# Kunduz (YC S18)

Instant help from expert tutors - Faster & more interactive than Chegg; More reliable than ChatGPT!

## Elevator pitch
Kunduz provides instant and personalized help to students from middle school to college by its extensive tutor network and use of AI. We operate in Turkey, India, and, now, the US.

- Canonical URL: https://wefunder.com/kunduz
- Entity ID: wefunder:company:82372
- Last updated: 2026-06-22T05:03:18Z
- Generated at: 2026-06-23T00:22:09Z

## Quick facts
- Projected $5M+ ARR in 2023 (not guaranteed)
- 🧠 Our AI can automatically answer 90% of student's questions and gives SaaS-level gross margins
- 🌎 100M questions answered by 35M+ tutors through Kunduz
- $114 LTV; $10 CAC; 76% gross profit margin
- 👫 50K+ paying users with 95% monthly retention

## Active fundraises
- wefunder:fundraise:43836: 4(a)(6) successful (USD)
- wefunder:fundraise:44217: 4(a)(6) successful (USD)

## Story
Forward-looking projections cannot be guaranteed.Forward-looking projections cannot be guaranteed.Forward-looking projections cannot be guaranteed.Forward-looking projections cannot be guaranteed.Forward-looking projections cannot be guaranteed.Forward-looking projections cannot be guaranteed.Forward-looking projections cannot be guaranteed.

## FAQ
1. **Please advise on your policy regarding the fine line between tutoring and cheating. A quote regarding Chegg: "A study published in 2020 has found that Chegg answers student questions even though the questions have clear cues to indicate that the student is trying to buy answer...**
   - Hi Aldert, we have various ways that address this risk: (i) Kunduz is not designed to just get solutions. We expect our students to chat with the tutors to discuss the question and the solution. Interactions between students and teachers are proven effective for active learning. This has been proven right in our pilot market by seeing that schools don't come to us to report misconduct or for a complaint. They reach out for partnership. Next year, we will be serving as many students through ou...
2. **Please advise who is responsible for AI research in the company, how long is he or she in the company, what is the motivation (option, etc.). No offense, but Baris is entrepreneur and full-stack dev., that's nothing about scientific research.**
   - Great question. Baris is an experienced CTO and he has gained experience in the domain since 2018. Mert Kucuk has been our AI researcher, who has been doing research in computer vision for over 12 years. His AI startup (computer vision) was funded by YC in 2014. After that, he has been a critical part of various AI-enabled tech early-stage and growth-stage startups. Volkan Cirik - CMU Ph.D. on NLP - has been our advisor for the application of Generative AI in our future plans. Our Head of Pro...
3. **Please advise how much does it take to get answered, is it 10 minutes, 15 minutes or 30 minutes? Why do you have different number of minutes in different places?**
   - Hi Aldert, in our pilot market, where we are using AI in full scale, our average response time is below 10 minutes (7 minutes at the moment). In the US, where we help students only manually through our tutor network, our average response time is 15 minutes. 95% of our questions are answered below 30 minutes. Thank you for asking for clarification. I'll do the needed edits on our deck to avoid any confusion.
4. **Chegg is a large corporation. What is your defensibility against them in case they focus their resources and achieve comparable or higher speed, reconsider their pricing plans and come up with the same affordable option, and copy your interactivity ideas?**
   - Hi Aldert, This is a David vs Goliath game and every feature we have means a significant impact on their bottom line. Making their service faster, more affordable, or interactive only comes with a higher cost of goods sold. Making such drastic changes in your bottom line requires an explanation to your public market investors and, regardless, it reflects on your stock price. For these reasons, they will be incapable of acting on it before it's too late. The mains reasons we are able to do tha...
5. **Does your SAFE have a discount relative to the next funding round? Do you have any additional fundraising materials available for our review?**
   - Hi David, sincere apologies for the late response here. We use the SAFE with the cap (post-money) and no discount. It was advised by renowned internal and external investors based on our metrics: We have made $2.4M in revenue in 2022. Internally, we are using the academic year for our annual projections and we are projecting $5M+ revenue in 2023-24 based on the deals signed off in B2B deals and with the most moderate B2C growth scenario. These numbers are accomplished with 2x YoY growth, 10+ ...

