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After receiving another scholarship rejection, I fervently looked for opportunities to fund my education for a prestigious college abroad without taking out a loan. 

At 24, the idea of being in debt made me uneasy. In an economy hard hit by the COVID-19 pandemic, funding higher education is a mammoth task that burdens the students. 

I came across Bengaluru-headquartered Mokusei Intelligence and its founder Ashish Bohora. I visited the website, and two hours later — after falling down the rabbit hole that was the vallued.ai website — I began to understand this unique startup, probably the first of its kind. 

The essence of vallued.ai — developed by the Mokusei team — is that it is a digital platform that provides an opportunity to fund your education or travel. 

You could fund your upcoming education and your ongoing or past education, and even fund your escapades around the world. No, they do not provide you loans, and you do not have to return them the money. You just have to be a Beta tester for their app. 

Vallued.ai is too good to be true, and this is exactly what they aim for. However, your funding depends on your score and the rank you get on your test.

The app

Amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, we saw schools shifted online. For India, the biggest shock was the cancellation of the board examination. 

A country that derives its academic popularity based on competitive exams, we saw a flustered schooling system that failed to create a sustainable method for individual assessment. 

Most students graduated from their classes without any evaluation. Even exams like the Civil Services or tests at the university level were postponed because even in one year, the system failed to come up with an alternative besides take-home assignments. 

The alternative could have been an online examination, but the question remains, how do you figure out whether the answers by the students are genuine or a result of cheating?

Mokusei Intelligence is creating an app that aims to identify the way students cheat in an online exam. This would be done by using the data they would collect when students or travellers attend their Beta test on the vallued.ai app. 

“Mokusei needs good, reliable, and real-time high-quality exam-time student behaviour data to design AI and ML-based cheating detection algorithms. These algorithms will be used to develop and implement Mokusei’s digital supervision and anti-cheating platform in the future,” Ashish says.

He adds, “Whenever someone will take a test on the vallued.ai platform, Mokusei will collect, gather, and analyse relevant data in the background to help Mokusei engines in the development of a mobile-based digital supervision and exam monitoring platform.”

This technology holds the solution to the issue of conducting online exams in real-time as it could assess cheating without any human intervention. 

During the trial run, the app’s privacy policy was displayed twice to ensure the user is aware of how their data would be used and how they would be assessed. The app is user-friendly and has transparency at its core. It would be available on both Android and App Store. 

Funding education and travel abroad 

Ashish believes education should be available to all, especially to the underprivileged, where the financial barrier tends to hold them back. 

He had wanted to work in the field of edtech for a long time, and this year, he saw an opportunity to make a difference with his idea and passion for education. 

Travelling — in the Indian context — is very distinct from education. Curiosity pushed me to inquire about adding travelling alongside education. 

Ashish said he believes travelling is also learning, where the world is your school. Education institutions share with you teachings found in a book and the minds of a teacher, but when you are travelling, the potential to learn is unlimited and not bound by anything. 

Thus, the startup wants to break the idea that travelling can only be accessed if you are privileged. 

Business model 

For Mokusei, people, ethics, and quality take precedence over money. 

Mokusei has a risky business model for the sole reason that it values principles and ethics over money. 

The startup has been honest about how its business operation has deterred many investors as its primary goal is not profit-oriented. Ashish is focused on bringing in investors, supporters, and campaigners whose vision aligns with Mokusei’s principle, with social justice and humanity at the core of it all. 

It is looking for investors who look beyond controlling an organisation and who would be excited to work with the challenge Mokusei is bringing.  

The startup is relying on crowdfunding and donations to cover the operation costs and generate revenue before its pilot project launches in August 2021. 

During the Beta test, Mokusei is charging the Beta tester a registration fee — directly proportional to the amount users are requesting and includes tax. This increases as the gap between sign up and registration increases. 

The current percentage is 0.2 percent of the fund requested, followed by 0.5 percent, and finally, 1 percent. It would be advisable to register as soon as you sign up to save up. 

“The funding that Mokusei is offering is an incentive for users to try out Mokusei’s software and take the Beta test on the vallued.ai platform,” Ashish says.

​He adds, “In the long term, Mokusei expects to generate revenue by licensing or leasing out its dedicated anti-cheating test and assessment app.”

The website challenges the user. Although user-friendly, the app is complicated by design to take you into a world of its own. 

The various hues on the website is an ode to the planet Jupiter as it’s designed like the composition of Jupiter. This is also an experiment for the founder. He believes that if you are someone who is a curious individual and possesses the qualities a Mokusei Tribesperson would have, you would keep coming to the website and explore it fully. 

But if you are someone who is deterred by it, then maybe it is not your orbit. Honesty lies at the core of this company. 

What would you do?

As a user, you would register for a test that it would be conducting on its app scheduled to be released in August and become part of the tribe. 

You would also be getting closer to your dream of studying abroad or travelling the world.  

(Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of YourStory.)