Africa Business Communities

[Startup Interview] Tolulope Ogundiji, Founder, Avalanche Nigeria

Tolulope Ogundiji co-founded Avalanche Nigeria in 2013, a resource providing answers to educational and ICT exam challenges.

Would you please introduce Avalanche Nigeria?

Avalanche Nigeria provides technologically driven educational solutions (software) especially helping schools- from secondary schools to universities to conduct customized computer based exams. We do not only help schools, we also help students prepare for computer based examinations. More so, our computer based exam software also helps organization conduct their customized computer based tests for appraisals, recruitments and any organizational tests. Avalanche Nigeria is headquartered at Ibadan in Nigeria

In what industry does Avalanche operate?

Avalanche runs between two sectors with one influencing the other.  Specifically, we target the education sector and harness information technology to meet the education market needs. With education, we focus on e-learning, test preparation and social learning.

What did you do for a living before you founded Avalanche ?

A friend  will always introduce me this way: " Meet Tolulope, the CEO of Avalanche NG, studied Civil engineering for his first degree but he no longer builds houses and bridges as related to civil engineering, he now builds software and business enterprise."

I had very little to no knowledge in business except for few months that I worked in the construction industry before I ventured into business. However, I learnt so much in first entrepreneurial experience and that has sharpened my idea in starting up this current venture.

Why did you start Avalanche?

In 2012, the university matriculation board of Nigeria introduced computer based exams but the left the gap of helping students who are used to paper-pencil exams. This is the opportunity I saw. And yes!, like every startup, this opportunity has evolved such that we  are no longer limited to helping students prepare for  computer based  exams. Rather, we now help institutions conduct computer based exams, provide platforms for social learning and for organizations to conduct computer based exams for free.

What is the ownership of Avalanche?

At present, the company is owned by four cofounders and a team of incubators and investors.

What will Avalanche deliver in 2016?

Paper- based exam is expensive, biased, time-consuming and of course not eco-friendly, yet examination or assessment is indispensable. At present, we provide software for organizations to create computer based exams.  And Yes!  The cost of setting this up can be expensive due to the cost of hardware needed.  Based on this, in 2016 we are launching Examtone to provide platform for organizations, schools, and institutions to create computer based exams without the cost of hardware and just for free.

Examtone therefore, is set to help schools, universities, polytechnics, organizations and examiners conduct an inexpensive, fast and highly reliable exam with no costs attached.

What are your ambitions in terms of (international) markets, growth?

Within one year of launching Examtone, we hope to have footprints in South Africa, Tanzania, Ghana and of course our base, Nigeria.  

What do you want people and companies who read this interview to do?

With examtone.com, we are launching a campaign on “one lecture-one test –one assignment” campaign. This we believe that if educators, including lecturers and teachers can create a test and an assignment after every lecture, it will aid learning for students.  To people, I’d really like them to share the campaign on the social media. And to companies, investors particularly, they can email to discuss further and how we are set to take a chunk of a market that is worth approximately USD3.9 trillion

www.linkedin.com/in/tolulope-ogundiji

www.examtone.com

www.avalanchenigeria.com

www.twitter.com/avalancheng

 

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