An unexpected blow

2020 was supposed to be a great year for Smartifier Academy. As a soft skill training company, the month of January showered in a lot of confidence for us.

• We were operational for 2.5 years
• We closed a retainer B2B client for a whole year
• We were getting a lot more requests from universities to organize sessions for the students
• After 2.5 years of prototyping, UATs (User Acceptance Tests), and tweaking, we had an unmatchable set of training programs

We were gearing up to shake up the training industry and work with the big brands.

But, as it's said, "If you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans."

In February 2019, COVID-19 disrupted the way businesses were run all over the world. We also took a massive hit.

Our retainer client lost most of their businesses and had to cancel the annual deal with us.

Universities were shut down.

We also had to shut down our offices to ensure the safety of employees.

The crossroad appears

One group was particularly affected - university students in their final year.

Being one year away from graduation, they needed to finish their studies and start their career. But the more the COVID scenario worsened, the more delay it was going to cause for them to resume.

Naturally, this was leading them to panic more.  

Professionals or Students?

As a training company that works with both companies and start-ups, we had two paths ahead of us.

One led to creating new training modules for companies focusing on remote work, and the other to helping the university students.

Going to serve companies could get us some new clients.

The second option would not be as profitable but would have a much higher impact. 

Back then, the virus seemed to be getting stronger, so I considered the worst.

I asked myself one question: “If this is my last year on Earth, what can I do to bring bigger benefits for the community?” 

I instantly thought of working for the students.

When I discussed the idea with my teammates, they showed tremendous enthusiasm.

But we didn't jump into action right away, as the move concerned all of our stakeholders and this was a critical point for our company. 

So, we also thought about our short-term and long-term gains and losses.

And then we took the leap of faith.

The main idea

Smartifier started to work on ‘YPS’, short for ‘Young Professional Smartification’. It was the first cohort-based online learning program for Bangladeshi students.

Program details:

We selected 28 different topics to train. But that would be overwhelming for the students.

So, we turned them into 4 different levels, each having 7 sessions. The levels were organized according to the life-cycle stage of a university student:
A. Job Readiness

B. Employee Performance

C. Employee Excellence

D. 21st Century Skills 

We knew that students are attracted to certificates. But how do we qualify them?

We decided to gamify our sessions with a quiz after each one. Solving the quiz would generate a badge which people can share on social media.

We also designed a 1-hour assessment after each level. Students who would score about 75% were given a certificate. 

To make the campaign reach out to a wide number of students, we formed partnerships with university clubs and youth organizations.  

Growth Hacking

We had a lot of work on our hands. 28 PPTs and 28 quizzes, recap content for each session, coordinating online sessions, and redistributing content on YouTube and other platforms, forming partnerships, etc - the team was working round the clock to deliver. To stay organized amid the chaos, we developed a project charter and set up specific departments. We had a curriculum development, partnerships, social media content, and growth hacking team.  

Partnerships:

We formed partnerships with 43 university clubs, 7 youth organizations. SpikeStory, a popular social media page in Bangladesh, was a co-organizer. Star Youth was our media partner, Torun was strategic partner, and Zengage was Corporate Networking partner.

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Gamification:

Logistics

The training was to be conducted in a private Facebook group. This group as an important part of our marketing funnel.

All marketing communication were to be done through our Facebook page and YouTube channel. Our partners, Star Youth and Torun would publish

Challenges

We faced multiple challenges. The biggest one was to ensure timely execution of all contents. The sessions took place at 9 PM. 3 hours before the session, we would announce the speaker and include a link for a pre-training assessment. Next day at 12 PM, we uploaded an ‘In a Nutshell’ content which contained 6 lessons from last night’s session. We edited segments from the sessions and uploaded them on different social media platforms. We also made our quizzes creative by adding real life characters and pop references. Designing the certificates for all these people was also difficult. Thanks to MIST Innovation Club, we were able to automate the certificate distribution service with their website, Certify.ltd. 

COVD-19 also gave us blows. Shiper’s mother suffered from COVID and he had to stay with her at the hospital. Even from the hospital he helped with the work out of his sheer sincerity. 

A major part of the program took place in Ramadan and we did everything remotely, so we had to adjust accordingly. Most nights we kept working until the sunrise and then slept. Core team members like Hasan, Shiper, myself were spending around 15-16 hours in front of the PC/ laptop. On a personal note, towards the end of the program, I started to feel like a stranger living with my family. The only time I sat with them was during mealtime. Rest was all work, work, work. 

Results

In total, 43 university clubs and 7 youth organizations partnered with us. They had all announced our program and we received 4300+ registrations in total, making the program a huge success. In the end, we distributed 2000+ certificates. The sessions were watched for more than 40,000 hours.

This success gave us the credibility to win $10,000 from BYLC Ventures Accelerator Program. 

More than 2 years have passed. But I still think of that question that catapulted all those events into action.

Maybe we can use that question in special moments in our lives, “If this is my last year on Earth, what can I do to bring bigger benefits for the community?” 

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