## Team
- Basar Basaran (Co-founder & Co-CEO)
- Melih Sener (Cofounder & Co-CEO)
- Baris Bilgic (Co-founder - CTO)

## Recent posts
- Last 2️⃣ days ⏱ Kunduz on the path of $5M+ ARR doubling YoY! (2023-06-14T17:59:11Z)
- 🚀 Tomorrow is the last day... And one last data on our prospect: What has been the growth trajectory of Kunduz? (2023-06-04T16:08:46Z)
- ⛳️ Update on the Round: Last 3 days... (2023-06-02T19:42:34Z)
- Last 3️⃣ days for our Wefunder campaign: What is left to do? (2023-05-26T16:01:11Z)
- 5️⃣ They invested $400K in Kunduz and here is why they think you should invest too… (2023-05-23T22:21:47Z)
- Thank you all 💐 Only 1 week remained and we've already reached 97%. It’s time to reveal our perk… (2023-05-19T13:46:59Z)
- Kunduz's expanding its quadrupling B2B business to global and Generative AI has a key role in it (2023-05-16T11:07:55Z)
- Last 2 weeks of our round... (2023-05-12T20:32:09Z)

## Q&A
- Q: You have $45M Series B valuation and show a lot of metrics, still you have neither explained the terms (e.g. how do you calculate CAC, https://a16z.com/2015/08/21/16-metrics/?), nor you have uploaded Financials and CPA Review Report in Details section. Do you have one? Is that audited? How did you come up to $45M valuation cap?
  - A: Dear Aldert, apologies for the late response. Please find my answers to your questions below: We have completed 2022 FY with $2.3M ARR. We are currently at 76% gross margin. Our CAC includes any acquisition-related costs including ad spending, influencer partnerships, SMS, and referral fees. We have shared our Financials as soon as requested by Wefunder for the filing. It is prepared by a CPA. Because the size of the round is below $125K, an audited version was not required. (Please note that we have shared the financials of our different subsidiaries as well and our consolidated revenue is not what it shows on the US company's financials - $13.97K. We collect almost all of our revenue in one of our subsidiaries since the inception of the company. You can see it in the financial documents of other subsidiaries.) We were advised by various experts and investors in the market that this valuation is Kunduz's fair market value because of 3 reasons: (i) Revenue projection above $5M for 2023-24 based on the deals signed off in B2B deals and with moderate B2C growth (ii) 2x YoY growth with strong LTC/CAC and retention (iii) Above 75% gross margin. When we launched the campaign, the valuation was priced by our previous rounds and the progress we made since then. It was quite below the Series A valuation range ($60-100M). With the metrics I shared above, having a revenue multiple below 10 for a tech startup at an early stage is considered reasonable. Again, sincere apologies for the delay. Startups have to prioritize what is most important for the company. Although we are glad that this mindset brought us to this point where we are only 1 month away from cash positive, we are aware that one of our responsibilities is to be responsive to the investors. I can assure you that you will see a responsive startup if you decide to invest. I will be more than happy to share some of our investors' contacts for reference. Best, Basar
- Q: Hi, Why hasn't this fundraiser been closed for several months/years ? Since the 2021 valuation is still the same in 2023, should we deduce that it was overvalued at the time or that the objectives were not achieved ? Is it possible to have the turnover of the last 3 years in order to visualize the traction ? Aren't ChatGPT and its future competitors a major risk for Kunduz that didn't exist in 2021 ?
  - A: Hi Regis, thank you for your thoughtful questions. Find the answers below in the same order. 1. We have delayed all of our fundraising efforts because of a change in strategy. We didn't have a particular area to invest in at the time. Now, we have a convincing strategy to invest in, especially in global B2B. 2. At the time, the valuation multiples were much higher. Now we have a much stronger projection for next school year that will have 9x ARR with 76% gross margin and top-notch LTV/CAC ratio. This multiple is quite reasonable since high-profit early-stage SaaS startup revenue multiple benchmarks are in the range of 7-12. Overall, market multiples are lower but our revenue prospect is higher justifying the same valuation. 3. I emailed the visual to you. I'll be sharing the same traction visual with other investors today as an update post. 4. Not at all for our pilot market in Turkey. We are known for giving students access to real tutors whenever needed and both students and schools appreciate that much more than having access to automated help - which also has a cost to them. Moreover, we have been expanding ourselves to become an all-in-one learning platform by offering hundreds of thousands of questions in access, physical books, counseling, and many more. This expansion makes us defensible to any AI-driven technology. In the global market, we have been seeing the B2B channel for chat-based tutoring emerge since Covid and that requires operational know-how and a tutor network even if AI can scale it over time. This game will require more than AI capabilities and we are the company that could dominate that market. We have in-house tutor operations experience and AI experience that we have been capitalizing on in different ways and scales. We will be betting on that with the round we are raising.
