Solution

Read the interview of Mustafa Salam, CEO of Corrsy

What specific education challenge is this solution trying to resolve?

I am originally from Iraq; I left the country in 2015. I consider myself a typical Iraqi: I lost my father in a civil war, I have been internally displaced, a refugee, and my life has been like a Hollywood movie! I come from a very good family. The two things that brought me to do this are: First, entrepreneurship, which I have always been practising, and second, I had a very good education, attended private schools, graduated from engineering, and had good English skills.

In the Middle East people learn for exams—not for life. We help you pass the exam but also help to gain skills for careers. Statistics say that in the Middle East 7/10 kids receive private tutoring. The cost of this reaches up to 20% of any family income, which is very expensive. On average it costs 3500 USD per student per schooling year to pass the pre-college exam. If families don't have the funds, their children do not pass it. The exams are designed this way.

Especially in rural areas, for a technology solution to be implemented, the whole local infrastructure, usage of devices, low internet connectivity and band width are a challenge. Now, the average speed for Iraqi users is about 1 MB per second, and in Finland it is 240 MB per second. In Iraq they are still using 3,5 G, in Finland 5G. But we work with that. If you open Corrsy anywhere you will get the opportunities very fast.

Where does this solution fit into a global or local (digital) educational landscape?

Our vision is to give high quality education to everyone with a mobile connection. We are using the national curricula but also trying to provide skills and competence outside of it. Simply put, we are in between the national curricula and competence solving the private tutoring issue.

And I know what it will look like on the other side without education. Private tutoring is the second largest business within education in the area—and so there is a possibility to make both profit and great impact at the same time.

How does your solution work, especially for new users?

Corrsy is a student-centred solution, focused on enhancing student learning outcomes. We deliver content designed on micro learning, storytelling and gamification in order to get higher engagement and better learning outcomes.

When students enter, they see the game environment, and the fear of exams is taken away. We get to the point immediately. It is more cost effective and affordable for many. Students see the content in different formats such as video, text, pdf. It is from the national curriculum but based on the Finnish education principles. After every lesson there is an exam which is inspired by the previous year's exams. We are implementing them so that students see what it will be like in the national exams. They see it and when they feel like they would pass, they feel good.

But private tutoring means different things in different contexts. In Iraq it's not private in the Finnish sense, when a student visits a tutor individually. In Iraq it is sitting in a class with hundreds of others getting the same teaching. The whole experience is like this.

How well-known, popular, or used is the solution in Finland? (To what do you attribute this success?)

In Finland we are part of the bigger ecosystem. We are trying to do it like many other founders in Finland that are trying to get their solutions to the Middle East. We are working very closely with other experienced entrepreneurs. In Finland we don't have users but a good ecosystem that helps us to grow in the Middle East.

Corrsy is specialised in one thing and not all the things, so we are happy to open opportunities for others who are not familiar with the market and the implicit knowledge that you gain only after living there, like trying to build a business consortium, to extend the lifespan of our students' opportunities. Other Finnish solutions are very much needed there.

How safe is it to use this solution?

We take safety very seriously. As a Finnish company we have to comply with regulations. But there are some other serious reasons too for us not sharing any data.

In Iraq girls are studying behind their family's backs because of the situation. Even fathers can’t know that families pay for tutoring services for girls, so subscriptions are asked to be paid when fathers are not home, especially in the rural areas which we are targeting. When fathers go to work, girls talk to mothers and agree to operate in silence and pay the subscription fee behind the father's back. If they found out, it would be a tough situation. Sometimes girls even need to do this behind their mothers' back. Sometimes the eldest girls do it and pay the subscription fee for their younger siblings. It is hard to believe! It is peoples' lives we are protecting here, so we will not share any data.

It is still the case in some communities that girls need to drop out of education to be housewives, marry and have kids at age 15. You are not allowed to go to school. But what to do when you want to continue your education? We have hundreds of users like this. Our specific target group is 12-19-year-olds, and that is +20% of the Iraqi population. They are not reached by social media due to their age. Now, many other solution providers are knocking on our door to use our algorithm, which would mean an extra revenue stream for us, but we are saying no, until we are sure we have a safe and good plan. So far, we have refused all requests, including research. We must protect the children, girls especially.

Scalability, Impact and sustainability

Scale is a result of multiple successful implementations in a variety of contexts. How can the solution be scaled up to reach a larger number of learners and schools?

First, we have extensive growth-hacking practices on social media. Marketing costs us 3 cents per download, while for the competitors it is 50-60 cents.

