How do I get parents to put school details on our site schoolcircuit.in ?

By Sweta Samota on February 5, 2015 9 Comments / 2425 views

Hi Rodinhooders!

I am facing a very basic problem.

We have developed https://schoolcircuit.in for giving relevant information about schools, preschools and daycare in India. We are collecting this information from available online info and then making calls to the schools. This is a time-consuming process.

To make it effective and fast, we want to crowdsource the data from Parents themselves who have their kids in schools. We have developed the platform in that way – where parents can lookup their school and then enter the data they know like fees, infrastructure, school timings.

This is a short process for parents.

Problem is we are unable to motivate them to do it.

How do we go about it ?

#SchoolCircuit #CrowdsourceData #edutech

Thanks,

Sweta

Comments

Sweta Samota

9 Comments

asha chaudhry February 5, 2015, 6:00 am

sweta – tough one. i’m a parent. a working mom. i have enough on my plate (like other moms) and don’t think i would be inclined to fill in details 🙁

but we have a similar venture here on trhs – https://www.therodinhoods.com/forum/topics/school-finder-helping-parents…

you need some parent ambassadors who will share over social media.

i’m pinging sunaina of parentune to give u some ideas.

all the best!

ps: which city are you based in?
Sweta Samota February 5, 2015, 6:35 am

Thanks Asha for the reply. WE are based in Navi Mumbai and I have met you in the last Rodinhood Open house 🙂

Glad to know about School Finder!

The problem is tough we know. Thats why looking for some innovating way to crack it!
Hardik Khanna February 5, 2015, 11:35 am

Hi Sweta

Couple of suggestions:

1. Instead of starting with database of all schools and pre-schools focus on a niche. e.g. Just focus on schools which provide IB courses. This should be relatively manageable database since the count of schools is less.

2. School brochures and websites cover most of the information. Save time from doing field activity.

Focus on finding information which parents are seeking for. What is the problem that you are trying to solve?

My thoughts:

Today JustDial gives contact details, school websites give information on course, amenities, etc. However what I don’t get to know is , whether a school is good or not. I would end up contacting 2-3 parents at most – not good enough data sample.

So knowing quality of education, school performance – both curricular and non curricular – is difficult to find, Help solve this problem. How — i dont know 🙂

But i think as a parent …this is a serious problem area
Sweta Samota February 5, 2015, 12:40 pm

Hi Hardik,

Thanks for the suggestions.

I agree lot of info is available online here and there . But nothing consolidated. Not many schools online.

Are you saying, visit the school, get their brochure and then put data ?

You are right about rating and reviews. We are focussing on that.

We conducted a survey to understand what factors parents consider before taking admission – board of education, infrastructure, rating and reviews and fees. So we are focussing on these factors for the school.

All parents understand this. Parents who have their kids in school – we want to reach them to get this info to be shared with other parents.

How do we motivate them to spend 10 min to help other parents is the problem here!
Hardik Khanna February 6, 2015, 4:13 am

Hi Shweta

Even if you get answer to this ,then the other problem that you will face is how to reach out to parents from different schools.

Also, do not expect free data collection. Data of your website – is the soul of the product and your business. You have to have a field force to do this.Just Dials and Zomatos of the world did that as well.

Its capital intensive – hence a difficult business to get it.

So, only way to motivate them (parents) is to pay them 🙂
Sweta Samota February 6, 2015, 4:31 am

Yes Hardik, Thanks for the suggestion!
Varun Miglani February 7, 2015, 1:20 pm

Schoolwale.net they are big into this thing. Pls check.
Alok Rodinhood Kejriwal February 8, 2015, 10:17 am

Bribe them.

Give them a free mobile top up and factor that in into your cost of customer acquisition

Better still – give the Moms a Flipkart Voucher (lowest value)

OR run a contest of 5 winners… each qualifying AFTER they enter their data
Sweta Samota February 8, 2015, 4:26 pm

Yes Alok. Thanks.

We are planning something on these lines!