- Q: Why is revenue for 2022 $13,972? How is it so low? What is current MRR? How many questions have you answered in the US? Need more details on financial & growth metrics
  - A: Hi Yosef, Thank you for the clarification. We have shared the financials of our different subsidiaries along with the financials of our US parent company. Our consolidated revenue is not what it shows on the US company's financials - $13.97K. We collect almost all of our revenue in one of our subsidiaries since the inception of the company. You can see it in the financial documents of other subsidiaries. We have made $2.4M in revenue in 2022. Internally, we are using the academic year for our annual projections and we are projecting $5M+ revenue in 2023-24 based on the deals signed off in B2B deals and with the most moderate B2C growth scenario. These numbers are accomplished with 2x YoY growth, 10+ LTC/CAC ratio, 76% gross margin, and high retention. Again, thank you for letting me clarify and avoid any confusion on that. I asked the Wefunder team to work on that last week.
- Q: I participated via the Kunduz YC S18 SPV back on June 26, 2023. Could you share a brief update on: The company’s current status and major milestones since the last update, Whether the SPV has recorded any impairment/write-down or if there’s been any liquidity event, and Timing for the next K-1 (2023/2024) if applicable. This will help investors understand tax treatment and expectations going forward. Thanks for keeping the community informed.
- Q: What is the best way to connect regarding the different levels of investor peaks that was advertised on the last SAFE round?
- Q: I thought this campaign closed in June, did it reopen or was it extended? As the round is closing today, can you update the current MRR from May, June and what is expected in July? Any other business updates?
  - A: Hi Yosef, thank you for the question! Wefunder and Kunduz teams have decided to reschedule the closing time a few times this summer after seeing a continuous influx of new investors joining in recent weeks. Having said that, we are planning on closing it this week. As an update, we have a few major ones: 1. Our revenue grew 1.4x YoY in July. This was above our projection for the month and we feel more confident than ever about at least doubling our revenue this year. (July is our off-season and has historically had a much lower YoY revenue growth than any other month. It also is the month where we don't have any B2B revenue). 2. This week, we are launching our most extensive plan in our test market. This offers live courses, book set, 1-on-1 counseling, and group counseling on top of what our standard plans offer (Q&A, video lectures, personalized practice tests, and mock tests) 3. We have formed partnerships with the most superior, the cream of the crop publishers in our test market. This has proven the point that we are the go-to partner for them as a platform when they look into the digital space. 4. Our deal flow in B2B continues to grow and we expect to 4x YoY in this channel by the end of the year. 5. We have earned various public incentives through our R&D, which will save us $1M next year. The majority of these incentives are permanent, which will help us save even more as we grow. 6. We also have new business development opportunities in the pipeline that go beyond what we have planned and shared on our deck. It's still early to share it but all I can say is that if we can close any of them, it will considerably expand our TAM. Hope it was helpful. If you have any other questions, I'll be more than happy to answer them!
- Q: Hi Basar, as you already know. Chegg shares drop more than 40% after company says ChatGPT is killing its business. Therefore, Chegg is developing its own AI product, CheggMate. The product is built in collaboration with OpenAI, which develops ChatGPT. It will lunch in few weeks. The Educational online sector is a little in trouble so, how do you plan to attract or reassure Chegg users or new institutional investors for using or investing in Kunduz ?
  - A: Hi Alioune, Thank you for your question! As you mentioned, Chegg is partnering with ChatGPT. However, it's important to note that they do not own the technology and, therefore, have no defensibility in it. What really matters is what customers care (product) and how we reach them (distribution). This notion has one short-term and one long-term answer to your question: Short-term: Short-term is a distribution game. Kunduz will concentrate on B2B deals, a more accessible and scalable channel to reach students. Our experience has proven this strategy, as evidenced by scaling to $2M ARR in just 2 years. Chegg can't replicate it because they position themselves as the arch-enemy of educational institutions. We have already begun initiating partnerships with global institutions, which will provide us with high-conversion leads for global B2B deals. As we pursue this strategy, Kunduz will be transforming its service by integrating generative AI tech with its state-of-the-art computer vision technology. Long-term: We are turning into a platform where we provide Q&A, content, personalized practice tests, mock tests, counseling (group and 1:1), book sets, and live courses. It'll be live in August in our pilot market and then we will be expanding it globally. We are going to build our distribution with our flagship Q&A service, build trust, and expand what offer to a turnkey, end-to-end online solution to become their ultimate online partner. This worked extremely well in our pilot market.
