OTTAWA, ON / ACCESSWIRE / February 1, 2021 / betterU Education Corp. (TSX V:BTRU)(Frankfurt:5OGA) (the "Company" or "betterU") is pleased to provide an update from the Company's CEO, Brad Loiselle.
Dear Shareholders,
This year, we decided to provide our investor community with a FAQ format as an update on some of the progress and activities currently underway at betterU.
Learn how the Company's pivot to the new SaaS Skills Platform has been driving more opportunities than the India Marketplace.
To support our vision of Education for All, it has required a lot of trial and error until we found the right solution. In late 2019, we finally found a solution we believed would support our vision and we moved right away to execute on it. Being able to support the differences between one person to the next is what was the largest challenge to overcome.
To put this in prospective, there are 38 + industries, with 20,000+ different skills across them all and with each person having their own level of education, culture, language, experiences, skill profile, affordability, technology access and constraints due to their local political landscape and government, it was a complex problem to solve. To support an individual, whether it be a youth, student, employee, unemployed or underemployed, our solution needed to be flexible, scalable, customizable, multilingual and support the understanding of an individual skills development requirements.
The pivot has not changed betterU's vision, but instead, streamlined it into a single, easy to manage platform that is 100% in our control while solving all the challenges we had previously faced, including being made available on a global scale. Our solution, called ‘Ready-To-Go', includes many integrated partnerships, a robust cloud-based learning management system, a growing library of 3,700+ curated courses across 200+ categories, a growing library of 800+ job role assessments plus 1,000+subject base assessments and the ability to create white labeled, customized platforms to meet the needs of any partner, while all hosted and managed by betterU.
Our growing network of partners and clients leveraging our ‘Ready-To-Go' platform, has created the same opportunities that the Marketplace was intended for, but in a way that is easier to understand, controlled by us, focused on skilling, upskilling and reskilling while also available to anyone, anywhere at any time.
As part of this pivot, despite the impact of COVID, betterU has completed reseller, client and strategic partnership deals with Unicaf (Cyprus), NRCM (Morocco), Fuel Online (South Africa), Paramount (USA), Positive Venture Group (Canada), Indigenous Works (Canada), Better Media and Tech co (Thailand), with another dozen proposals and partnerships underway. The level of interest continues to grow as our partners see the value and successes, they have been realizing with us. Here is a client testimonial as an example - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6cdPZY_cbK8&feature=youtu.be
Learn how the Company was impacted by COVID-19.
COVID-19 has delayed many of our efforts during a timing of our beta launch of our new SaaS Pivot in early 2020, then impacting our fiscal year-end audit timelines which was during the peak of the market lock down. While these delays impacted all our partners, new clients, public disclosure processes and staff, it also drove our team to work harder to push through the market challenges and ensure our pivot would be successful.
Learn how the Company has been financing their pivot and advancements.
betterU has been built by entrepreneurs that will never give up and who have been willing to sacrifice all that they have to ensure the success of their vision and protection of our shareholders' investments. Many of my staff and myself have on several occasions reduced or have not taken any salaries to ensure funding is allocated to support more critical operations. Even with a reduction of salaries, our team has continued to work hard and worked many more hours to ensure growth and sustainability. In a people driven business, during times when one facing more difficulty, we reduce to a lean operating model. While this reduction to a lean model slows advancements, the result is ensuring sustainability.
More employees are needed to speed up progress.
Today is much different then where betterU was over a year ago. betterU has the new SaaS program up and running with paying clients, has a back-end support in place and has put in place marketing automation tools. To advance our efforts faster, the Company would require an additional 10 resources to support sales, account management, marketing development, investor relations and platform support.
This is how the reseller program works and what the financial upside value opportunity is.
With the SaaS model, the Ready-To-Go platform enables our globally resellers with the opportunity to immediately make available to their users, under their brand, all betterU's skills development programs, all supported and hosted by betterU. This provides our partners with the benefit of the platform, skills content, assessments and marketing support to their networks and for betterU a reseller network, and revenue streams through their user base.
The company has started the process with TSXV to resume trading.
The review process has already begun. The Company's auditors and financial team have caught up with the filings for Fiscal year-end 2020, completed Q1 financials, which the board is reviewing currently and are in process of completing Q2. It is expected that within the next couple of weeks, the company will be completely caught up.
The Company has also received confirmation last week that they are in good standing with their transfer agent. The company has paid all associations fees relevant to each exchange and last week started the review process with TSXV to support resume trading, subject to TSXV approvals. The Company is in the process of scheduling the next Annual General Meeting of Shareholders, which could not previously be arranged until the Fiscal year-end financials were completed.
The Company is working to prevent any further halts.
The change in auditors what has resulted in delays in filing which was the reasons for the halt. The new auditor needed to take more time to understand the business, understand the previous auditor's work and ensure their reviews were thorough. Most of the time spent by the auditors were on the review of past auditor's work and there were no material issues. The Board of Directors, financial team and the auditor have been focused on ensuring this does not happen again. Now that the Company has found an auditor that is aligned with our stage of growth, fees and turnaround timelines, we do not expect this to be an issue going forward.
betterU is taking steps to improve investor communications.
betterU is in the process of interviewing for an internal Investor Relationship role that would support exclusively our efforts, advancements and ensure ongoing communications to the public, brokers and market creators to help drive more awareness and value we are working to build.
This is the current shareholder structure.
Currently, there are 78,271,751 shares issued and outstanding. I am the major shareholder with 15,000,000 shares (19% ownership). I have not sold any shares and continue to remain fully vested. No other shareholders hold more than 10%. Free float is 63.2 million shares.
We are looking forward to a positive 2021!
With best regards,
Brad Loiselle, CEO betterU
About betterU
betterU is an education-to-employment technology company offering an end-to-end solution leveraging business intelligence to automate skilling, reskilling, and upskilling for companies operating on domestic and global scales. The company supports all industries by providing them with everything an organization needs to launch and manage proper skills development programs, student work integrated learning and employee development, so that they can focus on what really matters: the growth of their people!
betterU's Ready-To-Go platform provides access to a white labelled all-in-one skills platform that includes access to a library of 3,700 curated and developed skills courses, 800+ job role assessments, 1,000+ subject base assessments and a robust learning management system all hosted and supported by betterU. betterU also provides additional services to include a fully white labelled marketed program, in partnerships with betterU that includes a website that promotes the Company's strategic partners Ready-To-Go program across their territory.
For more information, please visit https://corporate.betteru.ca
On behalf of the board of directors.
Brad Loiselle, CEO
1-(650) 267-8398
Email: [email protected]
betterU Education Corp.
Investor Relations
Neither TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.
SOURCE: betterU Education Corp.