A brief history: ZERROAI was founded in 2023 to address the growing plagiarism-related stress faced by students and academics, particularly in Nigerian universities. Existing paraphrasing tools proved inadequate, with limitations like character restrictions, slow processing, and high costs. Today, ZERROAI continues evolving and growing in popularity among students
What inspired it:
I was always the go-to computer guy in my department for any academic-related challenges that involved the use of software. In 2023, so many students in my department got their projects flagged for plagiarism and were asked to rephrase them. Once again, I was the go-to guy. I did it for the first person (one page at a time) using GPT; she passed the test, and in less than 4 hours, my inbox was full of messages from my colleagues. The pressure to do it fast led me to start looking for alternative ways to make things faster. I came across Grammarly, but I could only rephrase 10,000 characters at a time, which is equivalent to 3 pages – slow but better. However, the messages wouldn’t stop coming. I tried uploading 100 pages at once, but Grammarly requested I pay $44 (#78,000 at that time), which included other premium features I didn’t need and will never need. I tried other platforms, but they all seemed to be speaking the same language of $44. I thought it was just my department until students from other departments started messaging me, and that led to my question of: “Can we (Cimplify) build an easy-to-use one-page platform that allows students to complete specific tasks by themselves? A one-page platform where you simply upload, paraphrase, and download; all in less than 5 minutes while making the plagiarism zero?” We did our research and discovered that the problem was not just peculiar to UNIBEN students but prevalent in more than 54 universities in Nigeria, and that led to the development of ZERROAI.
Product overview:
ZERROAI is a paraphrasing platform for students and academics. The one-page platform allows you to upload or paste your text, and with a few clicks, it intelligently rephrases your content, ensuring zero plagiarism. ZERROAI handles even the lengthiest of documents with ease, generating unique, plagiarism-free outputs in a shorter time while preserving the original meaning with its advanced algorithms
Problem we are solving:
Simplicity, efficiency, and cost-effectiveness. We remove the plagiarism-related stress students go through in the latter part of their academic life.
How we are different:
There are other platforms such as Grammarly, Quillbot, and Checker that do something close to what ZERROAI does. We focus on affordability and ease of use. We don’t require you to pay hefty fees for other products features you aren’t going to use.
Stage:
Launched and in use, with more than 3300 visitors in less than one month and an average of 150 visitors daily.
Journey of product development:
We began with extensive research to know the number of schools that prioritize plagiarism testing for their students in Nigeria. It happens to be a widespread issue, affecting over 54 universities in Nigeria alone. With this insight, we assembled a team of developers and language experts to bring ZERROAI to life with weeks of development and iterations. The first version could only summarize until we finally got it right.
Biggest challenge so far:
We have been looking for a less expensive means to integrate a plagiarism checker on the platform, such as Turnitin, but have yet to receive a response.
ZERROAI is currently in use in more than 4 major schools in Nigeria so far (UNIBEN, UNIBADAN, OAU, DELSU) , though being challenged with good publicity.