A group of young people in Da Nang is putting quite a lot of time, efforts, and money into developing an ecommerce site at http://toidayhoc.com, which offers a number of courses associated with jobs and skills and recommends them to people in need.

The ‘Toidayhoc’ team introducing their services at the 3rd International Startup Conference and Exhibition, or SURF 2018

The site offers information on foreign language courses, extra classes in preparation for national senior high school graduation examinations, cooking, car repair, flower arrangement, and more.

Nguyen Huu Nhan, 24, graduated in Information Technology Statistics at the city-based University of Economics in 2016. For many reasons, after his graduation, Nhan decided to challenge himself with various job positions. In particular, in an attempt to open his own flower shop, Nhan found it very hard to seek a professionally-taught flower arrangement course in the Internet.

Nhan said he was very confused by a large number of flower arranging courses available in the Internet, and wondered whether or not they were good choices for him.

In fact, the names of establishments offering flower arrangement classes were introduced clearly to Internet users, whilst there was a severe shortage of information about the identity of the trainers and reviews made by graduates on the quality of the course.

This fact inspired the strong-willed man to develop a startup idea of connecting instructors and learners in a simple yet effective manner through the provision of specific information to satisfy any learning needs.

Finally, Nhan’s great efforts were paid off as he launched the ‘Toidayhoc’ (Come here to study) project in late 2017 in the form of a website at http://toidayhoc.com.

In middle of this year, ‘Toidayhoc’ started its participation in 6-month-long incubation programme offered by the Da Nang Entrepreneurship Support Company Ldt (DNES).

Under the highly practical programme, Nhan met and made friends with Tran Viet Dung, Phan Dang Khoa, and Ha Van Ngoc, all of whom possessed the same ambitious startup ideas as him.

Within one month, Nhan joined forces with his new friends to develop their own ecommerce site, and getting feedback from Internet users to continue adjusting and perfecting it effectively.

Up to now, specific information on a total of about 1,500 learning courses nationwide has been publicised at http://toidayhoc.com, about 300 of which are available right in Da Nang.

Visiting this site, users can find it very easy to access all information on courses, including trainers, tuition fees, and the strengths, shortcomings of the training establishments. Every day, the site welcomes between 100 and 200 visits. Nhan, however, realised that, these figures are still modest, and in fact, have not been able to generate sustainable revenue for the project.

The ecommerce site developers are planning to expand the business by browsing social network platforms to find more instructors and learners.

Noticeably, Nhan underlined the significance of creating a minimum viable product (MVP), which is a product with just enough features to satisfy early customers, and to provide feedback for future product development. In reality, gathering insights from an MVP is often less expensive than developing a product with more features, which increases costs and risk if the product fails, for example, due to incorrect assumptions. The launching of MVPs in the market is expected to help the site developers get feedback from customers, thereby developing more effective solutions to make the product better.

In the coming time, ‘Toidayhoc’ will offer free-of-charge courses in Da Nang for those in need. “This is a good way to both benefit the community, and promote the project”, Nhan remarked. He and other project founders are managing to realise their startup dream despite many potholes on their road to success.