ExamTime looks at premium subscriptions for cash growth

Boasting almost 200,000 active users at the height of its business in May, Irish tech start-up ExamTime is positioning itself to monetise its extensive user base as it launches its full service this week.

The e-learning platform, founded by Dualta Moore and which employs 25 full-time staff, is looking at premium subscriptions to drive revenue growth rather than advertising, which it says will not feature on the site in the short-term, at least.

With 600,000 registered users, the online platform allows anyone to create content ranging from tutorials on cell structure and global demographics to more trivial matters, such as users’ knowledge of the Harry Potter series.

Despite not having any specifics on how many of these resources are educational in nature, a spokesperson claimed the majority are useful learning tools and said a star rating system had recently been introduced as a quality control measure.

The company, founded in Dublin and with another office in Belfast, hopes to amass 1m users by year end.

Currently, around 2% of ExamTime’s user base is in Ireland, representing approximately 12,000 subscriptions here.

With its launch out of beta this week, the company is looking to its newly launched premium and premium-plus offerings to generate revenue, having previously enjoyed the support of parent company, Software Asset Management Ireland.

“Premium has just been released so we’ve actually boot-strapped off other businesses,” said ExamTime head of marketing Norman McBrien.

“There’s a few under our umbrella brand, which is Software Asset Management Ireland. Then we have Software4Students, which is a reseller of Microsoft, Adobe and Kapersky software, and then we have another platform called Edvance.”

From these other businesses, a need for a student-specific platform was recognised, and ExamTime born.

Now, as it launches its full service, it is continuing to search for talented developers to expand its product across the 200 countries to which it has spread in less than two years since its inception.