Nivaa.SG – A Case Study

 

● What: Student-founded SPED-tutor matching platform in Singapore; born from a lived family need.

 

● Origin → Build: Began as a Google Sheet + Telegram; evolved into a focused two-sided marketplace.

 

● Focus/Pivot: Cut broad “OT/SLT/psych” scope to SPED tuition only for speed, clarity, and reliability.

 

● Scale & Impact: 350+ families served, 600+ educators onboarded; consistency and safety prioritized.

 

● Automation Win: First response time ~36 hrs → <2 mins; time-to-match 3–5 days → <1 day.

 

● Traction: S$60K+ monthly revenue; on track to S$1M ARR with school partnerships and B2B push.

 

● Co-Founder Role: Built, measured, iterated; transitioning operations for continuity while heading to college.

How NIVAA began

Nivaa – portmanteau of ‘Nivedita’ and ‘Arnav’, the two kids who inspired this startup. The fact that it also meant ‘to bear fruit’ or ‘meaningfully communicate’ in Hebrew was a happy coincidence.

About me:

I’m Nandini Gupta, a senior at Singapore American School drawn to biological sciences, specifically the human brain, driven by my sister Nivu’s severe autism and GDD. Im curious about exploring the compelling intersections and applications of neuroscience.

Academically, I’ve tried to pursue sustained excellence while managing a fair load of AP classes in subjects of my interest. I’ve been on the SAS Scholar’s List for six consecutive semesters, AP Scholar with Honors, completed Cornell’s Cognitive Science Program with distinction, and earned certificates in Neurobiology, Bioengineering and Exercise Science.

In my internship at Duke-NUS (with Dr. Hongyan Wang’s award-winning lab), I contributed to autism research on neural gene expression and built lab skills in PCR, Western blots, and primary cultures.

I founded and lead SAS’s Neuro-Tech Club, hosting case discussions and an “Autism & Innovation” speaker series with academics and health-Tech investors.

I’m a varsity footballer and love exploring the shared cadence between neurobiology and sports-science. I produced a safer-heading guide and policy brief—published as Cortex & Cleats in Curieux academic journal.

Finally, I co-founded Nivaa.sg, a platform for matching SPED tutors and families in Singapore. This is our story.

Problem

One of the biggest challenges families with special needs children face, is fragmented access to allied health specialists.

 

Solution

Launch an online platform that matches families with therapists.

Parents want therapists with specific qualities, and the Therapists (especially freelancers) want to optimise their schedule, maximising utilization while controlling their time/place of work.

The classic information asymmetry that 2-sided service marketplaces like Upwork or Fiverr solve globally (or the ubiquitous Uber, Lyft or Grab). Unsurprisingly, I found many startups testing this problem, thankfully none in Singapore/SEA.

Research showed deep fundraising in this space, but gap in SEA

From All-in-One Platform to a Focused Marketplace

Nivaa v1 was ambitiously designed to provide multiple therapy services and a comprehensive app for parents. Too complex, too costly to build and promote!

Key Lesson: Pivot to ONE service and do it well.

Singapore is a near S$1.8 billion* home tuition market, with a strong cultural preference for ‘enrichment classes’ outside of school.

Target Addressable Market (TAM) for ‘Special-Education Tuition’ in Singapore:

36K SEN Students** (28K in Mainstream, 8K in SPED Schools), focusing on Top 10% ie 3-4K students, each spending $1600 p.a.*** on SPED tuition i.e. TAM S$5-6M

Our self-set goal: Capture $1 million of this annual $5-6M opportunity before high school ends!

v2 Focus & Simplicity

Key Competitors

Smile Tutor

  • Large mainstream tutor platform 6,000+ freelance tutors. SPED Tutors ~300.

Special Minds

  • SPED Tutors ~250.

BrightStar Tuition

  • Mostly centre-based, SPED Tutors ~40.

NIVAA’s Value Proposition:

  • PARENTS/Demand-Side: Largest platform for qualified and experienced special-needs educators in Singapore (600+)
  • EDUCATORS/Supply-Side: Understand special-needs families, focused on SPED Tuition, offering flexibility and best earnings per session.
  • Easy to enter segment, but as with most marketplace business models, “Scale is the moat”. The larger the supply pool, better the chances for ‘perfect match’.

Consistently grew Total SPED Educators, now largest in SG

Platform Design & Automation

Nivaa v1 had a dedicated ‘Sales Coordinator’ to understand parent requirements and curate match between educators and parents.

