How this edtech founder led his company through 10x growth by monopolizing a niche within a niche

In one line, what do you do and what is your most significant achievement?

“I monopolized a niche within a niche leading to a 10x growth"

Who are you and what business did you start?

I am an Entrepreneur in Singapore having been involved in entrepreneurship for over a decade. At present my business revolves around delivering quality coding and robotics classes to children ages 5-16. The key problem my business is solving is in ensuring that our customers get immense and tangible value from the services we provide. One of the biggest problems in our industry is rampant misinformation and we are looking to sort that out by providing our customers with a proper, recognized and accredited progression for their children. Graphite Academy offers coding and robotics classes for kids structured around internationally recognized and accredited standards.

What's your backstory?

I joined the industry as a trainer back in 2016 while I was transiting out of my previous business. Back then it was just a way to earn extra income and to me learning how to code was a great bonus. Over time I realised that this market is new, it's an emerging market and it's fraught with 101 problems. I sought to tackle these problems head on and the key problem to solve then first was the securing of quality teachers, teacher training and providing enough jobs for the teachers. The first iteration of Graphite Academy focused on supplying quality teachers and coding curriculum to companies in the same industry for programme delivery. Over time we became reputed within the industry for having reliable and quality teachers and to date we have now worked with approximately 70% of the coding enrichment providers in Singapore.

We then moved into providing coding programmes to MOE schools and through our unique operational model have taught programmes in more than 120 MOE schools, 10,000 students and have trained over 300 teachers.

A little known fact is we actually organised one of the largest coding online lessons during the pandemic season with People's Association @ Jurong Spring and that programme brought in more than 150 students in one setting for a national day coding event!

At present we are expanding our services into the private sector (enrichment centres) so be prepared to see a Graphite Academy centre near you soon.

What should be the first steps to take to enter your industry?

I think with any business, it is important to master the base business skills, once these skills are mastered, go deep into an industry, learn the ropes of that industry, apply the base business skills and build a business from there.

Base Business Skill Sets:

• Sales

• Networking

• Public speaking

• Team Building

• Structuring Win-Win-Win deals

• Lifelong Learning

How did you spend your First 100 Days of launching your business?

In the first 100 days, after spotting the gap in teacher quality within the market, I started teaching the teachers, skills I learned from my sales and public speaking experience. I opened up my training to these teachers all to ensure that these teachers are able to deliver their content effectively. Turns out a lot of the skill sets learned in sales and public speaking are transferable to teaching. The results were so great that the team i built eventually got recognized to hold some of the best coding teachers within the market.

Today this initial first batch of teachers that started out with me are either top teachers within the industry or have started their own business supporting the coding education industry.

Since launch, what has worked to attract and retain partnerships/customers?

Structuring Win-Win-Win deals, understanding that customers today are well-informed and educated and ensuring that we always deliver massive value from start to finish. It is this incessant focus on delivering value whether it is to our teachers, customers, or partners that creates these lasting relationships.

What has taken you from 0 to 100?

When Covid19 hit Singapore, we were met with a series of unfortunate circumstances. We lost one of the biggest partners we had within the industry that contributed 80% of our revenue.

At this juncture, we decided to pivot massively from a pure trainer supply and curriculum development model to actively engaging projects. This shift and the know-how and team we built since day 1 allowed us to sail through covid19 with growth and has poised us for massive and explosive growth in the next few years. We spend the better half of our career building up the company's fundamentals and now it's time to scale massively.

What is one underrated thing in your industry that business owners should start doing/using?

I think most people underestimate what part time educators bring to the table. Most companies view these educators as dispensable because of their seasonality yet when you actually take time out to learn more about them, you will realise that many of them have stellar backgrounds and these backgrounds could lead to partnerships, collaborations that propel your business to great heights.

What platform/tools do you use for your business?

Microsoft One Drive is great as a simple cloud provider. It has solved our version error issues with our previous cloud provider and has allowed our team to work seamlessly out of anywhere as long as they have a wifi connection,

How are you doing today and what does the future look like?

We are scaling massively and the future looks immensely bright. All the foundational pillars have been put into place and we are starting to see the fruits of our labour since the early days.

We've established ourselves as a force to be reckoned with in our early days and we are ready to establish this again in the private markets and beyond.