and dedicated Mentor-Mentee Q&A session at regular intervals
  5. Mentor-Mentee open-ended community support.
  6. Predefined Timetable according to the way the mentor wants with some limitations.
  7. We will have a 5-10% cut of total fees earned by the mentor during his whole course.
  8. Notification alert with Live video on our own platform.

Target audience:

  1. Unemployed section: The percentage of freshers in the corporate world who has been a victim to recession during pandemic now can earn their daily bread and butter via uploading their videos. These videos will be in the form of courses where a learner might subscribe to them and directly pay on the website. Not only this if they want to learn any course, but they are also most welcome to do so.
  2. School-going students: Highly enthusiastic and young programmers are our main audience. The app is mainly curated to curb their appetite for more in-depth knowledge about programming. We have also designed the app in such a way so that the slow learners in school can cope up with their curriculum.
  3. College Students: College Students who have difficulty in paying their college fees, can go for this program as mentees. In this way, the app aids college students in financial needs.

Financial Plan:

1. Sponsorships:
1.1 Government oriented:
The Indian government has introduced over 50+ start-up schemes in the past few years. Each start-up scheme is missioned towards boosting the Indian start-up ecosystem. Consider this. Close to 4,400 technology start-ups exist in India and the number is expected to reach over 12,000 by 2020. India is also at third place behind the US and Britain in terms of the number of start-ups. Furthermore, in line with its global counterparts, India has its own billion-dollar club to boast about. This includes start-ups like Flipkart, Snapdeal, Ola, InMobi, Hike, MuSigma, Paytm, Zomato, and Quikr. With the next $100 Mn funding raise, fintech start-up MobiKwik too looks to join the unicorn club.
1.2. On surveying:
We depicted that there is a good number of investors and key partners that we have to support our project and also funding requirements can be fulfilled from that.
2. Bank Loans: Refer the Images Uploaded in the Image Sections To get to know about our Bank loans Strategy

alt text Alt text index.png Alt text For more details on how to get loans for start-ups visit:link
3.CROWDFUNDING and EVENTS: Crowdfunding is a way to raise money for an individual or organization by collecting donations through family, friends, friends of friends, strangers, businesses, and more. By using social media to spread awareness, people can reach more potential donors than traditional forms of fundraising. The best e-platform for crowdfunding is ketto.com for your needs. Compare the best online fundraising platform by fees, features, support, and more. IVYHACK is also a great stage to pitch our plan and raise money for our start-up.

Marketing Plan:

First and foremost, the key to marketing is to know our customers. Therefore, we have sent out some google forms to school students. After 24 hours this is the summary of all the feedbacks:

Competitor Analysis:

The major competition is existing websites such as Udemy and Coursera. In research, we have found out that

  1. Coursera: We can avail to this platform, the disadvantage being that the cost to be very high (34- 70 dollars). It is impossible for a middle-class student from a developing country to pay such a high amount. That’s why our connects2 app is for rescue. The students can subscribe to our course at a much feasible amount (around 5-7 dollars). Not only this, the assignment questions on Coursera are generic resulting in answers getting availed on the internet easily. This will not happen in connects2 as the mentees are supposed to change questions weekly.
  2. Udemy: Udemy too has the same cost issue as Coursera. Additionally, they don’t have assignments in order to achieve a certificate making the process very easy. In connects2 we make sure that the student has genuinely gathered some information by conducting weekly tests. If they score good marks, they are eligible for the certificate.
  3. YouTube: YouTube may solve the cost issue but the main problem is that YouTube serves entertainment purposes as well. As a result, a student may get easily distracted by the suggestions bar. Connects2 makes sure that this distraction does not happen. The subjects are taught in such a fun interactive way that the students will have their entire attention in the classroom. Not only this, we will have an interactive class which requires the student to answer questions asked by their mentors. In this way, we make sure that the student doesn’t distract themselves.
  4. White hat Jr.: this website is only confined to kids below 10 years of age. Our app doesn’t have any age barrier. We are mostly focussed on building basic blocks of coding. We make sure that the student has a good command over one or more programming languages. The cost for enrolment is very high i.e. around 2000-3000 dollars which are not affordable by the majority of the population.
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