Synap

Online education platform using AI to revolutionise learning

Company Overview Synap is a unique e-learning platform for students and professionals. We encourage our users to create, practice and share Multiple Choice Question (MCQ) tests with their colleagues and friends. As students ourselves, we discovered how effective this method could be whilst studying for our own exams. Previously, studying had entailed long, dull periods of repeatedly reading through a textbook in the hope that something would eventually stick. After experimenting with Synap as a personal project, we’re now focusing on transforming it into a world-leading educational platform. Company Founders James Gupta (left) and Omair Vaiyani (right) are both medical students at the University of Leeds, currently taking a year out to work on their business and study an MSc in Healthcare Informatics. They came up with the concept of Synap a few years ago, and having worked together on a number of technology projects since then, they are now looking to use their experience to develop Synap into a leading e-learning platform. Earlier last year, James exited his first company, JumpIn, after it was acquired by Addison-Lee. James had worked on JumpIn for 18 months as their Chief Technical Officer, and was responsible for developing the product and, later, managing a team of developers in London. He is was a fellow at Kairos Society and is now the UK Executive Team / Warden of the North, and the recipient of Medical, Enterprise and Informatics scholarships from the University of Leeds. Omair is also the recipient of an Informatics scholarship from Leeds and is on the United Kingdom Medical Students' Association (UKMSA) committee as their lead technical developer. UKMSA released their first and only mobile app: The Medics Handbook, created by Omair, which became one of the top medical apps on Android within days of its release. He is also the Chief Technological Advisor at InnovateHealth UK, a new company that aims to secure investments for innovative healthcare startups. Company History Synap was born out of a problem its founders, James and Omair, faced in their daily lives as medical students. Like many courses, it requires students to learn vast quantities of new information in a relatively short period of time. Fed up with spending hours sitting in a dorm room reading over and over through an anatomy textbook in the hope that something would eventually stick, they decided to try something new. The duo started to write questions and challenged each other to take them. This became a bit of a game, trying to catch one another out on different topics, and it didn’t just make the studying process more efficient, it actually made it… quite fun! Over summer, this concept was developed into Web and iOS versions of Synap. It was initially popular amongst other medical students who used it to create, practice and share tests with their colleagues - even developing ‘crowdsourced’ tests for subjects where everyone in a year submitted one or two questions, resulting in a repository of hundreds of questions which everyone could benefit from. One day, the app went viral, amassing 16,000 downloads in the space of 4 hours. Suddenly, the app was being used not just by medical students, not even just by students, but by people at all levels of education. Primary school kids were using it, special needs teachers were using it, A-level students, Boeing pilots, professional accountants, doctors and nurses - all creating, practising and sharing the tests they’d made on Synap. This showed James and Omair that they’d tapped into a much greater market than they’d realised - this was something that a lot of people really wanted to use. Using everything they’ve learnt over the last year of development, and with support from an educational charity, Jisc, and Spark at the University of Leeds, they are focusing on re-developing Synap; transforming it from a hobby project into a world-class educational platform.