Stepping out of your Kalpha zone

Learning something new and sharing your own skills has never been easier now with Kalpha. I spoke to the founders behind the rising mobile application.

In our modern social media-savvy society where exciting life experiences are highlighted more than ever, life seems too short to miss out on trying new things. But sometimes we simply do not know where to go to learn certain skills, or it may seem intimidating.

This is where Jack Soh and Jaden Neo, both 28, step in. Classmates at Ngee Ann Polytechnic turned business partners, the duo developed a mobile application called Kalpha to connect people who want to learn a new skill to people who want to share their skills.

Users on Kalpha can look through skills that other users are sharing and sign up for whichever they are interested in. They can also post some of their own skills that they would be willing to share. Some examples of the skills already listed the platform include parkour, baking, photography, singing, and drone flying. There are even sharing sessions and talks about business ventures, studying abroad, and other life experiences.

“Our app is a platform whereby you don’t just use it to learn, you can use it to teach and share something as well. So it’s a two-sided platform,” Jaden says, “How I look at it is that now we’re [helping] people who don’t traditionally don’t have a place for them to monetise their skills or teach people, now they can use this platform to teach.”

The app has several features to aid the user’s experience. When someone shares their skill or experience, they have to indicate which days of the week they will be able to meet and share on. They will also have to include how much the learner will have to pay, but according to Jack users are “highly, highly encouraged to share for free” in order to create an environment of willingness, free of monetary obligations.

Jaden tells us that the app also limits how much sharers can charge to $80 at most. He says: “People now can learn stuff that is traditionally more expensive at a more affordable rate – this ties down back to our vision which is to make personalised learning affordable. Everything in the app is below $80 hence the environment that we create is a very affordable environment.”

Kalpha is similar in design to several other applications on the market that we are already familiar with, such as ride-hailing and e-commerce apps. This means that we will meet and transact with strangers, but the developers reassure us that Kalpha has several safety protocols in place to protect its users.

Apart from requiring users to sign in with either a Google or Facebook account and put up a real profile picture of themselves, Jack explains that Kalpha has three main features to help prove users’ credibility: “Number one is Kalpha point or credibility point. So if two strangers actually meet up for a sharing session, after the session both of them will gain one point. Number two is testimonial, we can review each other. Is this person real? Is this person dodgy? The third one [is] this function called cheers, which is a voting system for a particular personality trait of that person. So that person could be fun, respectful, knowledgeable… You can just vote. So the higher the vote obviously the person is more real, more genuine.”

The inspiration behind Kalpha came from their own individual experiences, especially for Jack who had gone through several businesses and believes that there is value in evaluating personal life experiences and sharing them with others so that they will not make the same mistakes and instead act wisely based on what works in real life. He aims to “replicate [this] transfer of experience” using Kalpha.

This is not the first business venture for the duo, who both studied Business Studies at Ngee Ann Polytechnic. They ran an import business for corporate gifts from their final semester in polytechnic, through their two years of national service, up until their first year at university when they decided to focus on their studies. Jaden continued to study business at Singapore Management University and worked as a management consultant briefly after that, while Jack did his university studies in Melbourne and opened a Chinese restaurant there for two years before selling the business.

Development of Kalpha began in July 2018, and took approximately six months to conceptualise and build. Since then, Jack and Jaden have had both setbacks and highlights. They have had to pitch to several potential investors and partners but there have been times when nothing came out of these meetings. The duo are also now working on this project full-time, which Jack says has made them more “prudent”. On the bright side, Kalpha peaked at number 2 and number 10 on the Google Play Store and Apple App Store respectively for the education category. They also received the Startup SG Founder Grant in January 2019 which is a government grant and mentorship programme for new entrepreneurs.

Paid social media advertisements on Facebook and Instagram, blog posts, and electronic newsletters are just some of the ways that Jack and Jaden are using to advertise Kalpha. They have also been attending events and seminars and working with educational institutions such as the National University of Singapore and Singapore Management University.

Looking ahead, they have big plans for Kalpha. Jack says they hope to “conquer the whole of Southeast Asia”, with Vietnam, Myanmar and Indonesia definitely being on the hit list of markets that they want to break into. Since its launch in December 2018, Kalpha has already amassed 1,300 downloads across both Android and iOS.

Kalpha is available for free for iOS and Android from the App Store and Google Play Store respectively.