Second, we like partnering with other ecosystem partners, like edtech companies, and complementing their services—not competing. We want to become their digital arm. Now we need to start working with teacher training programs.

When it comes to technology, we need to work with the big ecosystem players such as telecom companies, to reach millions of users in low tech areas. This is what our whole design is built for.

Share an implementation success story/quote to describe your scalability.

When it comes to content creation and how to scale with content, the question is are we able to produce a number of lessons? In what number of languages? We really put time on the design of the production line. Now we are producing 30 lessons per week. Every lesson is priced and can be scaled in every country. Very audible, engaging and high-quality content.

Explain your Operational model / Business model

We operate with a B2C (business-to-consumer) model in Iraq. I know how to hustle there as you need to be careful because of the corruption.

We have a B2B2C (business-to-business-to-consumer) model in Saudi Arabia because building a brand there is more expensive, the competition is fierce and everyone is watching. We have a very good partner, a family office focused on Education. We are also partnering operationally with an offline and online tutoring company to extend their services as their digital arm.

Is it possible for parents, teachers, schools, municipalities, governments, CSR/NGOs/Funds to become users/customers of your solution?

Families

What are your pricing plans / funding models like?

In Iraq, a student pays 22 USD per year for 5 subjects for the whole grade.

How do you measure the impact, or effectiveness, of your solution?

For us it is important to collect data of the user journey: completion rate, number of passed quizzes, grades, subjects studied. We have measures of all that.

The most concrete KPI (Key Performance indicator) is the passing rate. When we started, we wanted to test if this is proven. 69% is the passing rate after learning with Corrsy and 35% after a normal private tutoring service. We almost doubled the rate.

Does the user receive feedback on the impact of the solution after using it? If so, how?

The learning experience includes interactivity and feedback. If you are learning on Corrsy, we use the local dialect to encourage the student, for example, "Hey, don't worry. This is where you are not passing, you could perhaps continue there!" We give a detailed report after each lesson.

Ecosystem

Who are the necessary people and roles needed to ensure a successful implementation of your solution?

I see education is an ecosystem, of course! As a founder I also cannot do it without the ecosystem of stakeholders. We have teachers, without them no Corrsy! Telecomms, internet service providers, and tech partners locally are all needed. Without them no knowledge or the right kind of user experience.

The Finnish stakeholders are meaningful for us too. Not only the "made in Finland brand", which is great, but really trying to learn how the pedagogical side is done here, to really maximise it in the Middle East.

Then, we have the private tutoring services, a new business area for us, a content digital arm for them to give better experiences for their students.

Families—more courses for them, how to take the excessive pressure off the children. We have planned a marketing campaign for mothers especially, who care a lot for their children in this culture, and families for how to take the pressure away.

If any of the stakeholders are taken out, I cannot see Corrsy working.

How can local innovators, startups or organisations collaborate with you or the solution?

Good question! I want to share a campaign we did in collaboration with another innovator. It was about how to motivate students. In schools and private tutoring centres they are treating students as if they were in military service, with punishments and following them every day, beating them with a stick in front of their friends if they are not delivering homework. We cannot do this because first, we don't want to, but also because our service is online. Students will learn with incentives.

We did a campaign for students where they get to collect a point after studying on Corrsy. With the points they get discounts on e-commerce services. Most dropouts happen at the age of 15 after only 7 years of school, and what they think is that in 7 years they create a base for their career. But in our campaign we said, "Want to bring food for your family? Study 5 h a week to gain 5 USD, which you can spend on food. You will still be the man of the house, bringing food for the family."

How can local stakeholders, including educators, policymakers, and parents, be engaged in the implementation of the solution?

When it comes to the policymakers, in Iraq we are avoiding them. There are many invites, but we are low key partners, and partly for security, partly for corruption reasons. They say they need a cut of the cake. This is the disadvantage of operating in the Global South. But it is completely different in Saudi-Arabia, with meetings with the Ministry of Education, for example. They want to see us in real life. It depends on the market, and we aim to change the curricula and improve student health—this is what we are aiming at.

How can the middleman help you?

I am always using partners, although I know the culture. It is all about the connections. And they are needed very considerably. In Saudi Arabia we couldn't do anything without a middleman, and it is always like this. Iraq was easier, as I am from Iraq. But it also took 3,5 years and still I am, of course, using middlemen.

Although we have some multicultural people in our team we still need to adjust to cultural differences. These differences took me years to explain to a Finn. You cannot imagine it if I tell you that a teacher beats their students. And we need a team to do it, to work with the problem. We are getting there.