Chompound Developed By Genie Nupur Banerjee, Malini Pathakota, Namrata Ramani, and Varsha Venkat

1. Executive Summary
Over two million high school students in America are currently enrolled in Chemistry. However, the subject covers much information, most of which is extremely difficult to comprehend. Many high school students find it difficult to memorize many different compounds learned throughout the year, as this requires much time and effort. Chompound offers a solution to this problem because it helps students learn about these compounds through a simple and interactive game. Chompound is different from our competitors products because it helps students learn, while maintaining a fun environment. We have calculated that this app will cost us $32,540 and that we will have revenue of $59,540, which will allow for a return on investment of 89% in the first year, and 304% in the second year. Some of our future plans involve partnering with Innovaspire and Quizlet, and expanding to different subjects and to different age groups. In the future, we plan to offer a variety of applications to help students with all of their subjects and to make learning fun for all students.

2. Product Description
2.1 Problem
More than half of the high school students in the nation are currently enrolled in chemistry. Many of these students find it difficult to memorize long chemical compounds. Teachers often hand out long lists of compounds for students to memorize, an extremely unproductive task for students since they memorize these compounds only for their tests, without retaining this information. In addition, many students dont have any time to sit down and study these compounds due to their busy schedules. Memorizing chemical compounds is a critical problem that many students face, and it must be resolved.

2.2 Product Description

To solve the problem of memorizing long chemical compounds, we have developed a mobile application called Chompound, a science education app catering towards high school Chemistry students to solve this problem. Various studies have shown that entertainment and fun are an important part of the learning process. Our app is a fun game that focuses on interaction between the phone and user. Chompound provides the user with a list of compounds to

select from, and then creates a game in which users stack elements on our lovable creature, Chompy, in order to form the specified compound. Students earn points by forming more compounds, but lose points for catching the wrong elements. Chompound enables users to learn required material, while maintaining a fun and interactive environment. It also helps students by bridging the gap between fun and education. In addition, Chompound is mobile so students can study on-the-go, a useful characteristic since it conforms to the busy schedules of many students.

3. Market Analysis
3.1 Customer
Our app is targeted towards high school Chemistry students who need to memorize long chemical compounds. The task of memorizing these compounds is an extremely difficult and tedious task. One student said, Our teacher basically said to take this two page long packet and memorize every polyatomic ion on it. Out of our survey respondents made up of 66 Monta Vista students, 91% of students said that using a fun app would help them memorize long chemical compounds. Our app will allow these students to memorize these compounds in a fun, interactive way. We found that 56.5% of all high school students in the country take Chemistry, according to a survey conducted in 2006, and this number is steadily growing. This amounts to over two million high school students in the country who are currently taking Chemistry. Out of these, we estimate that 15% of these students will have access to Android phones. Even if a very small percent of these students (only 0.02%) use our app, this means that we will have 60,000 students using our app in the first year.

3.2 Competitors
Some of our competitors are Chemistry Mobile, Chemistry Aid, Perfect Chemistry, and Chemical Compounds Quiz. Chemistry Mobile has crammed in many features like periodic tables and calculators, making the app extremely similar to a Chemistry textbook,

while our app is a game where students can learn while having fun. Chemistry Aid is a Chemistry reference app for students who are taking Chemistry. However, this app is also more like a textbook on-the-go. Perfect Chemistry allows students to balance chemical equations, and solve questions about elements, but is not fun for students. Chemical Compounds Quiz puts elements together, and allows students to discover more about chemical compounds. These apps primarily provide the compound information similar to flashcards on a mobile platform. Based on the study of our competitors products, it was clear that our providing an app that engages the students was the best solution to this problem. Chompound provides the information in a fun and enjoyable way. It allows students to learn about compounds while playing a game, thus providing a distinct edge over our competitors. Given that our target market is high school students and that younger generation is easily drawn towards games, we strongly believe that Chompound has a huge benefit over other similar apps. In addition, parents will also want their children to use Chompound, because of its educational benefits.

4. Strategy and Implementation Plan

Before we can release our app, we need to carry out various tasks, such as adding our complete list of compounds to our database, improving the user interface, as well as conducting extensive testing. We also plan to add Google Analytics to track the download activity of our app. Next, we will need to maintain our app, and also market our app. We have Add complete list of compounds to data started building awareness of Chompound among our Improve User Interface future customers by creating a Facebook Test our product page that provides users with a description Maintain app of our app and pictures of the different Market app screens. To continue to build awareness for our app, we will advertise to students in our school by writing an article in our school magazine, which is read by many students, and encouraging interested students to like our Facebook page. We plan to have students spread the word about our product by offering incentives to students who influence others to buy our app, so we can reach additional customers. We also plan to make a Tumblr blog, so that we can help students with Chemistry. On our blog, we will include a Chemistry Compound of the day. We hope to use blog to help spread the word about Chompound.

Timeline:
By June, 2012 Release free app with polyatomic ions

By July, 2012 Release final version of free app

By August, 2012 Finish paid version, start testing

By September, 2012 Release paid app

As we get closer to the end of the school year, in June, when many students are taking finals, and may need to study the compounds that they learned at the beginning of the year, we plan to have ads for Chompound on Facebook. We want to target these ads towards 10th through 12th graders because they are more likely to have a need for our app. As shown in the timeline above, we plan to release our paid app by September 2012. Projections: When we release Chompound, we plan to use our school as the ramp-up platform. We expect that of the 2,500 students at Monta Vista, about 10% of the students will want to use our app when we first release it. After we start to advertise on Facebook, and students start spreading the word about our app, we plan to have 2,000 students using our free or paid app, and after our app has been released for one year, we expect that 20,000 students around the country will be using our app.

