“Federal college teachers infrequently repeat examination questions verbatim; what they repeat are core subjects.” When Dare Adeola and Olamide Onigbanjo got down to construct UniBeta on the College of Lagos, they made the quintessential early-stage mistake: seeking to construct an “the whole lot app.” They stuffed timetable scheduling, side road vox pops, peer tutoring, and a campus market hawking thrift streetwear and perfumes right into a unmarried platform. The end result? The outsourced cell app arrived riddled with insects, again and again failed Apple App Retailer and Google Play evaluations, and just about burnt up their financial savings. Worse nonetheless, they ran headfirst into the brutal truth of Nigerian edtech: large visitors spikes two weeks earlier than assessments, adopted by way of general ghost-town churn the second one papers are submitted. As a substitute of shutting down, they stripped away the bloat. Recognising that world chatbots like ChatGPT combat to make sense of photocopied route packs and idiosyncratic native syllabuses, they rebuilt UniBeta round algorithmic revision—coaching AI to identify high-yield subject clusters from previous papers. For TechCabal, OPEYEMI KAREEM is going inside of UniBeta’s bruising adventure from a failed campus super-app to a centered AI find out about instrument.
Via their moment 12 months, maximum college scholars have settled right into a rhythm: gauging which teachers call for essentially the most vigilance, the place to unearth previous query papers, and tips on how to continue to exist examination seasons.
Dare Oluwayanmife Adeola arrived thru a much less typical door. He entered the second-year City and Regional Making plans magnificence on the College of Lagos (UNILAG) by means of JUPEB—an extensive basis programme.
That rigorous preparatory 12 months pressured him to engineer a disciplined private time table to steadiness his coursework along an lively industrial hustle.
“Maximum scholars I seen had been both sacrificing their grades to make ends meet, or burning out socially simply to take care of academically,” Adeola informed TechCabal. “College is meant to be a complete revel in. You shouldn’t need to compromise your level to fund your existence, or vice versa.”
In 2023, Adeola teamed up with Olamide Onigbanjo, then a Chemical Engineering undergraduate, to construct UniBeta.
The preliminary imaginative and prescient used to be an bold, sprawling scholar super-app combining timetable scheduling, CGPA trackers, peer tutoring, profession recommendation, and an e-commerce market for scholar distributors.
3 years, a number of false begins, and a failed cell deployment later, UniBeta has stripped away the surplus to concentrate on the use of synthetic intelligence to assist undergraduates go their assessments.
3 years and a number of other iterations later, UniBeta now makes use of synthetic intelligence (AI) to assist Nigerian college scholars get ready for assessments.
Day 1: The 3 experiments
UniBeta didn’t start as instrument. It all started as an offline find out about time table shared amongst pals.
Inspired by way of their reaction, the founders broke their broader campus ambitions into 3 cheap offline experiments.
The primary check tackled teachers. Adeola recruited top notch scholars throughout schools at UNILAG to run centered tutorials for junior cohorts.
The basis used to be simple: undergraduates regularly clutch complicated ideas quicker when taught by way of friends who’ve just lately sat the similar assessments beneath the similar teachers.
“We began setting up tutorials throughout campus, and I used to be watching their attendance to peer whether or not other people in fact sought after to be told,” Adeola recalled.
The second one experiment all in favour of group media. The founders introduced Within Uni, a campus way of life channel generating side road interviews, vox pops, and relatable video content material. It briefly drew an target market, giving scholar creators an outlet whilst offering UniBeta with direct, natural campus distribution.
The 3rd pillar used to be trade. With scholar consideration secured, UniBeta started monetising by way of promoting promotional slots to undergraduate marketers working aspect companies.
“We had scholars hawking the whole lot from thrift style and streetwear manufacturers to perfumes and jewelry,” Adeola mentioned.
Reinforced by way of traction throughout all 3 channels, the founders made a vintage early-stage mistake: making an attempt to merge disparate merchandise right into a unmarried app.
