South Africa faces a significant skills mismatch. The graduate unemployment rate continues to rise, reaching 11.8% in the first quarter of this year, according to Statistics South Africa—an increase of 2.3 percentage points from the fourth quarter of 2023. Despite this, there is a shortage of skills in some professions. These are the issues that entrepreneurs Jason Adriaan and broadcaster Shahan Ramkisson want to tackle with their new education-focused platform called StudyStart. In an interview with BizNews, Adriaan explained that their online tool is designed to help students plan their educational and career paths. StudyStart offers a web-based application, optimised for accessibility on mobile devices. Jason emphasises the need for vocational training options alongside traditional university routes, noting the importance of various skill sets in the job market. He also highlights the challenges startups face in South Africa, including tax burdens and slow procurement processes with large corporations. Their goal is to effectively bridge the skills gap and reduce unemployment in the country.
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Highlights from the interview
South Africa’s skills mismatch is growing, with graduate unemployment hitting 11.8%. Entrepreneurs Jason Adriaan and Shahan Ramkisson are addressing this through their new platform, StudyStart. The tool helps students plan their education and careers, emphasizing vocational training alongside traditional routes. Adriaan highlights challenges like tax burdens and slow procurement but aims to bridge the skills gap and lower unemployment rates with this accessible, mobile-optimized solution.
Extended transcript of the interview
Linda van Tilburg (00:00:00)
I have Jason Adriaan, the co-founder of StudyStart, in the BizNews studio to tell us about the new online platform he has started where pupils can plan the next step for education and jobs. Hi Jason, welcome to BizNews.
Jason Adriaan (00:00:22)
Hi Linda, nice to be with you.
Linda van Tilburg (00:00:24)
Well, what is StudyStart?
Jason Adriaan (00:00:28)
StudyStart is a business that’s been on my mind for a long time. My education journey has been an interesting, unconventional one. I studied medicine but discovered three years in that this was not the right career path for me and ended up dropping out. I was at UCT and remember giving that phone call to my mother, saying, “Listen, I don’t want to do this anymore; I’m switching to a BSc.” You can only imagine, after spending an enormous amount of money and student debt, how that went down. But everyone was super supportive of me making that decision and changing direction. I eventually graduated with a BSc in Information Systems, Computer Science, and then I did my post-grad in Management through WITS. So, from medicine to post-grad management in digital business is like worlds apart.
I realised that we put a big, life-altering decision on the shoulders of a 17 or 18-year-old. A 17-year-old is out there making a decision for what the future version of themselves is going to do for the rest of their lives. It’s a massive decision that they often have no support in making. Often, the parents don’t know what’s going on. Most of us, particularly people of colour in South Africa, come from backgrounds where our parents didn’t have degrees. We didn’t have parents that went through tertiary education or were familiar with how academia works or what a bachelor’s or master’s degree is, or what these different fields are. So, there’s a lack of support for most people in making that decision, and there’s just no real education around education. That’s where we come in. That’s why we started this business, my co-founder and I,Shahan Ramkisson. We put together a product that we believe will enable those kids and their parents to make an informed decision about where to study and what to study.
Linda van Tilburg (00:03:18)
So it’s a platform. What are you offering?
Jason Adriaan (00:03:27)
It’s technology-driven. It’s an application; we’ve gone web-first. We’re very conscious about the landscape in South Africa. A lot of startups launch with apps. Our experience is that in South Africa, people are basically on mobile devices. 85% of people are just accessing the internet through their phones. That’s their definition of the internet. We want to reach as many people as possible, regardless of which type of device they have. So we built a web interface for our application.
What we do is we have an interest profiler, which is the first kind of starting point. It says, “Okay, cool, let’s ask you 60 questions. Let’s try and get a baseline understanding of where your passions and interests are.” Our belief is that if someone is interested and passionate about something, they’re more inclined to be successful in those areas later on in life. So it starts with the interest profiler.
Based on that, we’ve got some algorithms and some AI magic that direct students to specific occupations, giving them a deep understanding of what those occupations entail. It includes the day-to-day tasks involved, the description, and what they might be doing in the real world in corporations. We also link it to the qualifications they could pursue in South Africa to achieve those occupations. We try to link these various data sets together and make sense of a very complicated educational space for essentially a layman or a 17 or 16-year-old.
Linda van Tilburg (00:05:37)
And how far down the road are you in developing this?
Jason Adriaan (00:00:40)
We’ve launched the first version of the application, which includes the interest profiler combined with the qualifications directory. A student should be able to self-help through the entire process, from answering the questionnaire, getting career recommendations, understanding what those occupations entail, and then connecting to the various institutions in South Africa, whether it’s a college, a private college, a university, or vocational training. That is all possible within the application right now.
The second phase of our rollout entails a lot more hands-on support, including actually getting in touch with a human being to help with filling in forms. A 17-year-old often has no idea how to fill in a university application or which tests to take. We plan on providing hands-on assistance in that area as an additional service to the self-help product that already exists.
