Today we would like to offer you a further acquaintance with Anton Saraykin – the SKOLKOVO MBA 2010 Alumni. We have earlier published his articles on the four-week module in the USA and his impressions about the Chinese project module. Recently you might have read his section upon the overall outcomes from his studies at SKOLKOVO.
Today’s post is devoted to one of the most interesting start-up projects of the 2010 MBA class Alumni – e-learning service “ChineseOnline.ru” developed by Anton and his classmate Waseem Kawaf.
The project was established during the final module of the MBA programme when the students were to work on their own business ideas. Now it is growing fast and gaining prominence. Anton speaks about their enterprise.
- Anton, please tell us more about your start-up.
- ChineseOnline.ru is a service for learning the Chinese language in an efficient way with a teacher from China. All you need for studies is Internet access, a camera and a microphone. You are having individual lessons with an experienced teacher and learning to speak Chinese in the way the Chinese themselves do. You can see and hear your teacher as if you were sitting at a table with him or her.
Another great thing about the service is that now you can study at home, office or any place convenient for you, so you don’t need to spend hours in traffic while getting to the school or your private teacher. And what is even more important, you pay for the lessons 2-3 times less than most of the schools and privite teachers in Moscow charge.
According to our marketing survey Russia has a huge lack of professional Chinese teachers. Lessons with Chinese native speaker in Moscow will cost you up to $50-70 per academic hour, whereas our fees start at $9.99. This is not to mention the small cities where you normally don’t have another opportunity to study Chinese with qualified native speaker except for our service.
- Who did you aim for when creating the project?
- Most of our clients are people who have previously learned Chinese and now are willing to upgrade their level by studying with the native speaker. Plus now we are having more and more clients who start learning the language with us. That is why many of our trainers can fluently speak Russian. We find this important especially for children, as most of them can’t speak English well enough yet to understand the teacher if the lesson is going on in English.
We have students from all over Russia and abroad. Some of them wish to study Chinese with us for work perposes, some – as a support to their school classes, some – for their personal reasons. All of our clients are united by strong willing to learn communicating to the Chinese people without any difficulty. For even those who have been studying the languege here for years (with teachers and study books) usually feel uncomfortable when coming to China – the Chinese often can’t understand them at all because they lack speaking practice, even despite the seriousness of their academic training.
- How long can it take to start speaking Chinese?
- Of course it strongly depends on your personal abilities and time you can afford to invest in learning. But in general it takes a year to become able to support a conversation on common topics. Surely it takes longer to start reading and writing well in Chinese. Again, the timing is fully dependant upon yourself and your commitmemt to studies.
Today’s post is devoted to one of the most interesting start-up projects of the 2010 MBA class Alumni – e-learning service “ChineseOnline.ru” developed by Anton and his classmate Waseem Kawaf.
The project was established during the final module of the MBA programme when the students were to work on their own business ideas. Now it is growing fast and gaining prominence. Anton speaks about their enterprise.
- Anton, please tell us more about your start-up.
- ChineseOnline.ru is a service for learning the Chinese language in an efficient way with a teacher from China. All you need for studies is Internet access, a camera and a microphone. You are having individual lessons with an experienced teacher and learning to speak Chinese in the way the Chinese themselves do. You can see and hear your teacher as if you were sitting at a table with him or her.
Another great thing about the service is that now you can study at home, office or any place convenient for you, so you don’t need to spend hours in traffic while getting to the school or your private teacher. And what is even more important, you pay for the lessons 2-3 times less than most of the schools and privite teachers in Moscow charge.
According to our marketing survey Russia has a huge lack of professional Chinese teachers. Lessons with Chinese native speaker in Moscow will cost you up to $50-70 per academic hour, whereas our fees start at $9.99. This is not to mention the small cities where you normally don’t have another opportunity to study Chinese with qualified native speaker except for our service.
- Who did you aim for when creating the project?
- Most of our clients are people who have previously learned Chinese and now are willing to upgrade their level by studying with the native speaker. Plus now we are having more and more clients who start learning the language with us. That is why many of our trainers can fluently speak Russian. We find this important especially for children, as most of them can’t speak English well enough yet to understand the teacher if the lesson is going on in English.
We have students from all over Russia and abroad. Some of them wish to study Chinese with us for work perposes, some – as a support to their school classes, some – for their personal reasons. All of our clients are united by strong willing to learn communicating to the Chinese people without any difficulty. For even those who have been studying the languege here for years (with teachers and study books) usually feel uncomfortable when coming to China – the Chinese often can’t understand them at all because they lack speaking practice, even despite the seriousness of their academic training.
- How long can it take to start speaking Chinese?
- Of course it strongly depends on your personal abilities and time you can afford to invest in learning. But in general it takes a year to become able to support a conversation on common topics. Surely it takes longer to start reading and writing well in Chinese. Again, the timing is fully dependant upon yourself and your commitmemt to studies.