Zorbi founder and CEO Sukhans Asrani. Photo / Supplied
“I hated studying more than anyone I knew,” says Sukhans Asrani, founder and CEO of startup Zorbi, a science-backed flashcard learning app.
The not-so-unfamiliar statement is one shared by many students.
So the former University of Auckland graduate set out to change this.
Zorbi uses spaced repetition as a method of reviewing material at systematic intervals. It makes studying faster and easier through flashcards that only show up when you forget them.
“Zorbi makes studying significantly faster by telling you what to study, when to study, and how long to study for,” Asrani told the Herald.
The 24-year-old said he had the original idea for an app called AbsorbIt back in late 2019.
“The idea was to build an app that helps you absorb information through five-minute study sessions on mobile like Duolingo.
“I started researching ‘efficient learning’ to free up some time for my personal projects ... using two techniques, called ‘active recall’ and ‘spaced-repetition’. They made learning fun and I could learn two to three times faster.
“Some friends went from failing papers to achieving straight A grades after I showed them how to use the techniques.
“It turns out most students aren’t aware of this system of studying, or struggle to adopt it due to problems with existing tools.”
He built the app in 2020 in his final year at university – where he graduated with a Bachelor of Engineering (Honours), Software Engineering – and launched it officially in August last year.
The founding team also includes fellow University of Auckland students William Shin and Alex Zhong, and the trio have been friends now for several years, Asrani said.
Zorbi is now used by more than 40,000 students in 60+ countries and users have created 1.5 million unique flashcards.
“The learning techniques behind Zorbi are the most effective known solutions for solving memory retention,” Asrani said.
“Zorbi does this by asking users how difficult it was to answer each card. Our algorithm uses their rating to determine when they’ll forget that card.”
Asrani said students like studying this way because it streamlines the learning process.
“All they have to do is open Zorbi, hit ‘Study for 5-minutes’ and it re-teaches them the content they don’t know.”
Asrani interned at Microsoft HQ in Seattle between December 2019 and February 2020 before being offered a job there later that year as a software engineer earning US$190,000 ($320,000) a year.
But he choose to go all-in on his startup, which was still in its early stages.
“We were pre-launch and had less than 50 weekly active users,” Asrani said.
“My start date was several months away. I could have delayed and waited to confirm that Zorbi would be popular post-launch.
“I just felt confident that building a startup would be a better choice for me. Looking at the position I’m in now, I’m confident that I made the right decision in terms of learning, impact, fun, and finances.”
Asrani used his own savings to get Zorbi up and running and it’s paying for itself.
“I saved up money from my Microsoft internship. I also made some money off the GameStop bull run last year, and used that to bootstrap the company,” he said.
Asrani said the majority of Zorbi’s active users are still individual students who have found them through the App Store or on social media and have adopted it as their primary study technique outside of the classroom.
But they have plans to expand.
“We’re currently focused on building out Zorbi for Teachers, which we expect to be a major catalyst for our growth,” he said.
He said while Zorbi was never designed for schools, but rather for individual students, the team was “focused on understanding teachers’ needs and preparing to launch the perfect solution for integrating adaptive learning into a classroom.”
“Over the past few months, we have seen an increase in teachers also adopting the tool. These teachers generally find our Chrome extension and they will usually bring on 30-100 students each.”
But while the technology is being rapidly adopted overseas, New Zealand is slow to take advantage.
Asrani says there are just approximately 2000 students using the app in New Zealand.
“My current hypothesis is that it’s due to higher levels of risk aversion. We [Zorbi] get the most adoption from places that are actively open to trying new teaching methods,” he said.
“In our experience, this usually means private schools in places such as the US and Singapore.”
Asrani pointed to the different cultures between the US and here.
“I think inertia to change can be a big problem in New Zealand,” he said.
“I haven’t seen this problem in the US. Technology is viewed as something that can unlock solutions or improvements for any given problem.
“Capital flows freely, and budgets are looser. Many companies and individuals actively explore new solutions to improve their lives or businesses.”
Asrani, who is currently in San Francisco, has spent the last six months bouncing around the US, Bahamas, Colombia, and Guatemala.
He plans to come back and visit family and friends in New Zealand before the end of the year.
“Our customers are primarily in the US, so it’s often advantageous for me to be in the US time zone,” he said.
Asrani was born in India and his parents moved to Auckland when he was 2 years old.
There have been challenges along the way for Zorbi, including the Covid-19 pandemic and breaking into the international market.
“Operational issues made starting a company in the pandemic challenging,” he said.
“[But] the biggest issue was psychological though, being locked alone in a small studio apartment while trying to put out startup fires 24/7 is not a good environment to be in. By the end of the second lockdown last year, our whole team was severely burnt out, and it took a couple of months to really recover from that.
“The hardest part of trying to break through internationally was an initial lack of understanding of how the US EdTech market operates. It’s important to find and meet mentors that understand your industry and market more than you do.
“It might sound cliche but starting a company is the hardest thing I’ve ever done.”
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