Transforming Education with AI, for Both Teachers and Students
Meet Udaress, the brainchild of a civil engineer who traded a well-worn career path for the true entrepreneurial adventure. This innovative startup is harnessing the power of artificial intelligence to make education personalized and accessible to every student, lightening teachers' workloads, and helping schools make the most of their resources. From Lebanon to Station F in France, let’s follow the journey of Udaress and its founder, Wael Saade.
From Civil Engineering to Entrepreneurship
Wael Saade's path to becoming a thriving entrepreneur was far from linear. Initially trained as a civil engineer, he soon realized the profession felt "dry" and lacked the creative spark he craved. Wael felt there wasn't much opportunity to think outside the box in that field. During his last semester at university, while his friends were applying for jobs, he decided to not follow that path. Drawing on his background in civil engineering, he came up with the idea for "civil engineering for kids", which became his first company, Bildits - which was acquired.
Wael learned everything about business through this first venture, including the sales cycle, building a go-to-market strategy, and creating partnerships. This first experience ignited a passion for entrepreneurship, a thrilling world of constant learning that he readily admits he is now "addicted to". Wael’s journey and the rise of artificial intelligence inspired his current venture, Udaress, an AI platform designed to enhance teachers' abilities by personalizing student learning.
The Genesis and Purpose of Udaress
The concept of Udaress took shape a few months ago, inspired by Wael's experience with Bildits, his hardware-focused startup, which demonstrated the profound impact of interactive learning on students' cognitive and problem-solving abilities. He is convinced that AI can further enhance this approach.
The core problem Udaress addresses is the challenge of a single teacher effectively supporting 30 students in a classroom. The traditional alternative, hiring a personal tutor, is often too expensive and inaccessible. Indeed, Udaress is an AI tutor aiming to assist teachers with tasks like reporting, grading, and generating assignments, while providing students with personalized support, by understanding their strengths and weaknesses and improving their learning.
His vision for Udaress is deeply rooted in accessibility. He passionately believes that no student should lack quality education in an era empowered by AI. The aim is to create a future where every student has access to both personalized and quality learning, having their questions answered effectively.
“Udaress AI is the most accessible personal AI tutor that is designed for schools to save time for teachers, to save money for schools, and most importantly, to personalize learning methods for each student and raise what wasn’t possible before.”
How is Udaress using AI to elevate education to a new level?
The technology behind Udaress leverages existing Large Language Models (LLMs) such as Open AI, and Mistral AI, as these models are already performing exceptionally well, making it unnecessary to build a specific AI model from scratch. The key focus of the innovation is on effectively and safely applying this technology in an educational context.
This involves addressing challenges such as ensuring data security, maintaining information accuracy, upholding academic integrity, and respecting institutional policies/values. Udaress' AI tutor aligns to specific school curriculum, aligns with faculty objectives, supports institutional ethos, and provides persistent student learning assistance.
The innovation is about offering a truly personalized and quality learning experience to students while saving time to professors. The startup aims to use AI to foster curiosity, enhance learning engagement, and promote genuine understanding rather than copy-pasting. Thanks to AI, the tool can pinpoint students' strengths and weaknesses, supporting their areas of improvement and ensuring that no student is left behind. Udaress offers multiple use cases to make learning more personalized and more effective, such as simulating real-world scenarios and adapting to individual student learning styles - visual learners or auditory learners - through different content formats like videos, podcasts, graphs…
What’s the current and potential impact of Udaress?
The impact of Udaress is threefold: saving teachers time, personalizing learning for students, and saving money for schools. Udaress has shown having significantly reduced the time teachers spend on low-value tasks leading to more time for student interaction. The solution represents a saving of around 8 hours per week per teacher, which is determinant for the well-being of teachers and their ability to better help students.
Moreover, the platform helps ensure no students are left behind, and there has been a notable improvement in student grades in classrooms using Udaress. Impressively, initial AB tests showed classrooms using Udaress achieving zero students lagging behind and an average grade increase of two extra points out of 20 compared to traditional classrooms.
"We're already seeing, at our size, the impact our solution is having, including the adoption of AI by academic actors,"
- Wael Saade, founder and CEO of Udaress
The tool also enables schools to reduce costs by optimizing teacher time and potentially lowering expenses related to bridging knowledge gaps, such as in MBA programs, where it’s often necessary to organize preparatory courses (“pre-MBA”) to align students with different backgrounds before they take the same courses. Indeed, with a tool like this, an institution could cut this budget by half for this kind of course.
Udaress has also demonstrated its potential to support education in crisis situations, by providing a learning lifeline to students displaced by conflict in Lebanon, without additional financial burden for the supporting NGOs.
Vision and Future Plans for Udaress
Udaress is in its early stages, having secured $150K through a round of angel investors. Looking ahead, the vision extends beyond the classroom. Udaress plans to launch a B2C app soon to make its AI personal tutor available to any student at home. Extending the solution to a B2C approach will enable Udaress to better involve parents by offering tips to encourage engaging conversations with their children about what they learn in school.
Udaress is initially targeting private schools but has already established contact with potential customers in the public sector across several countries in Africa, the MENA region, France and Europe. On the private customer front, the team is engaging with schools in Canada, USA, Europe, and the MENA region. To accelerate Udaress’ growth, a fund-raising round is planned soon.
Wael's Experience at HEC Paris
Wael's journey with Udaress gained significant momentum after he won first prize in the 5th edition of the ESA-HEC Paris entrepreneurship competition. This victory led to his incubation at Incubateur HEC Paris, an opportunity he considers the best he has ever had.
In his words: The support at the HEC Paris incubator has been "incredible" and "on another level". Wael feels as though he has a team of 20 people supporting him in different areas from marketing and fundraising to pitching and legal matters. What sets the Incubateur HEC Paris apart is the combination of structured guidance and the staff's genuine, personal commitment to entrepreneurs' success.
“People in the HEC Paris incubator, it's crazy how helpful they are. From a personal level, they really want to support from the bottom of their heart, and this is crazy.”
Through Incubateur HEC Paris, Wael has gained access to unique opportunities, including pitching his AI solution to ministers in Africa, and during the AI Action Summit 2024 in France. He has also benefited from HEC Paris professors’ feedback, gaining strategic insights on AI needs in education, while exploring potential collaborations.
Wael also highlights the strong sense of community within the HEC Paris community, the easy access to a huge expert network, and the proactive support from the program managers: “If I have any question, they have an answer and they will support me till the end or they can refer to someone who is an expert within the community."
He emphasizes that the value he receives from the incubator far surpasses the potential monetary gains from other accelerators. His experience with HEC Paris Incubateur has been so impactful that he has chosen to extend his stay there.
Wael Saade’ Tips for Entrepreneurs
Wael’s advice for aspiring entrepreneurs centers on two main points: maintaining an open mind and surrounding oneself with inspiring and supportive people. He emphasizes the importance of being open to pivoting, changing the business model, or even abandoning an idea if necessary.
However, he believes that the core of success lies in being in an environment where you can look up to people, learn from them, help them, and be inspired by their journeys. He personally experienced the accelerated progress possible within a supportive incubator like HEC Paris, compared to his initial solo entrepreneurial journey. Wael also highlights the significance of choosing an incubator/accelerator that fits your development stage. He points out that the right connections and support are far more valuable than funding alone.