Sunday Times

Varsity study guides win innovation prize

- DOREEN PREMDEV

SHIVAD Singh and Fuaad Coovadia are two of the most popular students on campus after coming up with study guides that make swotting “easy as pie”.

On Thursday last week, the University of Cape Town students walked away with one of the prizes offered by the University of Stellenbos­ch’s LaunchLab, an initiative that encourages innovative ideas.

They received R10 000 and an opportunit­y to be mentored by some of the best business minds in South Africa — Andries Fourie, innovation manager at the Industrial Developmen­t Corporatio­n; Anita Nel, CEO of Innovus; and Michael van Wyk, a partner at Deloitte.

Singh and Coovadia, both 19 and in their second year of commerce and business science studies, created their Presto Books guides six months ago.

The two students share living quarters in the university residence.

“We shared the task of developing the idea and ended up bouncing ideas off each other,” said Singh. “Eventually, we came up with the idea for study guides that are different enough to be viable.”

Coovadia said they had experience­d the pressure that accompanie­s the transition from high school to university and understood the need for a resource to bridge that gap.

Coovadia said they had named their guides after the Italian word for “quick” because the guides contain humour and “colour” and present informatio­n in a user- friendly format that facilitate­s learning and comprehens­ion.

“Our guides are written by top students who have studied in these subjects. Through our books, we will teach students that the learning process doesn’t need to be time-consuming and frustratin­g,” said Coovadia.

He added that the guides also did not “undermine the value of diligence”.

So far, the pair have guides for tertiary accounting and economics courses. These guides, Singh said, were intended to test the idea of studentbas­ed teaching on the smaller university market before they move their attention to matrics. He said the matric guides were expected to be available in September.

“We are working with the country’s top matriculan­ts to write our next set of guides for maths, physics, chemistry and accounting,” said Singh.

Singh and Coovadia have big plans for Presto Books. They said they intended to grow their market and become part of the rejuvenati­on of education in South Africa.

 ??  ?? QUICK AND EASY: Fuaad Coovadia and Shivad Singh are studying at UCT
QUICK AND EASY: Fuaad Coovadia and Shivad Singh are studying at UCT

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