- Q: How do you plan to attract students (B2B2C) to actually use your application ?
  - A: Hi Alioune, B2B2C channel has been our most recent success. All around the world, schools are eagerly seeking ways to close the gap from the fully online period during the Covid lockdowns. This process made schools realize that they need external help that is instant, engaging, and affordable. Convincing the school leaders to its effectiveness was the challenging part and now the whole industry recognizes its positive impact. On the other hand, student engagement has been easy for Kunduz from the beginning. Students appreciated its effectiveness in their studies much more instantly. Our B2C users ask more than 3 questions a day on average while preparing high stake exams. At the times they don't have high stake exams, they still get help through 50 questions per month. Our retention throughout the year is consequently above the likes of Spotify and Netflix. At B2B2C, engagement is still at the top percentile compared to other edtech platforms sold through schools. On average students ask 1 question a day. We have consistently seen 98% activation. Having to find ways to attract students (B2B2C or B2C) has never been an issue. What we have built is something students truly need and we cater to that need well. Hope this answers your question!
- Q: Any updates?
  - A: Hi Justin, sincere apologies for the late response here. Hope our updates in recent weeks answered your questions. If you have any questions, happy to answer them!
- Q: Hello anyone here?
  - A: Hi Eliezer, sincere apologies for the late response here. Hope our updates in recent weeks answered your questions. We are planning to close the round next week. If you have any questions, happy to answer them!
- Q: Any update?
  - A: Hi Eliezer, as I mentioned in my previous reply, my sincere apologies for the late response here. Hope our updates in recent weeks answered your questions. If you have any questions, happy to answer them!
- Q: Can the founders answer some of the questions asked? It appear the founders and team does not care about investor concern and this is not a good sign!
  - A: Hi Van, sincere apologies for the delay. As of this week, I am answering all the questions here and I started sharing updates last 2 weeks. Although quite late, I hope they have been helpful. As you'd appreciate, startups have to prioritize what is most important for the company at that moment. Although we are glad that this mindset brought us to this point where we are only 1 month away from cash positive, we are aware that one of our responsibilities is to be responsive to the investors. I can assure you that you will see a responsive startup if you decide to invest. I will be more than happy to share some of our investors' contacts for reference.
- Q: Can you share any Q1 numbers?
  - A: Hi Andras, sincere apologies for the delay in my response. We have made $2.4M in revenue in 2022. Internally, we are using the academic year for our annual projections and we are projecting $5M+ revenue in 2023-24 based on the deals signed off in B2B deals and with the most moderate B2C growth scenario. These numbers are accomplished with 2x YoY growth, 10+ LTC/CAC ratio, 76% gross margin, and high retention. We are 1 month away from cash positive. We have recently shared financials and further fundraising materials on our Wefunder page. We also post updates here. Again, sincere apologies for the delay. We are planning on closing the round next week. If you have any other questions, happy to answer them!
- Q: Does your SAFE have a discount relative to the next funding round? Do you have any additional fundraising materials available for our review?
  - A: Hi David, sincere apologies for the late response here. We use the SAFE with the cap (post-money) and no discount. It was advised by renowned internal and external investors based on our metrics: We have made $2.4M in revenue in 2022. Internally, we are using the academic year for our annual projections and we are projecting $5M+ revenue in 2023-24 based on the deals signed off in B2B deals and with the most moderate B2C growth scenario. These numbers are accomplished with 2x YoY growth, 10+ LTC/CAC ratio, 76% gross margin, and high retention. We have recently shared financials and further fundraising materials on our Wefunder page. We also post updates here. We are planning on closing the round next week. If you have any other questions, happy to answer them!
- Q: Chegg is a large corporation. What is your defensibility against them in case they focus their resources and achieve comparable or higher speed, reconsider their pricing plans and come up with the same affordable option, and copy your interactivity ideas?
  - A: Hi Aldert, This is a David vs Goliath game and every feature we have means a significant impact on their bottom line. Making their service faster, more affordable, or interactive only comes with a higher cost of goods sold. Making such drastic changes in your bottom line requires an explanation to your public market investors and, regardless, it reflects on your stock price. For these reasons, they will be incapable of acting on it before it's too late. The mains reasons we are able to do that are our operational capabilities and advanced AI. For both, we are far ahead of the market despite that they have been around for over 10 years with more resources, richer data to build on, and a larger scale to leverage. Hope it's helpful!