A Marketplace For Smart

Learning
Table of Contents
........................................................................................................................................ 0
Introduction ..................................................................................................................... 2
What is Valeem? ...................................................................................................................... 2
Why Valeem? .......................................................................................................................... 2
Courses offered include:........................................................................................................... 2
Entrepreneurial Journey ................................................................................................... 2
Challenges........................................................................................................................ 5
Technical difficulties in Pakistan ............................................................................................... 5
Low level engagement in online settings................................................................................... 5
Ecosystem needs to grow ......................................................................................................... 5
Strategies adopted to overcome these .............................................................................. 6
Were these strategies suitable and sustainable for the future? ......................................... 6
Alternatives...................................................................................................................... 7
Invest in a reliable network ...................................................................................................... 7
Diversify for target audience .................................................................................................... 7
Anonymous feedback............................................................................................................... 7
Protect customer confidentiality .............................................................................................. 8
References........................................................................................................................ 9

By:

Ariba Owais 22051

Ayesha Shams 21998

Filza Kazi 21652

Furheen Shazib 22182

Mah Gul Zainab Khan 21640

Taha Ahmed 21558

Introduction

What is Valeem?
An online learning platform offering live and interactive online classes covering a vast variety of subject
areas. Carefully vetted teachers provide group or one-on-one classes so you can get the help you need
from the comfort of your home

Why Valeem?
→ Verified teachers
→ 95% satisfied customers
→ Operates in 13+ countries
→ Free demo
→ Secure online payments
→ Monthly progress meetings with parents
→ Wide variety of courses offered

Courses offered include:

→ o levels
→ IELTS
→ IGCSE
→ A levels
→ Languages
→ SAT I & II
→ Quran classes
→ Beauty courses
→ Yoga

Entrepreneurial Journey

Muhammad Ghayas and Ali Rehan, the two co-founders of Valeem, did their A-levels in 2012 and
graduated from IBA in 2016. Their main aim was to find the right team. According to them, to truly
achieve something, you need to be with someone reliable that you can easily trust and can share half of
the work with. Half of the work does not necessarily mean exactly 50%, but tasks being logically
divided based on what each person is skilled at. For example, if one partner is good in the department
of creatives, then he would be assigned tasks relating to that so as to achieve full efficiency, which is
the kind of strategy that they adopted for Valeem. Ali and Ghayas were of the opinion that having more
than 2 or 3 partners would increase the chances of having free riders and hence, were comfortable with
starting a business without too many people onboard.

Ali and Ghayas were very well aware of the risks of starting their own business. In this startup world,
if things went wrong, they would not just be responsible for the company and their own families, but
the employees’ families as well. In Valeem, they would be appointing multiple teachers and employees
which would mean undergoing the pressure of the uncertainty that would exist in case something went
wrong or the business closed.

Moreover, they also knew that being an entrepreneur would not necessarily mean that they would earn
more money. A 9-5 corporate job could give them significant monetary and non-monetary benefits and
possibly provide more job security as well. But Ali and Ghayas were risk takers. They wanted to
experience the thrill of waking up one day and coming up with something completely new and
innovative. For them, that is the beauty of having their own startup. Having the autonomy of simply
discussing an idea with the team, making a strategy for it and implementing it is exactly what attracted
them towards the startup world.

When Ali and Ghayas initially started working together, things were very ‘awkward’, as described by
Ghayas. Fresh out of university, they had no clue what exactly they wanted to do, or what market they
wanted to work in and that was something they could only understand and achieve through exposure.
They could only carry out a successful operational process if they went out and explored the world of
startups. All they had in mind after graduation was that they wanted to become a marketing agency for
education which, for an idea, was quite vague and broad. It could range anywhere between making a
website for a school or having a career counseling event for a coaching center.

They flipped a coin to decide that Ali would be doing business full time, whereas Ghayas would also
be having a job side by side. At that time, the ELP program at IBA had started, which required final
year students to work for and conduct research on a corporate company. Ghayas started working for
Dawlance along with 24 other people. Out of those, they gave offer letters to 3 people at the end of the
project and one of them was Ghayas, who was a finance graduate and had completed his CFA. He had
realized soon enough that he was not fit or passionate for a finance desk job even though he was good
with numbers. Instead, he later used that as a skill in his own startup. When he was offered a position
in marketing, however, he accepted it because that was a field that interested him.
By this time, Ali and Ghayas were working on multiple avenues, including but not limited to, making
school websites, facilitating admission processes and running admission campaigns. Social media was
comparatively newer at that time, but they were able to execute these ideas.

