We’re celebrating Indiana University student innovators and entrepreneurs who are clients of the Shoebox, the university’s student-startup incubator. Located in the Shoemaker Innovation Center in Luddy Hall on the Bloomington campus, the Shoebox provides 24/7 office space to help student entrepreneurs build, launch and sustain their businesses.
Meet Onboard Manuals
Cherif Redissi, a master’s student in data science from Tunis, Tunisia, co-founded Onboard Manuals along with along with Safwen Bouali and Amine Troudi. The company helps hardware manufacturers transform text manuals into immersive 3D manuals.
“Our clients are companies that are having a hard time onboarding their customers and training their workforce due to the inefficiency of textual product manuals,” Redissi said.
“That difficulty results in major customer churn, with clients leaving after the first bad support experience. As for assembly-line operators’ training, injuries are due to a drastic lack of documentation.”
Onboard Manuals’ software-as-a-service, or SaaS, platform allows hardware makers to create 3D assembly instructions in a few minutes, share them instantly with their clients, receive insights on the manuals’ visualization and customers’ data, and manage tickets or incidents through multiple funnels thanks to the multiple integrations they provide.
“We reduce the onboarding time of our clients’ customers by 85 percent, reduce the amount of support calls by 60 percent and offer a better customer-support experience to our clients’ customers,” Redissi said.
Onboard Manuals’ client testimonial
Khaoula Baya Rachid, marketing manager at Meubles Intérieurs, is one of Onboard Manuals’ clients.
“Thanks to Onboard’s 3D product manuals, setting up the household furnishings we provide to our customers has never been that easy and satisfying for them,” she said.
Onboard Manuals’ present and future
Redissi said Onboard Manuals has achieved several international milestones:
- Receiving $65,000 from Flat6Labs Tunis, the Tunisian branch of the largest business accelerator in the Middle East North Africa region.
- Participating in Arts et Métiers, the French hardware acceleration program in Station F, which matched the company with five major European hardware manufacturing companies.
- Participating in the Microsoft for Startups program, which offers co-selling opportunities to a global network of customers and cloud credits.
- Partnering with Zendesk, the largest customer-support SaaS company, which provides co-selling and co-marketing opportunities.
- Joining the African European Digital Venture Program, providing valuable mentorship and introducing the company to several B2B/B2C corporations in Europe.
“We also recently raised $175,000 in a second round of funding — mainly from Kepple Africa Ventures and several angel investors including Ahmed Hentati and Karim Jouini,” Redissi said.
Onboard Manuals seeks to grow its network of partners and customers.
“We are building a community of 3D-content creators on our platform while also partnering with universities to have them and their students deploy and showcase their creations,” Redissi said.
“Our goal is to become the go-to platform for checking online assembly instructions in 3D.”
Praise for the Shoebox
“I joined the Shoebox only halfway through the semester, and I wish I had done it early on,” Redissi said. “The Shoebox is an awesome community of like-minded entrepreneurs. Challenging each other’s ideas — suggesting and building on top of each other — while getting introduced to the local ecosystem in Bloomington has been great.”
Student startups can apply for 24/7 access to the Shoebox’s office space, which is located in the Shoemaker Innovation Center, Luddy Hall 2150. The Shoebox also collaborates with the Hoosier Hatcher pre-incubator at the Kelley School of Business, as well as Bloomington’s Dimension Mill startup accelerator. To apply for coworking space, write to luddysic@indiana.edu.
Leave a Reply