ZOL Jumpstart Challenge finalist startup profile: mTutor

This short series of 6 articles will cover the profiles of each of the six finalists that made it into the finals of this year’s ZOL Jumpstart Challenge to be held this Friday, 14 September. 

Startup: mTutor

Year founded: 2012

Team: Douglas Chifetete, Prince Kaguda, Nigel Gambanga, Blessing Bonde

mTutor was a winner of the Etxt Mobile Apps Challenge and has previously been featured here.

mTutor is an SMS based educational platform that provides SMS based question and answering techniques. It is working on learning material provided by the Ministry of Education ,Sports and Culture and in line with the State approved syllabi. The initial application focuses on primary school mathematics and covers key concepts in the school curriculum. The platform will also provide meaningful data about the pupils` performance to schools, teachers and parents. It will be available on the Econet Wireless network and powered by the eTXT messaging platform that was built by Forget Me Not Software.

Education’s role in poverty eradication is well known internationally. Sadly, access to study material such as books, supplementary guidance and free resources on the internet is out of the reach of a significant amount of students locally and across the developing world. With mobile phones reaching even the remotest of places within Zimbabwe and across the region, mTutor believes its SMS powered system has a finely balanced commercial and social thrust.

Core features of the mTutor application are as follows:

• Topic based practice questions
• Progress tracking: (To get assessments of the performance of pupils)
• Leader board (Pupils will get to see and compare results with top pupils in their grade)
• Quizzes (Pupils will be able to create and play quizzes with friends)
• Multiple pupil registration on one mobile number (for community usage)
• Automatic Assignments (the system will generate assignment questions for pupils based on concepts and topics they struggle with)
• A viral ability to invite friends to join using mobile numbers and email
• A no frills dashboard for use by teachers and schools to evaluate pupils

All members of the team hail from technical backgrounds with each having worked for local software development firms within the telecommunications sector.