#1 Founder’s Showcase: Zorbi (Sukhans Asrani)
Today we’re celebrating an exciting young founder, Sukhans Asrani, who is the founder of a fast-growing ed-tech start-up, Zorbi.
Zorbi makes studying faster and easier through flashcards that only show up when you forget them. With over 3,900 registered users they already have strong traction for such an early-stage company, with over 700 weekly active users and growing. We sat down with Sukhans to chat about his “why”, the problems he seeks to address, and what the future holds for Zorbi.
What is the problem you are solving, and how are you solving it?
We’re eliminating rote memorisation from the education system through flashcards that can predict when you’ll forget them.
Zorbi is a science-backed flashcard app that makes studying significantly faster by telling you “what to study”, “when to study”, and “how long to study for”. The learning techniques behind Zorbi are the most effective known solutions for solving memory retention.
Zorbi does this by asking users how difficult it was to answer each card. Our algorithm uses their rating to figure out when they’ll forget that card. Students like studying this way because it streamlines the learning process. All they have to do is open Zorbi, hit “Study for 5-minutes”, and it re-teaches them the content that they don’t know.
What do you love most about being a founder in NZ?
I love how small and tight-knit the NZ startup community has become.
Phase One is bringing together all the young founders in Auckland and it feels like we’re becoming a family — this wouldn’t feel as wholesome in a huge ecosystem like SF/NYC.
An added bonus is that the top mentors have more time for us and the founders have a lot of power when it comes to picking the right investors 😉
Why are you working on Zorbi? What was the trigger point that made you start working on this?
I hated studying and the education system more than anyone I knew. I started researching “efficient learning” so that I could free up some time for my personal projects.
I started using two techniques called “active recall” and “spaced-repetition”. They made learning feel fun and I was able to learn 2–3x faster (not exaggerating). I started preaching about the techniques to everyone. Some friends went from failing papers to achieving straight A’s after I showed them how to use the techniques.
I found research that showed over 80% of students were studying ineffectively. I decided to investigate why through my final-year research project titled “Increasing the adoption of spaced-repetition tools [e.g. Zorbi]”.
Most people aren’t able to adopt this type of learning because existing tools are difficult to use, lack gamification, and don’t synergize with existing study habits.
I’m confident that everyone else in this space is taking the wrong approach to solving the obstacles preventing widespread adoption of the techniques, so I feel like it’s almost our responsibility to make Zorbi real.
What is the current state of Zorbi — what does the product look like and what is your team focused on right now?
Zorbi is live and you can check us out at https://zorbi.cards! We have a web-app, Chrome Extension, and Android app.
Get started by creating a deck for what you want to learn (e.g. Biology). You can then use the web app or the Zorbi Chrome extension, which most of our users prefer, to create flashcards quickly from your notes or lecture slides.
If you don’t have anything you’re studying for right now, you can still check out our in-app “Explore” section to download a premade deck.
In the next few weeks, we’re focused on the launch of our iOS app, some key features for medical students, and some growth experiments.
What makes Zorbi unique?
SuperMemo pioneered this type of learning in the 90s. Every single tool is stuck copying their same archaic principles, and they all take a completely unnatural approach with zero attention to motivation theory and what students actually need.
In order to achieve widespread adoption in the student market we’re focusing on three pillars:
I. Exam-first spaced-repetition
Spaced-repetition learning has traditionally been focused on memory retention on the scale of years. We’ve optimized the algorithm for shorter timeframes that students might need (e.g. 12 weeks).
Our learning assistant also personalizes the study experience based on the student’s learning needs (e.g. “When is your exam?”, “How effective do you want your recall to be?”, “How much do you want to spend studying?”).
II. Synergize with existing habits
It’s difficult for people to accept that they’ve been learning incorrectly their whole lives, especially since there are a lot of myths out there around “learning styles”. Since we can’t change study habits, we opt to synergize with them through integrations. For example, we help note-takers turn their notes into flashcards via our Notion integration.
III. Motivation Theory
Spaced-repetition learning makes studying feel 2–3x faster, but I know that the real reason why people love spaced-repetition is because it makes the learning process feel like a game.
Studying can be tiring and it’s filled with uncertainty. Students get stuck on “what to study”, “how long to study for”, and “when to study”. Spaced-repetition learning removes these obstacles from the process and gives students a daily number of flashcards that they need to review (the flashcards they’ve forgotten). Zorbi enhances these game mechanics by enabling students to track their study progress through streaks and statistics on their profile page.
There are a few other factors to our overall strategy, but that’s all I’m willing to say publically right now 🙂
How are your customers doing? What is the traction like?
We recently shifted focus to growth and have averaged 20% WoW user growth for the past 8 weeks. In the past 30 days, we’ve had 210k flashcard reviews, and 89k unique cards created. This usage is from our 700 weekly active users and 1.3k monthly active users.
We’re focused on building for medical students since we know that they love our product the most. But currently, our user counts are dominated by high-schoolers brought on by their teachers-schools have been installing us onto their Chromebooks and setting homework via the platform. This is an interesting opportunity we plan to explore in the near future.
Power users love the tool and use it as their only study technique. Many users even tell us that Zorbi makes them WANT to study (ever heard a student say that?). We’ve also found that many users will keep using Zorbi after their exams to learn languages, remembering ideas from books, or for other hobbies like learning to code.
Where do you see Zorbi’s journey going in the next 3 years?
Although we’re focused on B2C via students right now, Zorbi is generalisable across many contexts.
First, we want to make sure we’ve built something that students undeniably love. After that, we’ll be expanding our focus to schools since we have signs showing that we’re solving big problems for them as well. For example, one private school in Texas is saving 10+ hours/week and they’ve completely eliminated worksheets thanks to Zorbi.
In three years, we’ll have branched out of the student space and we will be THE “efficient memory tool” used by students, schools, and adults across the world.
What is another start-up in New Zealand that gets you excited?
Eugene Yao from eVouch is building Word-Of-Mouth Marketing as a Service. The opportunity and TAM there is insane.
Who do you look up to for advice/inspiration? What’s your favourite piece of advice from them?
I don’t really look up to any singular person, but Naval was responsible for helping me understand that a big salary wasn’t the way to reach happiness. See: https://www.navalmanack.com/
“Retirement is when you stop sacrificing today for some imaginary tomorrow. When today is complete, in and of itself, you’re retired.” — Naval Ravikant
What would you say to someone interested in supporting or learning more about Zorbi?
If you’re talented and want to hear how our rockstar team will disrupt the entire education industry, please reach out at: sukhans@zorbiapp.com
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