Building a Scalable Multi-Language E-Learning Platform

Darajat’s founders approached Netguru after they noticed an excellent business opportunity in solving critical problems within the public education systems in Egypt, Kuwait, and the Middle East.

The public schools are crowded with 27-35 kids to a class and teachers often fail to deliver the full curriculum during a 50-minute lesson. Many turn to private tuition, but the availability is low and prices are high, creating a tough situation for both parents and students – sometimes paying over $3,000 per semester for private lessons.

Darajat’s founders decided to develop a useful and engaging e-learning platform keeping quality high and costs low: the most expensive mathematics course would cost between $100-120 per semester, the price of just one two-hour meeting with a private maths tutor.

The platform had to address specific regional problems:

• It needed to be developed for the Arabic language (reading right-to-left).
• The learning management system (LMS) had to deal with an ever-changing curriculum for multiple countries.
• The platform had to be designed for further localization down the line.

Challenges

Darajat needed to find a world-class product team with experience in both education projects and the Arabic language.

No local software development or product design agency had any experience with e-learning. Netguru already had experience with both education and the Arabic market from past projects such as Raqib50. We also had experience coding for languages reading from right-to-left.

We were given the challenge to:

• Help develop the product from scratch and provide ongoing maintenance.
• Help in the areas of marketing, tech solutions and revamping the Content Management System (CMS).
• Help clarify the scope of the product and cut-out the existing MVP.
• Revamp the Learning Management System to handle curriculums from multiple-countries.
• Maintain a consistent brand proposition during development and after going live.

What we did

The Darajat founders analyzed all the e-learning solutions available in the Middle East, Europe, and the US. They also approached hundreds of teachers to recruit the top 80. Finally, they engaged the Netguru team to build a state-of-the-art product.

The major goals were:

• Engage the best teachers.
• Deliver the best quality e-learning platform.
• Combine visual and audio messaging.
• Make the app appealing for both students and their parents.

Netguru acted as the right technological partner, a CTO, CPO, and CMO with a world-class design and software development team. We were responsible for building the entire platform from scratch. This included product design, development, as well as consulting services in the areas of marketing and strategic technology choices.

The client had a clear vision of what they wanted to build. We helped clarify the extent of the project during an intense "scoping session". During the workshops, we agreed on how the system would be set-up. It had to work with the Learning Management System (LMS) they had chosen before. The Darajat app we built can support multiple languages and is designed for easy localization.

We encouraged the Darajat founders to talk out their ideas, so no bottlenecks would delay the project. This way we managed to design a payment flow and UX that is able to support different ways to sell and course bundling.

Our client came with an idea and walked away with a complete platform. At the moment, we are responsible for the maintenance and further development of the Darajat.education app.

The next milestone is migrating to a new content management system (CMS).

The results

With help from Netguru, Darajat has filled a significant gap in the Arab education sector. This was only possible by working with a valid digital partner - a software house would only have delivered the app.

The platform is compatible with the Learning Management System and is able to adapt to other markets, as the platform has already gained traction in Kuwait and Egypt and is ready to expand to further countries, also outside the Middle East.

"We approached Netguru in 2018 – we had the idea, but wanted someone to guide us on how to do it. In just seven months we finished the entire curriculum for high schools in Egypt and Kuwait. Things are going in the right direction. What we have achieved so far is a huge thing."

Abdulla Hayat Co-founder and CEO at Darajat

• Reduced the price of tutorship from $1,500 to $100-$120 per semester;
• Delivered to the market a quality product with recurring payments used by 100k-200k students each year, and targeting 2 million students in Egypt and Kuwait only;
• Attracted investors for the project financed at first by the founders;
• Set up a model that can scale up and become the e-learning platform for the region.

If you'd like to learn more, read our interview with Abdulla Hayat, co-founder and CEO at Darajat ECS, or ask us for additional information.