Job-linked learning programs will offer peer-to-peer learning, mentoring and coaching, or what Screwvala calls most soft-skills, to prepare the workforce for the job.
“Today, I would say that many people who are managers and leaders around the world are not yet qualified for their jobs. They only got promoted after two years and now they need to figure out what managers and leaders like. How to deal. This is a controversial approach, but this is where the job-linked reskilling program comes into play,” said Screwvala, founder and president, Upgrade.
He told ET that while the company is offering existing higher education courses in collaboration with universities and institutions around the world, the upgrade will focus heavily on the new job-linked skilling program.
Screwvala told ET, “Job-led learning program is really the next big thing that we are focusing on education, where we want to double that and invest around Rs 400 crore. “In the next five years we see learning being disrupted… I am saying learning, because education will remain a calendar event, when you go to school, college, get a degree, throw on your hat and that frame Let’s freeze it. Then that’s when life begins. It’s what your parents, by societal pressures, set for 100 years old fashioned. I’m not talking about interrupting it, But after that that’s really where the disruption is happening.”
According to Screwvala, coaching and mentoring is going to play an incredible role around the world in that disruption. “For me, peer to peer learning will be the big deal to disrupt the next level of holistic learning. I think at least people will be obsessed with degrees and more and more about being job-ready,” he said. Told.
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The investment will be made from internal sources. upGrad recently raised $225 million at a pre-money valuation of $2 billion.
He said that the country needs to prepare a large population of 10 crore people for employment. “Not 10 lakh or 20 lakh, but 10 crore people need to be job ready. And while everyone is talking about skilling, for most people it is a lower parameter. But really, getting ready for the job is a very different process.”
Citing the example of the IT industry, which took it upon itself to train its workforce and set up centers in Mysore and other places, he said it was only for one region.
“It was because even in the year 2000, they realized that people were not job ready. Today, the sectors are massive – from food delivery to transportation to supply chain to logistics to BFSI. The world is changing rapidly and people are not ready for work.
The courses that Upgrade will start under its own brand will cost between Rs 1-2 lakh and will be spread over 6-9 months. This will be an online course and can be done along with the job.
“We will have an average online program of six to nine months, which you can do while in your current job. It’s not like you have to take time off, because no one wants to take time off to go back to class. But, when I say online, it is not zoom call and live lecture, which was during COVID. It is a very interactive, high touch learning process with peer-to-peer learning on a digital platform.”
The company’s investment will be on content, learning, mentoring, grading and training. The goal of the program will be to develop as well as mobilize the largest trainer base.
The company is aiming to make a profit in this division by the end of the first year, so that more investments can be made for results and job placements.