Linda van Tilburg (00:07:13)
What is the competition like in this landscape? Are you competing against other apps or services?
Jason Adriaan (00:07:19)
Yeah, there are a number of service providers in this area. There’s Gradesmatch, which also assists students with applications to universities. There’s ApplyForMe, UniApplyForMe, I believe, that focus on doing the applications. We want to focus on the end-to-end journey. We don’t just want to focus on the applications. We believe that the actual university application is a service we should render, and we plan on doing that. But we want to take a student’s hand all the way from matric, getting through matric, getting into university, and eventually getting into a job. You often report on this: we’ve got a massive youth unemployment problem in South Africa.
At the same time, JSE-listed companies talk about a skills gap. So we have this situation where there are vacancies in big companies and an oversupply of people, but the skills don’t match the vacancies. Addressing that problem is a mission of ours.
Linda van Tilburg (00:08:52)
Can we talk about funding? How are you funding this?
Jason Adriaan (00:08:58)
This is not my first time launching a startup and dipping into the startup world, then going into the corporate world, and now back into the startup world. Our approach here has been to try and self-fund as much as possible.
We’ve had a number of opportunities to take equity partners or investment, but we’ve held off on that for the time being. I’m a software developer, so fortunately, I’ve been able to build a lot of the tech myself with the help of various other software developers working with us.
We’ve been able to self-fund that, fortunately. That might change in the future, but for the time being, we’ve taken a very simple approach, trying to get into the market as cost-effectively as possible. I think it makes us more agile in navigating this space.
LInda van Tilburg (00:10:12)
So, what are the next steps for you guys?
Jason Adriaan (00:10:14)
As I mentioned earlier, our next step is to roll out the hands-on application services, helping kids apply to a university. We’re also working with financial service providers to connect kids to financing, student loans, and policies. There are many financial services products that parents need to be aware of earlier in a child’s education journey.
You don’t want that surprise in January of the year when your kid is going to university and realising you need R200,000 for accommodation and tuition. It happens. It happened to me and it happens to many kids going to university. So, as I mentioned earlier, the hands-on application service is important for getting kids into universities. It’s a pain point for many parents and students, trying to navigate forms, administration, and benchmark testing. But this is not the primary focus of what we want to do.
We want to hold a student’s hand all the way from getting through matric, getting into university, graduating, and getting into a job. You often report there’s a massive disparity in South Africa: a massive youth unemployment rate and corporate listed companies saying there’s a massive skills shortage.
So, there are enough people, but there’s a mismatch of skills. One of our goals is to solve that problem. Part of this issue is the financing issue, which we are well aware of. You don’t want parents realising they need R100,000 to 200,000 to send their kid to university for a combination of tuition and accommodation. It’s a lot of money needed suddenly. We want to educate around that and connect kids to funding opportunities and financial packages they may utilise.
Linda van Tilburg (00:13:07)
You mentioned that parents from some communities don’t know how to steer their kids because they didn’t go to university or know about master’s and PhD degrees. Do you find that some of these parents automatically steer their kids towards university, thinking that’s what they should attain, whereas many kids might need vocational courses?
Jason Adriaan (00:13:30)
Absolutely, that’s a very good point. That’s why in our database, we’ve incorporated a large number of jobs that don’t require a degree. Our assessment, the 60 questions the student asks at the beginning of the process, doesn’t bias towards building more academics or university students. We’re very cognisant that it takes many types to build a world. Vocational training is crucial, particularly in a country like South Africa where we’re trying to build things. You need electricians, plumbers, fitters, and turners.
My dad was a mason in his earlier days, and I always say that’s a very important role. In South Africa, there’s a tendency to look down on vocational training and work, with this idea that everyone should wear a white collar and carry a pen. In other countries like Australia, vocational workers earn as much as those in corporate offices. We want to inform kids about those options and not just steer them to universities.
Linda van Tilburg (00:15:21)
Jason, we’ve spoken about starting a business. Is it difficult for a startup like yours to start a business in South Africa?
Jason Adriaan (00:15:34)
Many people don’t appreciate how difficult it is to start a small business or a startup in South Africa. First, from a tax perspective, small businesses trying to get off the ground face significant challenges. There are many programmes and initiatives in place to assist, but taxing a small business trying to get started feels cruel. I have many friends and family members who started small businesses and often faced enormous tax bills.
It crushes them. This is an existential issue for small businesses in their early formative years. You’re looking down the barrel at this enormous bill. If you’re in the B2B space, dealing with JSE-listed companies can be incredibly painful. Procurement processes are slow, and it can take months to get a contract signed.
We’ve had many conversations with big organisations, and it’s a slow, painful process. You’re sitting there, three to six months go by, and no one signs anything. I’m a small business with employees who need salaries paid. You’re draining all my resources waiting for a signed contract. It’s challenging.
If you’re in a corporate in South Africa and a small business is pitching to you, remember that every day it takes you to respond to an email, submit a vendor selection document, or sign off on a budget line, you’re potentially putting that small business out of business. That’s the world we operate in.
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