 

Curation was meant to provide empathy for anxious families, but would not only lead to significant cost at scale (a future problem), but it was also becoming a bottleneck with poor response times.

Started with a spreadsheet that grew in complexity over time

In 2024, we decided on Automation to eliminate the manual bottleneck and drastically reduce response times.

 

Workflow: lead → AI screening → matching → session → follow-up.

 

AI Automation reduces scaling limits, drastically reduced response time, increasing conversion rate, and accelerates supply-demand alignment. We focused human intervention after the ‘matching’ step, on post-sales and retention.

Average Time from parents’ query to our first response:

  • Before: 1.5 days
  • After: <2 minutes

Average Time from parents’ first query to providing a matched educator:

  • Before: 3-5 days
  • After: <1 day

AI bot interacting with parents

Recruitment & Supply Management (Pre-automation)

 

Started with manual recruitment → ad hoc WhatsApp outreach → inconsistent response.

Recruitment & Supply Management (Post-automation)

Paired respond.io with using Telegram → standardized onboarding, reminders, incentives.

NIVAA’s official Telegram Channel

Price & Promotions

Parents: We charge prevailing market rate per session, varying across primary and secondary school grades, and 60/90/120-minute sessions.

Educators: Competitors charge 50% commission fee for the first month and nothing thereafter fearing leakage. We decided to charge a flat ongoing 30% commission fee to build long-term engagement with Educators.

 

Sample Promotions for Demand-side/Parents

  • 1st two trial sessions: 50% discount to encourage trial of our service
  • 10-session prepaid package: flat S$100 discount, for longer engagement

Sample Promotions for Supply-side/Educators

  • S$60–90/session, National Day bonus, First-response reward.
  • Incentives of S$100 if they complete 10+ sessions in a fortnight.

Steady growth in engaged Educators, while Client Acquisition hit a plateau for a bit, now growing consistently

Digital Marketing & Lead generation

Google Ads → ready-to-act parents’ search; lower CAC, leads from across SG

Facebook → helps create awareness; higher CAC; A/B testing for messaging and trials

Stable CPL and CAC over time, have we optimized our lead gen?

Financials & Future Vision

Through 2 years of pivots, humble lessons and trying to find product-market fit, Nivaa has steadily grown. Now with school partnerships, B2B revenue has opened pathway to S$1M ARR.

Avg. Monthly Revenue at S$60K, will hit S$1M ARR in 2026!

Simple MIS dashboard allows me to track key metrics even when at school

What’s Next?

Product Development: Deepen our moat and generate stickiness for parents via meaningful reports in our App.

 

Documentation

B2B/School partnerships have opened a new source of leads and revenue. From PPIS supporting financially challenged muslim families, to Tzu Chi paying 90% of shadow teacher costs for their students, or Fei Yue requesting bulk SPED teacher placement. We project this to become a larger source of revenue than B2C within 6 months.

Product/Service Roadmap

Final Reflection:

NIVAA enabled me to run the scientific playbook away from the classroom: analyze the problem, form a hypothesis, execute, measure impact and iterate. I’m handing off my first startup, but not my passion for pattern recognition and problem-solving.

I intend to keep learning, building, and leveraging the engine of entrepreneurship to deploy breakthroughs in science. Care as a constraint, reliability over rhetoric, measure what matters.

ETHICS DECLARATION:

I co-founded NIVAA and pursued this entrepreneurial curiosity alongside high school and various other commitments. I benefited from real support and privilege, especially from my mentors, who pushed critical thinking, experimentation, and gave me autonomy (including room to fail). NIVAA evolved from a student project into an operating unit of Kaleidoscope Therapy Group; I led strategy and key decisions, driving the startup across functions as most student founders do; three full-time staff now handle day-to-day. When I leave for college, I will hand management over to my mentors, Dr. Bipin Bhola and Mr. Aaron Ang. 350 unique clients, 650 plus educators, on track for S$1M ARR. These milestones are shared, primarily with Aaron, Nicole, and Nur Billah. For giving me the space to experiment and learn, Thank you.

*Source 1: https://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/spore-families-spent-1-8-billion-on-private-tuition-for-children-in-2023

**Source 2: https://telescope.gov.sg/transcript/2562

***Source 3: Household expenditure survey 2023, Singapore Department of Statistics