Edtech entrepreneurs launch £180,000 crowdfunding campaign

“EDTECH” entrepreneurs have launched a crowdfunding campaign to support the growth of their elearning mobile app and website, Synap.

Leeds University Medical School students 24 year-old James Gupta and Omair Vaiyani, the brains behind Synap, have launched a Crowdcube campaign to raise £180,000 for further marketing and product development activities. £13,210 had already been raised at the time of writing.

The two entrepreneurs were inspired to create Synap during their own studies, during which, “static learning” was hindering their revision. “It’s about learning in a dynamic way,”said Mr Gupta. “We created it for ourselves but when we went live to the public, it got 13,000 hits in 6 hours and snowballed from there.”

Mr Gupta has the credentials to back up the label ‘entrepreneur’. He has already sold his first company, JumpIn, a student taxi sharing app, to Europe’s biggest taxi firm Addison Lee, whilst still at medical school. With co-founder and chief technical officer Omair Vaiyani, Synap is set to do big things, starting with university education – which they both want to continue.

The principle behind Synap is being able to create your own multiple-choice quizzes for exam revision and courses, which are then shared with other site users. Synap uses proprietary algorithms based on years of research from neuroscience and other fields to track students’ progress in different areas, and suggest what they should study next.

“There’s been a lot of research into how the brain works, and the transfer from short term to long term memory,” said Mr Gupta and Synap works under the idea of spaced repetition, a learning technique which sees people revisit what they’ve learnt after intervals of time.

The site then sends notifications, intelligently reminding people when the next best time to re-read or test themselves is.

Mr Gupta said: “There’s a social network model behind it, you can make test questions public or private, and you set up profiles to use it. It’s effectively an e-learning package, giving people homework but in a social and altruistic way.”

Though initially launched to help medical and science students, the crowdsourced tests that Synap delivers are expanding, and they even have a philosophy practice test on the site.

The team, which also includes head of operations Stuart Clarke, head of technology Jason Gaved, and head of marketing Oscar Price, have ‘plans in the works to expand into new markets from primary education all the way through to the professional development market, and out globally.

Synap is based on a “freemium” model, and though it is early days for the firm as they grow their user base to create an active community, payment models for advanced features are also in the works.

After JumpIn, Mr Gupta had time and experience he wanted to use in another project (as well as his medical degree) and now Synap has been shortlisted for a Kairos 50 award, which highlights and helps the world’s most innovative startups with founders 25 years-old and younger.

They have received help from the University of Leeds’ Spark programme to support the growth of the business with an on-campus office and legal and financial advice and the team are planning to focus on their main UK areas; London, Leeds and Manchester.

“Growing up with technology, where you can access anything, anywhere, ours and younger generations have got used to it, that’s their reality,” said Mr Gupta, “There’s been a rise in 20 something year-old entrepreneurs because technology has made it possible for a 20 something year-old not only to develop an idea, but to distribute it around the globe.

“There’s also the awareness that there’s not a great job market out there, and younger people are annoyed with education, like doctors are with the NHS. It’s about building something to disrupt this, but it’s difficult to work within the system.”

Having gained 50,000 users with just £10,000 in grants, if they meet their target of £180,000 Synap looks like it will continue to grow.

There will be a Leeds investor event at the Google Digital Garage and Hello Works site at Leeds Docks next Tuesday 1 September, 5.30pm, and their fundraising page can be found here .