With an assembled crew of 3 instrument engineers, a presenter, a videographer, and a video editor, they got down to code an all-in-one platform that attempted to cater to teachers, media, and trade concurrently.
Day 500: The app that didn’t paintings
Translating 3 distinct experiments right into a purposeful cell construct proved disastrous. Bootstrapping with their very own financial savings, the founders paid exterior contract builders to engineer the frontend and backend architectures.
Months later, the delivered code used to be riddled with insects. The construct again and again failed App Retailer and Google Play evaluate tips, falling in need of elementary balance, interface responsiveness, and knowledge compliance requirements.
“It used to be truly discouraging to start out once more from scratch. This incident truly made me imagine forsaking the speculation as a result of I didn’t even know the place to start out from,” Adeola mentioned.
To stay momentum alive, the founders salvaged the one purposeful module—the seller market—liberating it as a light-weight internet utility whilst hiring a brand new engineer to rebuild the underlying code.
The disaster pressured a crucial product reassessment. The super-app premise had divided person consideration and complex retention: advertisers, way of life audience, and learning undergraduates every operated on fully other utilization cycles.
Extra essentially, the founders ran headfirst into the central structural defect of Nigerian edtech: excessive seasonality.
“The largest lesson we realized used to be that the desire for edtech platforms, particularly for Nigerian college scholars, is seasonal,” Adeola mentioned. “We spotted a excessive inflow of scholars when assessments had been nearer and a excessive churn when assessments had been over.”
To continue to exist, UniBeta wanted a device compelling sufficient to ship concentrated price all the way through the ones crucial examination cycles with out requiring over the top operational overhead. That seek ended in synthetic intelligence.
Day 1000: UniBeta bets on AI
Somewhat than appearing as a static repository of PDF notes and previous questions, UniBeta pivoted towards automatic syntheses.
In October 2025, the startup introduced UniBeta AI.
The instrument lets in undergraduates to add unstructured route fabrics and historic examination papers.
Its fashion then parses the textual content to spot syllabus routine patterns, robotically producing contextual flashcards, multiple-choice quizzes, and modular summaries.
“We spotted that lots of the previous questions from federal universities don’t repeat the questions; they repeat subjects,” Adeola mentioned. “So we’re in a position to spot the ones subjects after which assist scholars to check the ones subjects.”
The pivot put UniBeta in festival with general-purpose chatbots and AI gear constructed in particular for training, together with Google’s Gemini, Anthropic’s Claude, and OpenAI’s ChatGPT. On the other hand, Adeola believes UniBeta’s benefit is in construction across the realities of African college scholars.
“What we’re seeking to do is to make it extra area of interest against Nigerian or African universities slightly than what different merchandise would do for a bigger percentage of the marketplace,” Adeola mentioned. “UniBeta AI can be extra adapted to what a Nigerian college scholar in fact understands and would in fact be of price to them.”
UniBeta has a unfastened tier, and different paid plans value between ₦2,000 and ₦6,000. The industry additionally generates earnings from occasions, Within Uni promotions, and subsidized promoting. The corporate has additionally secured an angel funding for an undisclosed quantity in September 2025.
UniBeta mentioned its subsequent problem is distribution, as it’s in talked with the Nationwide Universities Fee about construction a unified information construction for approved Nigerian universities.
If the plan comes in combination, the founders hope it is going to make it imaginable to take UniBeta to perform around the nation with no need to construct a separate presence from scratch on each campus.
The corporate additionally mentioned that the crew is operating on options together with slide introduction and voice tutorials that would flip a scholar’s uploaded fabrics into what resembles a one-on-one lesson. The longer-term ambition is to construct an AI product that understands how Nigerian scholars find out about and the educational methods they have got to navigate.
“For an edtech platform to be successful, we additionally want to resolve different issues scholars have outdoor the study room so we will be able to be related round-the-clock,” he mentioned.
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