Ghayas worked in Dawlance for 3 years then switched to Phillips, where he was appointed National
Sales Manager. He was managing a portfolio of 1.5 billion rupees, with 53 resources under him, and
was earning a handsome amount of salary. Yet, he gathered the courage to resign in February 2022. He
took this leap of faith to start working at Valeem full time. He felt that he could not eventually expand
at Phillips or any other corporate company. In a startup, and that too his own, he could keep on inflating
it and achieving growth. Their advice to us was to pick a business or idea that is scalable, meaning that
to double the output of a business should not necessarily equate to doubling the input or increasing the
resources of the business. And that’s exactly what they did with Valeem.

Initially, they were just a tech business, a B2B startup that created websites, learning management
systems etc. Valeem, as a platform itself, came into being when they created a B2C learning
management system that was discarded by an investor. They decided to introduce one-on-one online
learning classes for students in O/A Levels, which has now expanded to group classes, ILETs classes
and career counseling. Valeem has recently introduced a feature where instructors are able to record
classes which their students can watch in their own time.

Surprisingly, Valeem’s first client was not from Pakistan. Ghayas and Ali posted a promotional post on
Facebook, hoping to gain traction from the online community. Soon after, they received their first client
via WhatsApp from UAE. Furthermore, Valeem’s market is dominant in both Pakistan and the Middle
East. Valeem became so successful that some of their teacher’s now earn 6 figure salaries off of the
platform. Moreover, Valeem has never been in a loss, both in terms of profit and net income. This goes
to show how well their journey has taken off since their beginning in 2018. While many businesses
suffered during the COVID-19 pandemic, Valeem really took off since it introduced online learning
which became the norm during that time.

At Valeem, since Ghayas has an abundance of experience in marketing and sales, those are the
departments that come under him. Whereas, Ali handles the operations, which entails dealing with the
teachers and clients, as well as the technology aspect of the business which involves creating an efficient
system that works for everyone. When asked about their long term planning, Ghayas shared that they
would rather focus on short term targets and get through those which is what they equate to success,
giving an example of a horse that is unable to see in its peripherals.
Challenges

Technical difficulties in Pakistan

In Pakistan, the concept of online academics is still very foreign and not taken very seriously. Majority
of the parents due to the technology gap, believe that studying online is relatively less effective than
studying in a class physically. Tech devices are still a luxury in Pakistan hence many students are
deprived of such privilege. This as the basic perception in many Pakistani households pre COVID-19,
hence Valeem were bound by this traditional Pakistan mindset thus, limit their resources use only to
physical classes than explore more opportunities for expansion.

Low level engagement in online settings

Moreover, a massively tuition based market such as that of Karachi that is massively dominated by
tuition centers that provide classes physically. Since the general perception was always in the favor of
physical classes, Valeem were hence bound by these especially A levels and O levels have a huge tuition
market making it a very competitive one to enter. The leading teaching institutes are the ones with very
qualified and renowned teachers backed with right funds to support them. So taking a share in the
market here meant fierce competition.

Ecosystem needs to grow

Another issue is that our ecosystem needs to grow. This is because in Pakistan, convincing parents to
take this leap of faith that everyone’s family needs are different. Family wants a stable income that
linearly progresses. However, the startup world is filled with uncertainty which means that a fresh
entrepreneur will definitely come across certain challenges and obstacles which they would have to face
to gain experiences. However, our locals have a tendency to always stick to the safest option which is
why Valeem owner’s had to tackle trust issues amongst their parents as well because gaining the trust
of their parents and simultaneously fulfilling their expectations was a huge source of pressure on them.
Moreover, the company was formed on the basis of a sudden decision and some of the population was
still untapped. Initially Mr Ghayas said that Valeem had a major loss of their funds when they launched
a tuition management system to cater to Pakistani clients but due to some unfortunate circumstances
the clients declined it. However, this was not the end of it, Mr. Ghayas and Ali Rehan showed persistent
effort which finally proved to work in their favor thus leading to a formation of Valeem website with a
much more professional and improved layout allowing them to reach new heights. Now with their
commitment towards their cause and persistent effort in the right direction with necessary changes
needed to target abroad clients , Valeem now generates 70% of their revenue from foreign clients
outside Pakistan.
Strategies adopted to overcome these

Valeem gained the most popularity during covid-19 when traditional in-person teaching was no longer
an option hence parents were forced to become more accepting of e learning platforms. Promising
results and statistics have created further acceptability for online learning platforms. This has also
increased engagement. Increasingly people are able to see how effective platforms like Valeem can be
as they offer greater flexibility than traditional tuition centers. Unlike traditional tuition centers, students
can schedule the timing and type of session (one-on-one or group study sessions) according to their own
preference, all from the comfort of their own home.

