It has been customary for providing a quarterly update on our activities and progress. This serves as one way we communicate to you our users, partners, and stakeholders where we are in our plans as Standard Gateway and also serves as a self gauging tool; Touted in our belief that planning is an integral part of any successful organization. Although we were not able to achieve all our goals, the first quarter has been a successful one.
Our biggest challenge at the moment is revenue generation and commercialization of products and services in general both our educational products and our technology products and services. As far as education, we were able to increase the number of practice exams, and kickstart their upload while for technology, we made very good progress in bringing on board several travel agencies and lining marketing strategies and plans.
In the near future, a good number of practice exams will be available on kezastore.com/online-exam. As usual, while our free past exams and past keys will continue to be free on nationalexamination.com, we have decided to make online practice exams pay and access models, with the exception of a handful that will be used as demos and be accessible for free. With pricing of just $1 or FRW 1,000 per 6 months to access everything we think it is reasonable taking into account the current cost of education. If a student values our services, in most cases they should be able to pay $1 per 6 months to access and practice exams. We expect diligent students to be able to do so, with a projected share of 10%.
As far as e-ticketing is concerned, we have proceeded to add travel agency information, where we have added 5 travel agencies from Rwanda and 3 from Burundi. We will continue adding more travel agencies, travel agency by travel agency, and country by country while continuing the effort of securing a working agreement to be able to advertise and sell tickets. In the interim Kezastore.com eTicketing will be positioned as a route and fare search platform for travel agencies with whom we have not signed a working agreement yet.
Funding continues to be an issue, in the first quarter we started by structuring our financial reports and set up organizational schemes that will enable us to easily raise funds, both from investments and grants. Initially, grants shall be prioritized, but later on, we will look into bringing committed long-term investors. Part of the structures currently set up is among others Standard Gateway Advisory Board will be principally responsible for advising senior leadership and actively steering the organization to secure long-term funding be it grants and/or investments.
Below are some summary activities for both Q1 2022 and planned activities for Q2 2022
Activities for Q4 2021 (Jan-March)
- We organized and added content for 5 travel agencies in Rwanda and 3 Travel agencies in Burundi while positioning the site as a route and fare search for stated countries
- We kicked off 29 online practice exams uploading exercises, currently with 21 fully uploaded and 8 more to go, this will give students access to more online practice materials, and strengthen our $1/6month subscription offering to students
- We renegotiated contracts with our suppliers for practice exam materials and engaged media content suppliers
- We finalized Packaging for eEducation Products Offering, where we included besides past exams and past keys, online practice exams, exam grading assistance product, and others, soon to be included in our mainstream launch
- We sourced and identified talent for our education effort business development, and prepared education business development marketing plans and strategies
- Kickstarter operationalizing our activities in terms of quarters and for the first time
- We applied for the first grants and build the process for grant applications
- Started building processes and templates for Financial reports
- Kickstarter Materials Development Review Board Meetings to cover non-education materials development quality evaluation and operationalization
Planned Activities for Q2 2022 (April – June)
- The primary goal for Q2 2022 is to truly kickstart commercialization by
- Bring on board an eEducation Partnerships and Business Development Individual (for Rwanda)
- Bring on board a Business Development Individual (for Burundi), covering business development, Sales, and Marketing for both education and eTicketing
- Bring on board content development resources for Burundi and DRC, covering francophone East Africa (Burundi has been selected as a scalability testbed given cultural and historical fitness with the Rwandan team: Speaks nearly the same mother tongue, and nearly have the same culture)
- Finalize and Operationalize Sales and Marketing Plans and Strategies
- Chase and Finalize a working agreement with at least two travel agency operators in Rwanda and Burundi (From last Quarter)
- Investigate and finalize a plan for funding mobilization from both grants and investors (as needed)
- Compile and add on the kezastore.com 5 more travel agencies from Rwanda and 5 more travel agencies from Burundi.
- Launch and Drive Market campaign on buying tickets online: “no more reason to go to the bus park with no ticket, with kezastore.com e-ticketing”
- Organize events to communicate to our users, partners, and customers about our services, solutions, and products (From last Quarter)
- Finalize Social Media Content Generator Tool and Animate Standard Gateway Social Media to communicate to tech-savvy internet users the benefits of our products and services (From Last Quarter) – This is a tool that will give us a competitive advantage and help us engage with travel agency operators (From Last Quarter)
- Kickstart Standard Gateway Advisory Board Meetings
- Finalize Materials Development Dashboarding (From Last Quarter)
- Standardized the already kickstarted Materials Development Review Board Meetings
- Internally operationalize Sales and Marketing Operation and start tracking sales revenue
- Establish a Partnership Development plan with schools and other educational stakeholders (NGOs, Districts, agencies, etc.)
2022 shall be a memorable year for Standard Gateway and we have been working hard to get there. We believe we are able to raise the necessary revenues to be able to operate our free services sustainably and professionally. We want everyone who is about to take a national exam to do so successfully with our products and services, same as everyone about to take a trip, we want every traveler to think kezastore.com before anything else and we are making good progress. Before we get there, it will continue to be business as usual, push until it happens!
Thank you for reading and If you have any feedback, partnership inquiries, etc do not hesitate to reach out to us.
Cheers…
SG Team
N.B: This article was originally published at http://standardgateway.com/blog Here you can read our past quarterly updates and other articles.
Standard Gateway is an online and offline products and services provider focused on education and technology, visit http://standardgateway.com for more information | You can also visit our different products: www.nationalexamination.com | www.edrivingschool.org | www.kezaplex.com | http://kezastore.com |