By July 2012 250 students will use our app

By October 2012 10,000 students will use our app

By May 2013 60,000 students will use our app

By May 2014 100,000 students will use our app

5. Financial Analysis
We plan to have a free version of our app, as well as a paid version of our app. In the free version, students will be able to pick from an already added list of compounds, but they wont have the option to customize their app by adding their own chemical compounds. Our survey results showed that 46% of students would be willing to pay $0.99 for our app, while the other 54% would want to use the free version, and may eventually choose to buy the app if they find it useful. We will be able to make money from our free app by having ads from Admob. Every time a user clicks on an ad, we will make money.

How much would you be willing to pay for Chompound?

$1.50 5% $0.99 41% Free 54%

A survey we conducted showed that most high school students wouldnt want to spend more than $1.00 for an app, so we decided to sell our app for $0.99. One of our competitors, Perfect Chemistry, is also priced at $0.99. We believe that our app is reasonably priced because we have a competitive advantage in that we offer students a game to play, so that students can have fun while learning, unlike Perfect Chemistry. To further develop our app, we will need the assistance of a computer programmer, to help us develop our final app for the Android Market. We also want to have a User Interface Consultant, to help us improve the experience for our users. In our final version, we plan to have many more chemical compounds, so we plan to hire a high school intern to input all of this data. Finally, we need to buy a used Android phone to test our app on, which will cost us about $60. We found that in total, we will need $32,540 to make the final versions of our free and paid apps. Budget: Description Computer Programmer, UI Consultant, and Testing

Cost $30,000

Data Entry Intern

$480

Used Android Phone

$60

Explanation We plan to hire a computer programmer, a UI Consultant, and also test our application. We found that to do all of this, it will cost about $30,000 for one month. We need somebody to enter the complete list of compounds to our app. We will pay them $20 an hour, and will need about 24 hours to complete this task. Used to test our app

Maintenance Marketing to Monta Vista Marketing on Facebook

Free Free $2,000

Done by our team Done by our team We plan to advertise the month before students start taking their finals, when they need our app.

Total

$32,540

As explained in our projections, we plan to have 60,000 customers in the next year, so since each customer will pay about $0.99 for our app, we will have revenue of $59,400, and profit of $28,860 as shown in the table below.

Description Expected Revenue Estimated Cost Profit Return on Investment (after the first year) Return on Investment (after the second year)

Amount $59,400 $32,540 $28,860 89% 304%

To complete our app, we will require an investment of $32,540, and we will have a return on investment (ROI) of 89% in the first year, and our ROI will continue to increase because after our first year, our costs will be lower, and we will have a greater number of customers. Our ROI after two years will be 304%.

6. Future Plans
After we launch our free app, we plan to partner with Innovaspire, so we can have a multi-user, cross-platform game. Innovaspire is a company that focuses on having fun while learning, and it is reaching out to a similar market of high school students, so partnering with Innovaspire will help both of us reach a larger market. Over the next few years, we also hope to establish a partnership with Quizlet, a website that enables users to create flashcards on a public database. The company has proven to be extremely popular in recent years, with teachers creating flashcards to help students study. Since Chompound helps students learn material taught in the classroom, we hope to partner with Quizlet to enable communication of material between the teacher and student. Teachers will also be able to track their students study habits by viewing the number of games played, using their Quizlet account. This partnership will be beneficial to both companies, as it will expand the number of students reached. We also hope to expand to different subjects, such as Math and Physics in the next five years. We want students to use many different apps developed by Genie to supplement the learning that they do in their classes. In this same time period, we want to add more features to Chompound, so that students can learn more about Chemistry in the same fun

manner. After we expand to different subjects, over the next ten years we also plan to expand to different age groups, because elementary school and middle school students can use our educational apps as well. As we continue to develop our app, we plan to have ads on Admob to promote our product further.

7. Team Summary
We at Genie are a team of four girls from Monta Vista High School. We are highly motivated, and are extremely excited about our application. Namrata Ramani has previous hands-on experience in programming thanks to her involvement with the school Robotics team; she is soon going to Nationals with her Robotics team. Given her previous programming experience, she does most of the back-end programming of the app and she is a good team player. Namrata is currently studying Chemistry and she has a hard time memorizing ions. She strongly believes that this app will help with this problem. Nupur Banerjee has experience in Java programming, and is part of DECA, a business club. As part of this club, she worked on a financial business operations plan to improve the customer loyalty program of Wells Fargo, and is progressing to the international level after winning at the state level in competition. She knows a lot about the business aspect of the app and she helps with pricing, marketing and the entire business aspect of the app. Varsha Venkat is highly experienced in writing reports and giving presentations. She is part of FBLA, another business club, and Writing for Publication, so she also is contributing to the presentation aspect of the app, and as well as the slide deck and the pitch. Malini Pathakota has in-depth experience in programming because of the Java class she is taking in school, and she enjoys this class. She helps with the programming, as well as the gameplay and the graphics of the app. She also has a lot of experience working on teams thanks to her involvement in various clubs.