In order to increase accessibility, Valeem offers reasonable prices. Furthermore students can take group
study sessions to divide costs between themselves.

Being a startup, Valeem had its fair share of challenges, consistent effort and resilience on part of the
owner’s is what allowed Valeem to get to the place it is today. As mentioned earlier as well, during the
initial period of Valeem Mr Ghayas worked at other MNCs as well and only once it was in a reasonable
place financially did he leave his job to work full time at Valeem.

Were these strategies suitable and sustainable for the future?

Challenges that were encountered before covid-19 were then to some extent resolved during the virus
outbreak. This is primarily because during the pandemic many institutions had to go online which was
the only way to conduct classes or exams. Valeem saw this as a golden opportunity and made full use
of this chance to expand through online settings. since everyone was now somehow adapting to the new
online setting hence abroad students could be easily accessed along with the local students in the country
who were also looking for institutions to provide adequate online academic facilities to cater their newly
adapted lifestyle. thereby, this strategy of Valeem proved to be sustainable because by the time the
pandemic nearly ended, people were already accustomed to the new at home lifestyle. it proved to be a
minimum viable product as it eventually became a newly formed need for the consumers post covid-19
as well.

Moreover, any start-up goal in the long term is to thrive for growth and survival in the market through
actively forming such sustainable strategies that would enable them to retain their customers. One of
such strategies taken by Valeem to thrive in a highly competitive tuition market like Pakistan was
through the improvement done on its website by Mr Ghayyas Ali led to a more professional looking
website which allows it to attract clients that visit its website consequently leading to a positive word
of mouth.. This also acts as a factor to enhance the clients trust on their website. This is very sustainable
in the long term because it takes a lot of effort to make your website attractive and eye catching to
engage the customers thus the more the customer visit the website the more they tend to engage on it
which consequently increases their overall clientele making it more feasible for long term survival of
the business.

Alternatives

Invest in a reliable network

Firstly, Valeem should install a reliable network as it is very crucial for online businesses to invest in a
good internet network that strengthens its client reach by providing an efficient system with little to no
glitches in order to reduce the waste of resources and respect its client’s precious time thereby gaining
their loyalty and trust. Moreover this will also ensure that the clients requests are fulfilled on time
without any communication gaps and thereby can be addressed.

Diversify for target audience

In order to really grow in the long term it is important for any business to clearly identify its target
market and research on your target customers. This will allow the business to direct and channel all of
its resources efficiently towards its major goals. In case of Valeem the major consumer segment for
them is the youth such a students of A levels and O levels in need of tuition, other than this they can
expand their services such as media design and studies because these are the needs of the same
consumers they are already catering to. Which means there will be time saving in researching for new
consumers. furthermore, they can even ask their clients to create their own training resources as this
will specifically target people with diverse backgrounds. furthermore, Valeem should identify trends in
order for them to expand more and last long in the future, it is very important for them to identify trends
in the markets as this will ensure that clients are not getting bored from their website.

Anonymous feedback

for any company to prosper its needs to identify and evaluate its performance for which it needs an
honest anonymous feedback from its clients. in this case since majority of the students are too shy to
express their concerns and individual problems openly hence Valeem should keep anonymous
performance appraisal for its employers to check on their performance whether they are catering to their
students’ academic needs adequately or not.
Protect customer confidentiality

Moreover, cybercrime is becoming very popular with the introduction of e-learning hence consumers
are reluctant to share their private information or open their cameras for better engagement in classes.
it is very crucial for online businesses to protect consumer confidentiality as their business primarily
depends on it. this is because, customer data will then be at stake to hacks. this could in turn lead to low
client confidence which will be a barrier for them to attend classes with high engagement.

In conclusion Valeem with its consistent effort and resilience has reached so far and still has the
potential of growing abroad in many markets Hence through these relevant strategies , planning and
efficient use of its resources it can make the most of what they have and prosper on the near future.
References

https://www.valeem.com/olevelcrashcourse/?fbclid=PAAaZb3CD67TIMSSUSFwNN
6MB2f0w7c57edQak9rlI-mjElCWEbKMnt8hnbu0
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/19YKVg6K0cvvWDrdqqy249lUmB4nYmQR
L