[Exclusive] In Conversation with CiOL: Irwin Anand, MD, Udemy India

There is an underlying current of anxiety, with as many as three-quarters of workers in India responding that they feel personally affected by the skills gap. As the COVID pandemic further exacerbates employee anxiety, business models, and jobs, many people have turned to skills training platforms like Udemy to help them become more competitive.

Irwin Anand, MD, Udemy India

Thus, Irwin Anand, MD of Udemy India, in conversation with CiOL talks about the various pointers that have affected the EdTech industry; the skill-gap and how WFH has affected him. Excerpts here:

What were some of the things you miss while working from home? How did you maximize your productivity while working from home?

WFH has been liberating as well as tiring. With random schedules, vis-à-vis spending time with the family, it becomes very difficult to prioritize. But we need to find that optimum balance between personal and professional life. Key things that I miss while working from home are maintaining a connection with the team and our Brainstorming/ whiteboarding sessions as they are not as efficient online.

For me, the 3 key elements of working from home to maximize my productivity are Schedule, Communication and Workspace. To allow a balance between personal and professional tasks, I start my day early, at 7 AM, and put in a couple of hours of uninterrupted work. To make time for my family, I try to ensure that I have at least 2-3 evenings free every week by scheduling my calls with the international teams beforehand. By following this schedule, I have realized that sticking to a routine really helps in adjusting to working from home.

As all of us are working from home and not meeting our teams physically, communication becomes more important than ever. At Udemy, we communicate through Email, Slack, and Zoom and set status messages in communication apps to notify our co-workers on our availability.

For my workspace, I have set up a separate room and that is my office from home. For those who can have it, separate setups help amplify productivity. At Udemy, we have offered $500 to each employee for setting up their workspace at home

How are you personally dealing with the pandemic? Are there any new activities that you picked?

When I joined Udemy as the first employee in January 2019 and worked from home for 4 months before we set up our India office, I had discovered the merits of working from home. However, working for a prolonged period from home is a different ball game, as we start feeling tired and find it difficult to prioritize, especially when everyone in the family is at home, one needs to balance work and personal life.

Since we are in it for a long haul, it is more important than ever to prioritize family and work. It is essential for us to indulge in practices that enable efficiency whilst working from home. Beyond work, I focus on eating healthy, exercising, maintaining a sleep schedule and investing in my personal development by reading a book or taking an online course.

To be productive and energized, it is important for me to maintain a disciplined 7-hour sleep schedule and take time off work. With no occasion to take a holiday, it is still important to take time off to refuel brain and energy levels. At Udemy, we encourage our coworkers to take regular time offs to unwind and distract themselves from the routine.

At home, our favourite pastime as a family is watching MasterChef Australia. All of us, including my 10 and 7-year-old kids, love playing MasterChef. Cooking together as a family is becoming our go-to activity to be together, connect and relieve stress.

How Covid-19 accelerated the transition to digital for all sectors. What will the new normal be for EdTech?

There is no denying that the nation-wide lockdown has accelerated the transition to digital for all sectors including Education. India’s online education segment is growing rapidly after the coronavirus outbreak. The lockdowns shuttered schools and forced millions of school-going children to switch to e-learning instead.

While the demand for online education has been strong in the past few years due to rapid internet penetration, the pandemic has given a new lease on life to the sector, allowing businesses to tap into the multi-billion dollar sector.

The new National Education Policy also recommends harnessing Ed-tech through app-based learning, online student communities, and lesson delivery beyond ‘chalk and talk’. This shows that the sector is headed in the right direction and there will be ample opportunities for everyone.

Going forward, Online and virtual learning will be the new normal. Companies are already investing in personalized, individual online learning interventions, instead of classical classroom training and they will continue to do so.

Individual students and workers are also understanding the need to continuously learn and update their skills to stay relevant on the job, through personalized online learning. There is no need now to take a break from work and go for classroom education as all that we need to acquire practical skills is available to us at any time, place, and pace of our choosing.

