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These two men saw the opportunity and gap in the Nigerian education system and decided to bridge the gap. Ogunlana Olumide and Chukwuwezam Obanor are founders of prep class a platform where students are helped to prepare for local exams like Jamb and others. They provide quality teachers who give students one on one teaching after school hours.
Olumide and Chukwuwezam are graduate of electrical electronics from the university of Lagos, they met during their diploma year and were not close friends until projects brought them together. It was during this time they found out they had similar work ethics which set the tone for them to work together in the future.After graduation Olumide went ahead to work for Jumia as the senior online marketing specialist in 2012 where he worked for a year before quitting to focus on prepclass. While Chukwuwezam traveled to Europe for a 3-week festival where he got inspired to launch his own company after gaining 6 months of work experience as a business developer for StartUp Partners Africa (now defunct sunglasses.com.ng and glamour.com.ng.
They both met later and decided to start Prep Class. Chukwuwezam said “At the beginning we bootstrapped seriously. Both Olumide and I had worked for a while, so we had some savings which together amounted to about N700,000 or so. We were young and naïve, but we were passionate and we just wanted to take that plunge. So we started by using Olumide’s house as our office’.
He recounted how they survived,believing they will get back millions as soon as their product was ready but it didn’t work out until February 2014 when they won their first competition: the Techcabal Battlefield that marked the beginning of a better entrepreneurial journey.
According to Chukwuwezam, technology is completely changing the educational space in Nigeria, and for the first time empowers parents and students to easily improve their education and access personalised study help.“It’s very different from what you have in classes because this is a 1-on-1 arrangement with the entire focus concentrated on just one student with the bid to know and understand his strengths, weaknesses and most importantly, to help him meet his goals and ambitions.”
At prep class, each tutor is screened well going through different careful selections that prepares them for the work ahead.
Today a parent or client can see their child struggle in a particular subject, or be apprehensive for a particular exam, and pick up their phone, go to Prepclass.com.ng, and have access to our test prep platform for a token fee or request that a knowledgeable specialist be sent to their home to help their child through that difficulty,”they said.” We wanted to make an impact in the education sector in Nigeria. When Jamb announced plans to move exams to computer based tests we saw an opportunity to create a test prep platform that would help students across Nigeria prepare for local exams and have educational resources at their fingertips. However as time went on, we realised it would be much more impactful on students learning for us to connect them with physical tutors”.
They both believe in a greater and better Nigeria and that starts with a revamp of the educational sector.
