37. HowNow

Founder: Nelson Sivalingam
Founded: June 2015 (Launched January 2016)
Website: www.learnhownow.com

HowNow is the brainchild of Sri Lankan-born award-winning filmmaker and entrepreneur Nelson Sivalingam.

As well as two previous appearances in the Startups 100, Sivalingam has been recognised by Virgin Media Business as one of the top 30 young innovative founders in the country, and featured in North American magazine Anokhi’s annual list of noteworthy South Asians from around the world, alongside the managing editor of Huffington Post and Miss America.

His latest venture HowNow is a cloud-based platform that allows those with expertise and skills (‘educators’) to teach what they know. The platform equips users with the tools needed to create, deliver and monetise digital learning through their own websites.

Educators pay a monthly or annual subscription to licence the HowNow software, which gives them the ability to post interactive videos, broadcast webinars to up to 1,000 learners, teach one-to-one or group virtual classes, create articles and audio content, and create smart assessments to track the progress of their learners.

Prices start at £29 per month plus 10% commission for the starter plan, £79 per month plus 5% commission for the essentials plan, and £299 per month with no commission for the growth plan.

Since launch in January 2016, over 600 educators from 30 countries have turned their “passion into profit” by joining the platform.

Users include teachers, social media influencers, universities and corporates, with the software being used to create online schools for everything from singing to photography.

Not satisfied with 600 customers, HowNow will use the next year to grow the number of educators on its platform and develop the platform further to “build an ecosystem of apps that help deliver the best teaching and learning experience online”.

In 12 to 18 months, Sivalingam expects to be able to raise growth funding and fulfil his mission to “empower educators everywhere to educate anyone anywhere”.