Team ‘Online Sohopathi’ on the way to conquer Germany

Publish: 4:13 PM, September 15, 2018 | Update: 4:13 PM, September 15, 2018

Rafiqul Alam Khan
What would you do, if you’re struggling with any academic queries is mind? If there is nobody around to satisfy your urge, you are more likely to turn to Question-Answer websites like Quora or Stack Overflow. The problem arises when you feel the need to search your academic queries in Bengali.
Addresseing this issue, ‘Online Sohopathi’ has revolutionized the idea by creating a web based academic related question-answer platform in Bengali. Shadman Majid, one of the co-founders of the platform was sharing his experience on how they came up with the idea of Online Sohopathi. “When I was a teacher at a popular coaching center, I had to deal with not only students’ academic questions but also many of their personal queries. I also found out there are a lot of students in rural area who are deprived of quality mentors. Even in the metropolitan cities across Bangladesh, students are heavily dependent of coaching centers and private tutors. I had shared it with some of my friends in a brainstorming session. One of them replied- why not build a website that deals with all of these problems.”
The implementation of their idea kicked off in 2017. At first, in September of that year the team opened a Facebook page to test the idea. Within three weeks the Facebook page managed to attract four thousand visitors. This brought confidence within the team and persuaded them to finally launch the website in the December of 2017.
The team members of Online Sohopathi hailed from different universities including students of top engineering and medical schools like Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology, Military Institute of Science and Technology, Dhaka Medical College and the University of Dhaka. Md. Atiquer Rahman- an associate of the team said, “We are voluntarily engaged in this initiative. Our core team consists of 11 members who are responsible for carrying out managerial tasks and setting up the strategies according to our vision. Our 25 volunteers help us to execute the operational tasks on different levels. There are 25 campus ambassadors who are promoting the website and disseminating the idea of ‘asking questions and getting answers in Bengali’ in their respective campuses.”
The website has greatly facilitated the process of online learning of Bangladeshi students. If anyone asks any of their academic related questions in Bengali, their questions are then promptly responded by mentors from top universities. Other additional features in the website include Educational Blog, Profiling, Library, Leaderboard and Online Exam. Online Sohopathi charges zero fees for the services they provide.
Since the launching of the website Online Sohopathi has come a long way. At present, the website gets browsed by 30,000 unique visitors. Their Facebook group has 26,000 organic members. There are over 3,500 questions and answers that are archived in the website. Almost 80% of the questions are answered by the users of this platform. On top of that, the education based startup has been able to bag several accolades in their achievement cart. GP Accelerator- a Dhaka based startup grooming platform rated Online Sohopathi as one of the Top 30 ideas of 2018 in Bangladesh.
Recently, UNESCO and Stiftung Entrepreneurship- a German based organization invited team ‘Online Sohopathi’ to participate in the Youth Citizen Entrepreneurship Competition 2018 at the Free University of Berlin. The initiative has already made it to the final round of the competition from a pool of 651 projects of approximately 100 countries. The team is confident that they can bring glory for Bangladesh by winning the ‘2018 Youth Citizen Entrepreneurship Award’.