Our Accidental Entry Into The Start-Up World
It all started in 2016. As part of our Enterprise Development course during our master’s degree at the London School of Economics, all students were put into groups of 5 and told to create a business startup idea to then pitch to a team of judges at a competition at the end of the term.
By applying the principles of design thinking, we were to identify a problem, design a solution by fully empathising with our end-consumer and finally, create and test a ‘rapid prototype’ to help visualise the idea. This meant getting creative with all kinds of random everyday objects — from popsicle sticks to pieces of cardboard and sticky notes — to act as a first step to bring the product to life.
Although all 5 in our team belonged to completely different countries and backgrounds, we had one thing in common — a passion and appreciation for Education. My fellow teammate, Vedika, and I were both from South Asia (Nepal and Pakistan respectively) and had first-hand knowledge of the issues within education in the region. We shared a sense of privilege to attend the LSE, and strongly believed that the challenges in our home countries could be transformed into opportunities for us to give back and create real and meaningful positive impact.
After days of exploring opportunities within the region, we eventually decided to focus on the issue of students from marginalised communities in South Asia attending schools with little to no classroom furniture — a situation that forces them to lean on the floor to read and write in uncomfortable positions for hours, resulting in lower productivity, discomfort, and discipline challenges in class.
With this in mind, we put our heads together and came up with the ‘Educase’, a backpack that unfolds into a smooth desk — an idea that would eventually lead us to win the end-of-year competition. The late nights, endless brainstorms, spontaneous networking calls, hilariously awful product sketches, and floppy initial prototypes all felt worth it in the end when our DIY prototype at the time — a box file with ‘legs’ made out of cardboard that we spray-painted blue — was proudly placed in front of our team as we gathered around posing for pictures to celebrate 1st place.
With all the positive feedback we received, we found ourselves at a turning point we hadn’t imagined before — do we just close the chapter on this project, or take the plunge and enter ourselves into the start-up world?
Naturally, after graduation, some of our team members followed different ambitions, however with Vedika and I emotionally invested in this cause, we felt motivated to continue and see where it goes. With both of us working full time, across countries, and with zero expertise in product design, we found ourselves squeezing in meetings in our lunch breaks with designer freelancers, exploring material stores, and researching business strategies at any spare moment.
Fast forward to today and Educase is a registered social enterprise in Nepal with a fully functioning, manufactured product that has so far helped around 1000 children from around the country. We’ve still got a long way to go, but are so happy to have reached where we are!
Though Universities and courses do their best to teach the theory of running a successful business, nothing comes close to the real thing. Despite being small, we’ve experienced plenty — competing against other start-ups around the world, having no clue and improvising, saying yes to opportunities, almost having our design stolen, meeting other new and interesting entrepreneurs, juggling time zones and motivation levels, and of course, adapting our startup business to the ‘new normal’ during this pandemic.
For that reason, we wanted to create this space to share our learnings, questions and experiences with other budding entrepreneurs also trying to figure out how to thrive and survive. We hope that through our work we can improve children’s learning environments and access to education, and that this blog is an inviting community for all those who have a similar mission (or not) to join us. So stay tuned to follow us on this ride!
- Neha Ahmed, Co-Founder of Educase
