After placing top 50 in the nation for USA Biology Olympiad (USABO) a couple of years ago, sophomore Arjun Krish began to think about how he might help others do the same. His idea was for a tutoring company to help his peers prepare for similar competitions. From talking with fellow contestants he met at competitions, Krish slowly started working for over a year on bringing this idea into reality.
By advertising on sites like Discord and Wechat, this vision of a company turned into Pandorax, a limited liability company (LLC) aiming to help students prepare for academic competitions by making free guides and hosting bootcamps, in-depth classes spanning an hour each.
Students usually pay $400 for 12 classes or about $33 per class, with each class having roughly around 40-60 students. Krish himself has hosted 7 bootcamps, written 4 guides, each with over 500 pages and created one search engine for topics ranging from biology to physics to calculus.
“We have a Discord community with over 1,000 students who either attend our bootcamps or use our guides to help each other on different topics and competitions, with the supervision of the coaches in our company,” Krish said.
The company was established in late June and kicked off in late July. As the Chief Technology Officer (CTO), Krish’s main role during the first few months of the creation of the company was to design the website. Although Krish didn’t have much prior knowledge with the required coding languages, such as HTML, CSS and JavaScript, a simple search online helped him find a way to develop the skills needed for the project.
Pandorax was established by Krish and other students across the country, including CEO Aiden Pan, a senior in New York, COO Amit Saha, an undergraduate freshman at Georgia Tech and CHRO Aryan Bora, a senior at William P. Clements High School in Texas.
This summer, their company has earned over $20,000 in revenue from teaching over six bootcamp classes. Through meeting each other at competitions and volunteering conferences, they have also recruited over 50 award-winning writers and 21 award-winning instructors including: Ong Zhi Zhang, an International Physics (IPhO) silver medalist and International Olympiad of Astronomy and Astro-Physics (IOAA) gold medalist, Aashray Chegu, a International Earth Science Olympiad(IESO) gold medalist and Science Olympiad national champion and David Zhou, ranked #2 in IESO gold and a National Science Bowl champion.
The initial idea behind Pandorax was to have multiple websites, each dedicated to different STEM Olympiads. For example, “bioly.guide” was the initial link for USABO and “calc.guide” for calculus, but Krish and his co-founders later decided to put them all together under one company to streamline access for their viewers.
Although their guides are free, they also provide tuition-based classes. Krish said the money earned from these classes are donated to low income students by funding nonprofit organizations like Teach For America.
“Our company is one of the biggest websites that provide free guides for the different competitions, as we aim to provide an opportunity to every student interested,” Krish said.
Though Krish and the other founders spent a lot of time starting Pandorax, the only people getting paid in the company are the college student instructors who get about $1,000 per every 12-week period.
Because the written guides made by Krish and the other instructors are free, their main income comes from the classes they provide, coached by high school and college educators.
“The thing that makes our classes special is that we not only teach students the material, but also coach them and prepare them for each olympiad,” Krish said. “Just learning the subject is not enough, as you need to develop intuition to use your skills to problem solve.”
Although the company is still in its early phases, Krish is optimistic for its future. He hopes that the company can expand from teaching to establishing their own products, such as their search engine for research, seekso.org, as a staple resource for students.
“I see a bright future for both the company and myself and know that it will end up helping thousands of low income students, as well as students who want to learn and improve their competition skills,” Krish said.