We are building behaviours and changing workplace rules which will stay in future.

What are some of the challenges you faced in driving digital transformation?

The digital transformation took a lot of time for our generation to get used to it. However, for millennials, the speed has been accelerated. Apart from employee pushback in organizations, there is a huge skill gap problem in most businesses. Here are a few challenges that we face in driving digital transformation:

Overcoming traditional business models; Cultural transformation and barriers in the mind, for example, work from home, Talent Transformation; Speed of change and Outcome-based economy.

A lot of companies are struggling. How do they re-engineer themselves?

With the stakes higher than ever, and as businesses face their most formidable challenges in recent history, executives must ask themselves a straightforward question. “How can I navigate my company through a historic storm with no compass and shoreline in the sight?”

A global pandemic is a time when panic can and does take hold. But that can’t happen in the executive suite. Job one for any corporate decision-maker leading a company through turbulent times is to exude calm, even if the temptation is to give into infinite stress. Hundreds of employees are working from home today with all kinds of disruptions. The need to communicate authentically with employees, being honest and up to par with them, as well as being there for them when they need to hustle cannot be stressed enough.

As companies and their employees struggle to re-engineer themselves, it is important to understand what is working for them and keep on doing that until the shore is in sight. Leaders should also help employees. They can find online resources to help them continue to work, teach, socialize, and learn so we can all grow together.

We can also use this time as an opportunity to reflect; adapt something that is needed but does not happen when business is usual.

What are some of the parameters that one should look for when entering the industry?

Not just for the Ed-Tech industry but while entering any other industry, we need to be very passionate about it. So, passion for education and improving people's lives through learning is something that is very important to have. We should also enjoy what we do and be curious about learning new stuff. There is a huge scope for changing the norms and innovation in the industry. So we need to be ready for the fast pace of change and reimagining experiences.

What are the future career prospects in the IT Industry for the upcoming workforce?

The IT industry is evolving at a fast pace. With a half-life of a tech skill being as low as 12 months, technologies are changing rapidly. Hence, tech workers and programmers need to stay abreast with the latest tech skills. They need to continue to learn and re-invent themselves as new tools to develop disruptive innovations for future emerge. Example being the trending courses which we see on our platform.

According to a recent report published by Udemy, we witnessed a huge surge in IT skills around the globe:

Neural Networks (61% increase), TensorFlow (46%), Chatbots (60%), Microsoft Azure (31%), and OpenCV (40%).

Has Covid-19 opened career opportunities for everyone through technology, or do we continue to face the job crisis?

COVID has shaken economies and stock markets around the world and It is going to be like this, at least for a while now. Job crisis is a reality, but the only way to stay afloat is to use this time to invest in skills which are relevant for the future. Digital disruption is happening in all industries and people should use this time to invest in upskilling themselves.

According to the CMIE, nearly 5M salaried people lost their jobs in the month of July. This takes the total number of job losses in the category to 18.9 million.

Does upskilling play an important role?

India was already facing a job and skill crisis and COVID has accelerated that. Towards this, upskilling plays a very important role in the future of work, especially for this generation. The modern workplace is a fast-moving environment. Automation and other technologies are changing job descriptions, while the shelf life of skills is shrinking. Since skills learned in college are no longer enough to sustain a professional throughout their career journey, those who embrace lifelong learning have a distinct advantage. To retain such talent and stay competitive in their respective markets, however, employers must foster a learning culture from within.

What are the best-selling courses on Udemy currently? How does that define the market?

In the last few months, there has been an immense surge in enrolments in these courses; Communication Skills (606%), Financial Analysis (311%), Business Fundamentals (281%), Art for Kids (531%), Pilates (402%) and Coding for Kids (375%).

Besides the top course topics in the past six months were: Python, Java, Ethical Hacking, Data Science and Machine Learning.