Cikguu: Going Beyond Classrooms

Nov 29, 2021

Welcome back to an all-new Head’s Up. This issue, we spoke to Aziz Iskandar, CEO & Co-founder of Cikguu and Bikesh Lakhmichand, CEO & Founding Partner of 1337 Ventures on Cikguu’s victorious emergence from their latest cohort and going beyond just educating students.

But just before you go on, here are some news & announcements. And till our next issue, stay safe and stay healthy!

News & Announcements

A One-stop Platform For Malaysian Startup Data, Resources, News and Insights.

Muru-ku is a one-stop platform for Malaysian startup data, resources, news and insights. The platform contains more than 660 Malaysian Startups and is a platform filled with resources such as The VC List, Grant List, Startup Events & Problem Statements to solve.

Visit https://muru-ku.com to learn more and submit your startup if it’s not already listed.

Sunway University Appoints Five Prominent Entrepreneurs to Spur innovation & Entrepreneurship Education

The industry fellows namely Joel Neoh, Desmond Ngai, Anna Chew, Clayton Tan and Michael Jiang will lead the delivery of Sunway University’s various credit-bearing and non-credit bearing entrepreneurship programmes that aims to help students manoeuvre through the constant challenge of getting people to understand the value of their product or services and avoid the early pitfalls of setting up a company

The iLabs Foundry entrepreneurship programmes focus on experiential and inductive learning pedagogy that includes problem-solving, building a successful team, customer-problem fit, design & prototyping, market-solution fit, go-to-market strategies, venture financing, storytelling, and more.

Mavcap Launches Two New Ventures Funds To Invest In Tech Startup In SEA

Malaysia’s largest venture capital firm, Malaysia Venture Capital Management Berhad (Mavcap) has announced the launch of two new venture funds that will invest in tech startups in the country and Southeast Asia.

The two funds have a total target fund size of US$38.2 million (RM160 million) collectively. The two new VC Funds are the latest additions to MAVCAP’s 14 VC Funds at various investment stages, from Seed to Series C, such as 500 Durians, Axiata Digital Innovation Fund, Asia Greentech Fund and Meranti Asean Growth Fund.

From these funds, 10 tech unicorns have emerged, including Malaysia’s very first, Carsome, while other startups coming from the funds are also transforming the normal brick-and-mortar business landscape.

Cradle Develops MyStartup Platform

The Malaysian Startup Ecosystem Roadmap (SUPER) 2021-2030 has been launched via the MYStartup platform - a digital information resource portal that provides comprehensive facilitation services for startup ecosystem networks.

The MYStartup platform is a national digital portal of information resources aimed to help ecosystem players navigate the startup ecosystem and drive local innovation as well as continuous assistance and guidance in developing startups that have world class investment value.

Startups, investors, industry players and ecosystem builders are encouraged to register on the MYStartup platform at www.mystartup.gov.my to gain access to insights and resources on the Malaysian startup ecosystem.

Interview with Aziz Iskandar, Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder of Cikguu and Bikesh Lakhmichand, CEO & Founding Partner of 1337 Ventures

The education system globally woke up to the need for a massive revamp early last year. Usage of technology in a lot of countries to facilitate classes was still at its infancy and while others had achieved milestones in utilising tech in education, it was not as widely implemented.

With news of students, parents and teachers struggling to adapt to the new changes, there was a rise in edtech based startups, offering these groups options on easing their struggles. Some recalled their own experience as both students and tutors themselves and chose to create solutions out of problem statements they were familiar with.

Cikguu is an edutech startup that emerged victorious from a cohort of 71 teams to receive US$12,000 (RM 50,000) in funding from 1337 Venture and media group Amanz. Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder of Cikguu, Aziz Iskandar shares his thoughts on going beyond just helping students get better grades but helping the young generation develop the necessary skillsets.

“The idea came up way back when I was sitting for my SPM exams in 2019. I learned how to study effectively, got straight A’s and received a scholarship to study engineering in Germany. The habit of learning didn’t only stop at acing SPM.

“Arif and I taught ourselves to code after watching ‘The Social Network’. We felt motivated to start our startup from our dorm rooms,” Aziz tells Head’s Up.

To realise his ambitions, Aziz drops out and joins an edtech startup while Arif joined AirAsia to gain technical experience. After a few months of working and learning, they finally felt they were ready to materialise the 2 year old idea into a reality.

“Other than wanting to help students achieve better grades, we are also looking to help the youth develop the most necessary skillsets to succeed in the new normal, the ability to self-learn and collaborate with other people remotely,” he says.

The team behind Cikguu is made up of Aziz who worked as an Associate Product Manager at an edtech company, Arif worked as Software Engineer Trainee at AirAsia, and Mathew is the founder of math YouTube channel, Y=mx+c.

Aziz and his team are now planning to launch the Cikguu App in January 2022, which will first include their very first offering, SPM Plus. Students will be able to carry out digital exercises and analyse their performance to better achieve the best grades they can in their upcoming SPM exams.

The app will also have a ‘Practice’ and ‘Community’ feature where students can discuss and collaborate to help one another.

“We are also looking to raise our seed funding sometime around Q2 of 2022,” Aziz shares.

The team is planning to focus their contribution to UN’s Sustainable Development Goal No.4, ‘Quality Education’, by providing free online tutoring lessons and digital workbooks to the minorities in the country.

“We fully believe education will not only change one’s life but also an entire community’s. The challenge we are facing to make this happen is to find organisations and individuals to collaborate with,” Aziz tells Head’s Up.

“Cikguu is a project that all 3 of us are really passionate about, technology and education. Arif and I belive so much in online education because we aced our SPM Mathematics by learning through Matthew’s videos on YouTube without ever meeting him in person , and now we’re building Cikguu together to do that again on a bigger scale,” he concludes.

On the other end, Bikesh Lakhmichand, CEO & Founding Partner of 1337 Ventures comments on what they say in Cikguu.

“We’ve always been keen to invest in this space especially due to our roots in education iTrain. Early-stage funding is about the opportunity in the market and the skills of the founders.

“We found this young dynamic team had a clear understanding of the industry pain points and had the ability to put a product together really fast. The ability to execute and have the foresight of a regional play early in their journey gives us the confidence to bet on this team to do well,” he says.

Apart from undergoing structured weekly mentoring sessions, 1337 Ventures will be helping the team behind Cikguu synergise with other relevant portfolios, continuously fundraise and get access to top talents to join their team.

Bikesh also points out that when possible, the startups they invest in not only gets to leverage on their corporate and SME networks but also those of government agencies and ministries that could aid them in their go-to-market strategy.

“Lifelong learning is a huge market not just in Malaysia but the region. There’s definitely more space for supporting platforms in this vertical. We’re still keen to see local startups that leverage the power of Artificial Intelligence (AI0 to tackle the challenges in the education sector.”

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