Yes, I've had the criticism that we are doing it for the money,
But I think actions speak louder than words
in terms of what we are doing as a company.
The reason I got into education is to make a big impact.
My name is Evan.
I’m the founder and CEO of the Zenith Learning Group.
We offer tuition services to students,
mainly in the secondary school and junior college markets.
Growing up, even though I was quite rebellious,
I studied really hard.
And that was how I got into teaching.
I started teaching in junior college.
I found that the best way for myself to learn,
was to teach others.
The rationale was that if I could explain concepts
in a very clear manner to my friends,
then I could do the same thing in exams as well.
After I graduated, a lot of them
recommended their juniors to come to me
and sought my help.
I was like, you know what?
Tuition can be a very good way to earn some money.
But at the same time,
it is also a way to pass the time while waiting for my enlistment.
So yeah, I think it was at the end of my second year in the army
when I really realised that
education was something that I’m very passionate about.
It checked all the right boxes, in terms of
what I wanted in a career.
Which is Number One: Something that I'm good at.
Number Two: It is something that I enjoy.
Number Three: It’s something that has a real impact on society.
And Number Four: In terms of income and work life balance,
I think it is second to none.
I decided: “You know what? Let's just stay in Singapore...”
“Take all the money I've saved from the last few years,”
“put it into a business account and start the company.”
I think a lot of people would see tuition or education as just teaching.
But there are a lot of aspects of the business
that make it very, very difficult to run a company.
Such as you need to understand finance,
you need to understand marketing,
you need to understand operations.
So I guess at the start,
there were a lot of mistakes that I made,
which looking back, were necessary mistakes, right?
Because I feel like I adopted a win or learn mentality, right?
There's no such thing as failure, because out of your failures,
that's where you learn the most.
The Zenith that you see today
has been built upon all those mistakes that I made at the start.
When people ask us what makes us unique?
Why is Zenith successful?
I always say that it boils down to one thing,
which is our customer obsession.
In terms of academics,
we provide free consultations.
We provide free extra lessons.
We provide free marking services.
We also give the tutors money to buy welfare for the students.
So for the first lesson of each month,
a student will get Starbucks,
acai bowls,
or even wagyu bowls.
And then on a weekly basis,
our pantries in the centres are stocked to the brim with food,
there's free-flow drinks,
there are massage chairs.
It's really a very, very holistic experience.
So we do whatever we can to maximise the amount of value for the students.
Yes, I've had the criticism that we are doing it for the money,
But I think actions speak louder than words
in terms of what we are doing as a company.
I'm a firm believer in social capitalism.
I feel like the more money we make,
we can actually reinvest in terms of social impact.
What we are trying to do
is launch a free-to-use online platform
and for all students between the age of seven, all the way to 18,
to receive a world-class education for free.
So we are essentially taking the Singapore curriculum
and digitalising it.
We are creating animated videos,
we are filming lessons,
and then we are putting it on this platform
and we are making it free of charge
for all students in Singapore and the rest of South-east Asia to use.
And I think that's how
I like to measure my success:
Not in terms of how many centres we open,
or how much profit we make.
But it's really on that scale of impact,
which is: How many people you can help
multiplied by to what extent you help each individual.
And when I use that formula,
I know that I'm making a big impact.