Sweden-based Nigerian innovator, Ismail Eleburuike, Ismail Eleburuike, has continued to attract global recognition by changing the academic landscape of the continent through his EdTech platform. With his SchoolTry platform, Eleburuike is rebuilding the operating system for African schools, elevating quality education with globallyrecognised digitisation strategy.
Eleburuike has two Master’s degrees: one in Electrical Engineering with an emphasis in Telecommunications from Blekinge Institute of Technology, and another in Project Management and Operational Development from KTH Royal Institute of Technology.
In his story, his innovative journey started when his mentee, who had served as a classroom teacher in Katsina State during the mandatory National Youth Service Scheme, reached out to him for financial assistance to set up his own school. However, Eleburuike insisted that he would only support vision if the school the teacher intended to build was a digital one.
That conversation, along with his firsthand experience of the transformative power of education in his life and what is available in Sweden, prompted him to research further how schools could be digitised. Having studied models in the US, UK, Sweden, and what Nigeria could offer, Eleburuike concluded that instead of building just one school, they could serve multiple schools.
He then sketched an imaginary architecture for how the school would look, and that’s what gave birth to SchoolTry, an education management solution that empowers schools to coordinate operations, enhance communication, and improve overall efficiency.
The EdTech provides a platform where students can take courses, school administrators can manage their students and teachers, and teachers can give assignments, mark attendance, and grade students’ performance digitally.
The all-in-one platform offers customised, digitised educational solutions that simplify school operations and enhance learning experiences for students, administrators, and teachers.
Eleburuike launched SchoolTry in 2020, focusing on basic education (primary and secondary schools), before pivoting to serve tertiary institutions. The innovator said resilience and persistence, two core values of entrepreneurship, had kept him going on the journey so far, even when first-timers had struggled to break through and some others eventually collapsed under challenging environment for such endeavour.
During the early days of SchoolTry, it encountered challenges when some parents refused to pay after the solution had been deployed. At some point, SchoolTry was deployed to command schools, a network of 45 Nigerian Army managed schools, but after a full year of operation, a change of leadership forced the startup out.
However, some of the schools, after seeing the value on offer, decided to continue independently of the headquarters and pay for it out of their own pockets. To date, 15 of the 40 approved still utilise SchoolTry, a development Eleburuike described as a turning point in his startup journey. Following this validation, some higher education institutions approached SchoolTry to replicate the software for them, and this became the EdTech’s biggest revenue channel.
Within a year of deploying SchoolTry for higher education, the startup generated more revenue than it made in three years deploying SchoolTry for K-12. And it was only a logical decision as SchoolTry now focuses on serving tertiary institutions and vocational training centres.
Eleburuike says he is more confident about the future based on the challenges and journey so far. SchoolTry now has 400,000 active students on its tertiary platform, with over two million users (including lecturers, partners, etc); yet Eleburuike says he’s yet to serve one percent of the market.
Today, SchoolTry serves Obafemi Awolowo University, University of Ilorin, and Kogi State University, and discussions are ongoing to expand to other institutions to deploy the EdTech solution. With five simple clicks on SchoolTry, students’ transcripts can get to anywhere in the world on request.
However, with the difficulty surrounding data migration for some institutions, the transcripts collection might not be fully active, even though the service is fully operational in University of Ilorin. Currently, the startup is building an AI-job matching infrastructure atop the higher education system.
It can match students with job opportunities based on the data it has on its system. While still studying for a degree, students can find remote or part-time jobs through the opportunities listed on the platform. SchoolTry is also leveraging its data to provide a pipeline of students to online universities seeking candidates, as well as providing alternative admission routes to students who couldn’t gain admission to overcrowded federal and state tertiary institutions in Nigeria.
The Edtech has raised over a million dollars in the past three years from angel investments and gap to shore up some pipelines. The startup is operational in Cameroon and has pilots ongoing in Burkina Faso. However, its major markets are in Nigeria and Kenya, with its headquarters in Sweden. SchoolTry currently powers all the higher institutions in Oyo State.
Eleburuike says he presented SchoolTry to Nigeria’s vice president when he visited Sweden, and he’s also been in touch with the Minister of Education and some governors.
The main idea of SchoolTry, aside from access to education, is to connect Nigerians, Kenyans, and other Africans with researchers from Australia, Europe, and other continents to exchange learning and opportunities, and all the possibilities that education can afford.
With only 0.2 percent of its users being paying customers, the startup still has a long way to go before it can make meaningful profits. However, since 90 percent of its 400,000 paying users are in the higher education bracket, the startup might have just found the perfect product to focus on. SchoolTry was conceptualised in 2019 but launched in 2020 and started towards the end of 2022.
