Kyle Dodds and three of his friends, Wihan Horn, Corneil Clasen, and Waldo Boshoff, are joint founders of Cognition.Online, a platform that connects tutors with tutees and facilitates payments. As an engineering student, Dodds ran a tutoring company of his own for five years, but once he realised that he would have less time to tender to his company upon graduating, he and his friends employed the use of technology by creating Cognition.
“I realised going into the professional world as an engineer I wouldn’t be able to manage the tutoring company hands-on. So, moving with technology, the only way to go was to automate the entire process of a tutoring company,” he told How We Made it in Africa.
As with every innovation, Cognition makes the entire tutoring system swift and easier. As opposed to being allocated jobs by a tutoring company, Cognition makes it easy for tutors to locate jobs as the app informs them of available lessons within a 150km radius. “Our aim is to simplify the process of finding and booking a quality tutor and turn it into an enjoyable experience from start to finish,” reads the overview on the platform.
The app also operates a free-market system giving tutors the power to determine how much they are paid, the exact jobs they want; by filtering lessons according to a pre-determined age group and the subject of expertise of the tutor, and when. Parents also get to enjoy its flexibility as they are at liberty of choosing the perfect tutor that meets their requirements.
“As word spreads with more and more successful lessons taking place, student sign-ups are also gaining momentum.” – Kyle Dodds
With Cognition, payments at the end of the month are timely and 100 percent what was negotiated between parents and tutors. There are no deducted commissions and stalled payments as with traditional tutoring companies. Parents and tutees only get to pay a booking fee to the platform once the lesson is complete. And if a lesson was unsatisfactory, there’s a refund option. Parents and tutees have the option to rate tutors according to their services, which are displayed on the tutor’s profile, and also file complaints when necessary.
According to Dodds, the process of starting a company in South Africa is sluggish, inefficient, and way too complicated for the average person. “We [as the founders] are fortunate enough to come from diverse backgrounds, financing, engineering, IT, and business. But it still has been a real mission for us to go through those processes. From opening bank accounts, opening a merchant account… to the company registration, the entire process is just too slow and people wonder why we don’t have more entrepreneurs,” he said.
Currently, services on Cognition are available countrywide in South Africa, with its biggest presence in Pretoria, Stellenbosch, and Johannesburg. But the team hopes that the platform would expand further into Africa and beyond, possibly Europe and Australia with the right partnerships.
