Case Study · EdTech

Gurukul

Run your school. Not your paperwork.

Year
2024
Timeline
5 months
Role
Full product design & engineering
Status
Live in production
Visit live site
Gurukul

Run your school. Not your paperwork.

Overview

A school management platform for institutions in Nepal that turns paper-based attendance, fees, and exams into fast digital workflows - with an AI layer across every module.

The Challenge

Schools across Nepal spend a staggering share of their day on paperwork instead of teaching. Attendance is taken on paper and re-entered by hand, fee collection means chasing parents and writing receipts, and building exam papers each term is a manual, error-prone slog. Administrators and teachers were drowning in admin overhead - time that should have gone to students went to ledgers, registers, and reconciliation. The institutions needed their operational busywork to simply disappear.

What We Built

We built Gurukul as an end-to-end school management platform with an AI layer woven through every module. Teachers mark a full class in about 90 seconds, parents get instant SMS alerts when a child is absent, and school-wide attendance updates live. An AI examination system generates NEB-aligned question papers in around 30 seconds. Fee management runs on Khalti and eSewa with automatic bills, receipts, and overdue reminders, cutting billing time dramatically. Students get a React Native mobile portal for their timetable, homework, attendance, and results, while staff management handles role-based access, leave workflows, and digital payslips. The outcome is roughly 35 minutes saved per teacher per day and a setup that goes live in under 24 hours.

How We Built It
01 · Discovery

Built for how schools actually run

We started in school offices, not in a design tool. That is where we learned the academic year runs on the Bikram Sambat calendar, that fee collection happens through eSewa and Khalti, and that connectivity outside the valley cannot be assumed. Each of those became a constraint, not a feature request.

02 · Architecture

Multi-tenant from the first commit

Every school is a hard tenant boundary with its own grading scheme, fee structure and calendar configuration. Building that in at the schema level rather than retrofitting it is what made onboarding a new school a configuration task instead of a deployment.

03 · Delivery

Phased rollout, module by module

Schools cannot switch everything at once mid-term. We sequenced the rollout - student records first, then fees, then attendance, then exams - so each module was in real use before the next arrived, and the staff learned one thing at a time.

Key Capabilities

Fast daily attendance

Teachers mark an entire class in about 90 seconds, parents receive instant SMS alerts for absences, and a live dashboard shows school-wide attendance in real time.

AI examination system

Generate NEB-aligned question papers in around 30 seconds, replacing hours of manual paper-setting each term with a reviewable AI draft.

Fee management

Collect fees through Khalti and eSewa with automatically generated bills, receipts, and overdue reminders - making billing roughly three times faster.

Student mobile portal

A React Native app gives students one place for their timetable, homework, attendance, and results, with everything synced from the school's records.

Staff management

Role-based access, digital leave workflows, and automated payslips remove the paperwork from managing teaching and non-teaching staff.

AI across modules

A shared AI layer assists across attendance, exams, and admin, so the platform actively reduces busywork rather than just digitizing it.

Outcomes
35 min
Saved per teacher daily
98%
Attendance accuracy
3x
Faster billing
< 24h
Setup to live
Tech Stack
Next.js
React Native
PostgreSQL
Khalti
eSewa
Tailwind

Project FAQ

About this
build

Common questions about how we approached and shipped Gurukul.

Onboarding is designed to be near-instant - a school can be set up and live in under 24 hours, with attendance, fees, and exams ready to use from day one.

Like what you see?

Let's ship something like this.

Gurukul went from concept to production in 5 months. Tell us what you're building and we'll scope exactly how we'd ship it.