WEBUCATION ROMANIA, LTD.
BUSINESS PLAN
December 2011
Dani Oros
Alexandra Brierley
Petras Misiunas
Florian Langstraat
Zina Magomet
Artyom Semyanov

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Webucation Romania, Ltd.
Weaving toward your goal.

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VII.
VIII.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
a. Overview
b. Product Offering
c. Market
d. Business
e. Team

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COMPANY SUMMARY

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THE PRODUCT
a. Webucation Romania, Ltd. Website
b. Future Products

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MARKET
a. Overview
b. The Online Educational Tutoring Services Market
c. Customers
d. Competition

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STRATEGY AND IMPLEMENTATION
a. Overview
b. Market Needs
c. Marketing
d. Pricing
e. Sales Strategy
f. Development Plan
g. Overall Schedule

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FINANCIALS
a. Financial Highlights
b. Cash Flow

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MANAGEMENT SUMMARY

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APPENDICES
a. Key Financial Ratios
b. Cash Flow (3 years)
c. Income Statement
d. Balance Sheet

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Webucation Romania, Ltd.
Weaving toward your goal.

I.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Webucation Romania, Ltd. is currently creating a unique subscription-based interactive education platform for Romanian students undertaking the Baccalaureate Exam.

A.

Overview
Technological developments create opportunity for online tutoring services

As technology has become increasingly important in education services, developments in the Internet and multimedia technologies have enabled the rapid growth of e-learning and electronically supported learning and teaching, particularly in the secondary school standardized testing market. However, high-quality online education for these tests, including the Baccalaureate, is disproportionally more advanced in Western countries, which tend to invest more in education than others, especially transition countries in Eastern Europe. Specifically, Romania is classified as a transition economy that has not yet fully reformed its schooling system and reported poor results on final secondary school exams in 2011. Webucation is a new online tutoring company that aims to provide all aspects of e-tutoring for the Romanian Baccalaureate, as we have identified an absence in the market for personalized tutoring. Market and competitive advantage

We plan to create a market niche for Baccalaureate online tutoring with our dynamic education platform targeted at Romanian students in their last year of secondary education beginning to prepare for the Baccalaureate exam. Our market potential is of considerable size: about 100,000 Romanian students. Our most important competitive advantages are our affordable prices and the flexibility and convenience of studying at home. Additionally, private tutors may present competition, however, they provide a service completely different from ours in a very separate price category.

Logistics for market entry
We will employ the use of an external firm to develop our website and create our market. Outsourcing this part of the business will enable the owners to spend time hiring student tutors, producing the content for the website, and implementing our marketing strategy. Team

Our current team includes two team managers, each with tutoring and computer science backgrounds, two accountants with a combined four years experience in finance, and two marketing officers that have worked on several advertising campaigns. After our website is developed and online, we have the skills to manage the business’ financials and market the website, but we will need technical help maintaining our website and help to manage our website’s student forum. For this, we are looking to hire a forum manager and IT expert in year 1.

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Webucation Romania, Ltd.
Weaving toward your goal.

B.

Product Offering

Webucation Romania, Ltd. offers a subscription-based online tutoring service to help Romanian students prepare for the Baccalaureate exam at the end of high school. We have decided to start our business in Romania due to the poor results in this year’s final exams. We aim to create an online community of young people through visual learning, online tests, a student forum, and an advice center all dedicated to improving students’ preparation and performance on the Baccalaureate.

C.

Market

Webucation is aimed at the online education services market. The rapid growth of the Internet and its various uses has created a unique opportunity for us to bring the online tutoring services readily available in regions like the United States to Romania, which lacks an online tutoring platform for its standardized tests. We have thus identified a niche for Webucation in the online tutoring market and a subset of high school students who demand a cost-effective study tool in preparation for their exams. Private tutoring can be very expensive and not easily accessible to every student. We intend to market specifically to students in their last year of secondary school and their parents. Once we have established our company brand and customer base in Romania, we will expand our business to other Eastern-European countries.

D.

Business

Our business model reflects our strategy to first establish ourselves with our potential customers and expand our subscription base from there. Because we are the only firm of our kind in the market, our main focus is on generating a customer base and not on out-competing other firms.

Sales will be made via our company website. Once we have established our brand and begun to generate revenue, we will look to expanding and advertising our business in other EasternEuropean countries that lack our services.

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Team
Dani Oros – Team Manager
o Former mobile applications developer
o B.S. in Computer Science (University Babes, Romania)
o 5 years of technical experience related to websites, databases, and computer networks
o 2 years tutoring experience in Romania
o Currently: pursuing B.A. degree in Business and Economics (University College of London)
Alexandra Brierley – Team Manager
o 3 years of teaching and tutoring experience
o 2 years of sales and marketing experience for start-up online company o Currently: pursuing B.S. of Economics with special concentrations in Computer Science and Markets and Management (Duke University, USA)

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Webucation Romania, Ltd.
Weaving toward your goal.

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Petras Misiunas – Team Accountant
o 4 years of volunteer teaching experience in Lithuania
o Currently: pursuing B.A. degree in Economics and Business with Eastern European Studies (University College of London)
Florian Langstraat – Team Accountant
o 2 years of work experience in finance with Dutch accounting firm o Research interests: evolution of high-tech industrial clusters and patterns of urbanization in both Western and Eastern Europe
o Currently: pursuing B.A. in Human Geography and Planning (Utrecht University, the Netherlands)
Zina Magomet – Marketing Officer
o 2 years work experience as advertising agent for Picadilia Ltd. Company o Organized Shanghai EXPO Advertisement Campaign (China)
o Currently: pursuing B.A. degree in Marketing and Advertising (Moscow University, Russia)
Artyom Semyanov – Marketing Officer
o 3 years of tutoring and teaching experience, including work as a school teacher o Co-founder of StudentsHelp (provides tutoring services to students at HSE, Moscow)
o Currently: pursuing B.S. of Economics in HSE, Moscow

Our future team will need further expertise in website development and maintenance, as well as a full-time website manager. In the first year, we are looking to hire an external firm to develop Webucation’s website and several student tutors to produce our educational videos. Once our website is online, we will need to hire two staff members: one part-time informational technologies expert and one full-time education professional to manage the website’s student forum.

II.

COMPANY SUMMARY

Webucation Romania, Ltd. will be formed with six owners (listed as the six members of the team) as a limited liability company for ownership and tax purposes.

III.

THE PRODUCT
A. Webucation Romania, Ltd. Website

Our website will be integral to the success of the business. The website will consist of the following four cornerstones:
 Tutorial videos for various subjects;
 Online practice tests;
 ‘Free your mind” inspirational corner
 A forum;
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Webucation Romania, Ltd.
Weaving toward your goal.

These four elements will all be accessible through a personalized interface, where our students can track their progress and manage their results on our online tests. We plan to launch the website in September of 2012, the start of the school year, in preparation for the June Baccalaureate.

Webucation, in partnership with an external website developer, will create an efficient and dynamic website. Operating within Romania, Webucation is the only online tutoring service aimed at Romanian students in their last year of secondary education who are preparing for the Baccalaureate. Our education platform serves as an affordable alternative to private tutoring and is the only product of its kind in Romania.

We expect that we will need around three months to find suitable tutors in Romania a...

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