Author’s Blurb: When I was in high school, my tuition teachers were decided on from word of mouth or by going to afterschool classes conducted by the school’s teachers themselves. Either way, there were very few options of tutors to choose from.
Caritutor.my understands that this entire process could be done so much better.
When conducting market research for their potential users in Malaysia, founders Faizal and Rostam found that many parents still struggled with making an informed decision with tutors for their kids.
Good Old Fashioned Tuition Sessions, But Streamlined
“Many parents don’t quite know how to find a tutor or how to judge how good or bad they are. They panic and end up paying for something that doesn’t really help their child, without assessment and regulation,” said Faizal.
The struggles of his own wife to find an experienced ustaz was also a huge factor that led to the birth of Caritutor.my in 2015.
Before writing this article, the concept of online tutoring platforms was new to me.
However, a quick Google search will show that Caritutor.my isn’t the only startup out there of its kind.
Sites like Home Tuition and TeachMe also allow students to be matched with a tutor through an online platform.
However, TeachMe is a platform that provide exclusively online tutoring services.
This works by having a student log in to join an online classroom where a tutor livestreams the lesson.
Home Tuition connects students with private home tutors, and is available for both face-to-face and online classes.
Caritutor.my, on the other hand, is slightly different.
They essentially work as an online directory, where students can browse through tutors that are located nearby.
Students can then decide on a tutor based on his/her fees, schedule availability, achievements, and more.
Once that’s done, they can go ahead and book said tutor based on their own personal preferences and timing.
The A-Z List Of Vetted Tutors
In terms of what categories of tutors are listed, Faizal elaborated that you should be able to find anything from music, sports, culinary, photography and more—so it’s not just limited to the vertical of traditional educational categories.
They also encourage professional trainers and speakers to put up listings as well.
Corporate partners would benefit the most from this, as they would be able to handpick candidates straight from the platform—instead of incurring extra costs going through third-party services.
“Due to the economic challenges, more and more people are interested to create secondary income. The simplest is to share and extend their knowledge and skill to those desiring to pursue such knowledge,” Faizal continued.
All tutors are of course background checked by Caritutor.my themselves, although they don’t specifically mention the criteria they’re looking for.
After passing these background checks, the tutor can then start posting their listings and decide on their rates.
“As of today, we are open to letting our tutors set their own pricing rate. However, we have it planned in our roadmap to introduce new structures to differentiate between Premium and regular tutors,” Faizal elaborated.
To ensure that they keep up the quality of their tutors, Caritutor.my also relies on student feedback and reviews.
When asked about their plans for expansion, Faizal told us that they were focusing on building the community to serve both tutors and students first.
“We believe that the market is big enough to build a community of tutors that are willing to share their knowledge and experience at the same time,” explained Faizal.
“Our forecast is to generate 1% from the total students nationwide of 5 million, bringing us RM1 million revenue in the first year with a capacity of 50,000 booking size.”
The team has also since expanded their operations to Indonesia, under the domain Caritutor.com.
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I do see Caritutor.my’s appeal, but only if I try hard enough to see it from the perspective of parents who still insist on face-to-face private tuition sessions for their kids.
But digging around their website, they have tutors who also offer services ranging from digital marketing to forex trading and photoshop tutorials—all of which are very clearly targeted towards young adults all the way up to a more mature audience.
From a person who’s interested in digital marketing, I’m not exactly sure as to how I’d need a tutor to learn this when a plethora of information always awaits me on the worldwide web. For free.
The argument for face-to-face private tutoring is albeit a strong one, but perhaps not all categories of subjects are made equal in the eyes of Caritutor.my’s users.
If they do (for some reason) implement features like the ability to buy mini-courses designed by these tutors, or even to secure private video sessions with them, it would be ten times more interesting to me.
Bottom Line: Their platform doesn’t resonate with me, but then again, the demand for tutoring services by Malaysian parents is huge. Looking through their platform, they do seem to have an abundance of home tutors for primary and secondary students—whom I suppose make up the majority of their users.
- You can read more about other Malaysian startups here.
Featured Image Credit: Caritutor.my
