The Cube

Skooli's market focus is K-12 schools and districts. This segment is an obvious choice because of the sheer size of the market; the K-12 online tutoring market in the UK, for example, has the potential to grow by USD 4.5 billion during 2021-2025, and the market's growth momentum will accelerate at a CAGR of 10.77% (Technavio, 2021). Ontario alone has over 2 million K-12 students with approximately 850,000 e-learning students (State of the Nation, 2020).

Skooli's offering type is a service (on-demand and unlimited online tutoring). They offer the platform and the teachers as an inseparable package. The on-demand segment led the online tutoring services market in 2020, accounting for over 75% share of the global revenue (Grandview Research, 2021). The rapidly growing adoption of customized and personalized learning is triggering the on-demand tutoring market’s growth positively.

Skooli appeals to a few different buyers. There are opportunities for learners to buy personally, as some high school students will purchase this directly. More commonly, the learning is bought for the learner, in the case of parents who would like to give their child assistance with their school course. However, Skooli's main target is large scale education organizations and school districts i.e. learning bought centrally. This target allows Skooli to sell thousands of licenses in a B2B (business to business) model, which is exponentially faster and larger than selling B2C (business to customer). For example, Skooli provides access to 400,000+ students through their TVO Mathify contract.

The global target is mainly anglophone countries. These countries have excellent internet infrastructure and use English as their first language (the first language of Skooli's tutors). There are opportunities to expand to European countries with language skills since the service is available 24/7 (time zones are not a concern). While their marketing does not focus on English language skills for ESL students per se, students trying to learn the language would benefit from getting assistance from a native English speaker.

This market supports export oriented learning technologies and substitution of imports. While tutoring services are often imported in these markets, take Ontario, for example, there are also local companies that provide similar services. There are smaller tutoring companies (i.e. Tutor Doctor) that provide in-person and online tutoring on a smaller scale. Some schools in Ontario imported online tutoring services from outside of Canada but replaced this with the locally developed Skooli service due to better localization of content/service (Ontario certified teachers).

Skooli's target market is quite developed in terms of educational technology, however, not too far along. Skooli finds themselves roughly in the middle of the development curve, which has allowed them to be one of the first to market at scale.

Skooli works with an already well-developed learning system (i.e. online schools, day schools, home schooled students, etc.); it acts as an add-on or supplemental to the existing system. Skooli will succeed because learning technology is deeply embedded in the educational system in the target market already. For example, Skooli landed a contract with TVO ILC for the TVO Mathify program, providing their service to 400,000+ students. This was made possible by the fact that TVO already had a robust elearning platform and Skooli was able to simply integrate a single sign on (SSO) button into the existing learning environment.

In a smaller way, Skooli also substitutes for other Forms of learning as it can replace in-person tutoring. Given the expense of in-person tutoring, the inconvenience of coordinating schedules, and the potential for travel, Skooli's service will overtake traditional tutoring services almost completely.