TAKING FLIGHT
Jamie Tan Ai Ping
FLYING CAPE PTE LTD
“Break seemingly insurmountable things down into smaller manageable tasks, and be consistent about completing what you set out to do.”
Founded by Jamie Tan in 2015, The Flying Cape is an education company that seeks to leverage technology and meaningful data to make customised quality educational content accessible to a large cross-section of aspiring learners from all backgrounds.
The business delivers innovative solutions to address real-world educational pain points by actively partnering with leading educators and business partners from diverse fields, and its mission lies in helping children and young people from all backgrounds discover and live their aspirations.
Fundamentally an online booking platform (www.flyingcape.com.sg) for a child’s tuition and enrichment needs, the Flying Cape platform promotes more than 350 brands in over 600 locations, offering a plethora of activities and classes for children and their parents, suitable for ages 18 months and above. The company also offers an All-You-Can-Learn Pass that allows parents to purchase credits to allow them to go to any class around Singapore, as well as SMART Holiday Camps that guides parents through the company’s SMART Framework.
For one who did not perform exceedingly well in school, it seems somewhat ironic that Jamie Tan has found her career in the field of education.
Prior to starting her own business, the 39-year-old had spent 15 years in the corporate world as the Asia Pacific head of an IT department in an insurance giant— a profession that allowed her to maintain her fondness for crunching numbers and providing services to people. Then, her career took a sudden turn in 2014 when she came across a newspaper article discussing how parents were disappointed with the results of enrichment lessons despite paying a lot for them.
Determined to change this, Jamie established Flying Cape, with a goal in mind to help schools administer their businesses more conveniently and for parents to find with relative ease the relevant enrichment lessons for their children.
Tell us more about Flying Cape and what it offers.
The enrichment space in Singapore is very fragmented and not really tech-savvy, so parents may sometimes not be able to find what they are looking for. Flying Cape is an online booking platform that addresses this immediate need in the market. More importantly, we tie up with public universities and provide recommendations for the relevant courses that children are more suited for. Parents can use our tools to find and track their children’s progress. And when schools are on our platforms, they get access to a free service where they can set up classes, have an online presence and collect their fees; they can focus on teaching and not have to worry about mundane things.
What has been your greatest challenge in running Flying Cape?
Finding like-minded people to form the core team. The team has to understand Flying Cape is not a money-driven initiative, it has to have the vision and passion to do the right thing. While there are a lot of talented people out there, finding people who understand what we are trying to achieve and having the passion to see it through has been an interesting journey.
What is your secret to productivity?
Break seemingly insurmountable things down into smaller manageable tasks and be consistent about completing what you set out to do.
Share with us your thoughts and observations on female entrepreneurship.
Entrepreneurship is hard enough as it is. Women may find additional challenges because of social stigma and expectations of what they should do in the eyes of society. But there are quite a few support groups addressing that, so the scene is relatively healthy.
