Pandai YC Application

Summer 2021Active

Pandai went through Y Combinator in the Summer 2021 batch as a Education company. Below: what the company does, who founded it, and its application to YC, reconstructed question by question in the real YC form.

YC batch: Summer 2021
Industry: Education
Team size: 32
Status: Active
Launched: 2021

Founders

Khairul Anwar Mohamad ZakiFounder
Akmal AkhpahFounder
Suhaimi RamlyFounder

What Pandai does

💡 What is Pandai? Pandai is an app that helps students get better grades in school. Pandai provides gamified quizzes aligned to a specific school curriculum, from which students can learn, practice, get feedback, and diagnose their weaknesses. 🔥 Why do we build this? In Southeast Asia, the education system is competitive and exam-oriented. There is a huge demand for interventions (tutors, workbooks, and extra classes) to help students perform better in school. Pandai fills the demand with a solution that is better than the alternatives. 👨‍🏫 Who We Are The three founders are based in Malaysia and have known each other since high school, 23 years ago. After we graduated (from MIT & other US colleges), we started our first education company in 2007, focusing on coaching school students in STEM subjects. We worked closely with students (many of them from underprivileged backgrounds) and saw firsthand the impact we’ve had on them. We then realized that with technology, we could reach more students and bring more impact. Hence, we released Pandai in 2020. 🚀 Present & Future Currently, we have launched in our home ground Malaysia in 2020. So far, 280,000 students have completed 83 million questions on Pandai, and 92% of users have seen some improvement in their academic performance. We plan to expand to Southeast Asia and other emerging markets, a market of 100M+ school students. Pandai is designed to be scalable, and our content (also available in English) can be mapped to other curricula from other countries.

Pandai's YC application, reconstructed

Y Combinator application

Pandai, Summer 2021 batch. The real form questions, answered from public data.

Founders2
Company7
Progress7
Idea4
Equity3
Curious2
Batch Preference1

Company

Company name

Pandai

Describe what your company does in 50 characters or less.

Learning app for school students in Southeast Asia

What is your company going to make? Please describe your product and what it does or will do.

We're building Pandai, an app with gamified quizzes aligned to Southeast Asian school curricula. Students use it to practice, get immediate feedback, and identify weaknesses to improve their grades. It's focused on exam-oriented learning with content mapped to local standards.

Where do you live now, and where would the company be based after YC?

We live in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, and after YC the company will continue to be based here.

Explain your decision regarding location.

We are based in Kuala Lumpur because that's where we have deep roots, understand the local education system, and have direct relationships with schools and users. Southeast Asia is our initial market, so it makes sense to build here.

21 more answers in the full application

Founders, Progress, Idea, Equity, Curious, Batch Preference are in the full version. Create a free account to open it in YC Insights, next to every other YC batch.

See full application

Frequently Asked Questions

Is this the real Pandai YC application?

No. Y Combinator keeps submitted applications private. This is a reconstruction: the real YC form questions, answered from Pandai's public data (launch notes, founder backgrounds, product description). It shows how a company like Pandai would present itself to YC, not the text they submitted.