Tika is a bridge between the learner and the teacher

Language education is one of the needs that has always had a wide market due to the weakness of schools and universities in fulfilling it. A market that has created a platform for the activities of institutions and private teachers. Facilitation in this space, such as setting up platforms for communication between teachers and learners, as well as the idea of ​​virtual education, is one of the most common actions that startups have sought to do. Tika also one of Startup are those that compete with other startups in the space of providing language training services. To learn more about this startup and the path it has taken so far, we had an interview with Hamed Vafaei, the co-founder of Tika, which we present to you.

Start with yourself. What activities did you have before Tika?

I am Hamed Vafaei, the co-founder of Tika startup, a software graduate. Ali Rezaei and Hossein Mohsenian are the other co-founders of the team. Hossein Mohsenian studied software and Ali Rezaei studied medical engineering at Amirkabir University. Hossein and I have done fintech work in several companies, and before that we were also involved in businesses such as Telegram advertising, writing management software for photography studios, and also website design, which we were successful to some extent. Due to working in the city and relatively small market volume, with the production of similar samples, it became practically difficult for us to work.

Where did tikka start?

The problem of language education is a problem that has been with students since school days and a solution has never been provided for it. According to the causal studies in neuroscience and the history of language teaching, we came to the conclusion that we can provide a solution. First, we went to find the applications available in the market and the functioning of the schools, and in June 1996 we reached MVP. For the work space, we got help from the side-view accelerator and the advice we got from them was very helpful. Tafernegar is a large holding company whose main product is Peach accounting software has launched a unit called the Innovation and Entrepreneurship Unit, through which it invests in teams and after a while introduces the teams to Karaya or other groups.

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What services do you offer?

Tika is a bridge between the learner and the teacher. Due to minimal access to the community, teachers repeat their teaching methods, and on the other hand, the content that the learner receives is not rich content and does not have access to good teachers. This made us create a communication bridge so that teachers can record their courses and send them to the TIKA system.

Our previous version included a section called “College”, which is like a language class, and another section called “Entertainment”. The entertainment section ensures that the space is not limited to an absolutely educational space and providing tips. The structure of the college section is also in a form that accompanies the user from beginner to advanced level.

How did team building happen in Tika?

Due to the camaraderie and co-university of the team members before the formation of Tika, the skills of the members were somewhat close to each other. Ali was more active in the field of making TIKA algorithms and interacting with lecturers. Hossein and I worked in the field of production and market, and we tried to experience different skills and test ourselves in different fields. The team consists of 5 permanent members and 5 part-time members. Ms. Hadith Fakhari, Shaghaig Khorasani and Fatemeh Bazdar are helping us in the field of content production, Sahar Ghamtkar in the field of UI/UX, Amir Amini and Yasin Vermziar as developers and main members.

How is teacher recruitment done?

First, we invite a group of teachers to visit the service, and after that, interested teachers are asked to submit their resumes and proposals; Of course, there are a series of lines and filters for teachers before entering the system.

About 13 instructors are working with us and we plan to increase the number of instructors to 40 by the end of the year; In addition, each teacher can have several courses of his own.

Two of our teachers have lived abroad and are currently continuing their studies in the language field at the post-graduate level. But in general, only people who have an educational approach are considered by us.

What are your plans to enter the market?

The first strategy is based on the teachers themselves; Instructors themselves have a large number of language learners, both language learners and enthusiasts, who can be trained as users in Tika. Our next strategy is to use content. Content that has been worked hard and we are trying to spread it in different social networks. Usually, we don’t spend a lot on advertising and we try to attract users by offering the advantages of the service.

How many users does Tika have now?

We currently have 19,000 users using Tika, and some of them are trying the service for free. The difference between Tika and other competitors is that in Tika, users can use the 5-day subscription of the application for free.

How do you generate income?

We sell one-month, three-month and six-month subscriptions, which is our main subscription model, and we also have courses that the user buys by paying.

In addition to the application, are you thinking of a website?

The website will be ready in a month. Due to the fact that we were Android developers ourselves, we worked more with the platform that we mastered and currently the site is just a landing page that directs the user to the application. The site will have the facilities of the application and the user can log in with his account both through the application and through the site. On the other hand, it is much easier to attract users through the web than through an application.

What startups are your competitors and what is your competitive advantage?

By the way, the market of our competitors is very hot; Because this market is attractive both financially and in terms of audience. We have two main competitive advantages that differentiate us from our competitors:

• We are active around the platform and we invite professors and our content in the music, video or courses section is updated.
• Two, we have a method that we follow; This method stabilizes the learning process and postpones the forgetting process, and because one of the team members is an expert in this field, we have a series of models that this method is based on; The simplest programs in line with this method are sending notifications that are sent for browsing, and through gamification, we made this browsing more attractive, as some competitors have also gone to gamification.

What share of the market does the field of language education have?

According to the statistics of 1993, the income of Tehran schools was 1000 billion tomans. At the level of the Middle East, the digital education of English was 230 million dollars.

Are you planning to develop a new service on Tika platform?

At first, we are going to strengthen the support part and then go to other languages ​​and add other languages ​​to Tika. In order to enter this area and get market share, we need to attract capital and we hope that this amount will enter Tika so that we can Expand the service.

What important challenges did you encounter along the way?

Usually, the first challenge is to form the team and to harmonize the spirit of the team members, and one of the reasons why we went well was that the core of the team members got to know each other. The biggest challenge was cooperation with other team members, about ten people joined us during this period and then left, two of them are working on a similar idea to ours in a separate startup. Another challenge we had was the financial issue, which was partially solved with the amount we received from Taranegar for acceleration.

last word…

In the way of forming a startup, the team is very important. A team can give wings to a startup and can hinder its progress. Thank God, we had a good team and we traveled many paths together, and I hope the rest of the path will also go well.

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