Startup Circle: How is 21CC Education revolutionising future logistic workforce?

India’s logistics sector is ripe and rich in potential. According to a KPMG logistics report of 2019, the Indian logistics sector is a $ 200 billion market. The ensuing Covid-19 pandemic and an ever increasing number of internet subscribers has led to and explosion of e-commerce and e-tail. With that, the transportation of critical goods is now tantamount to an essential service. At the current rate and with the skill level, the sector may grow at 10% CAGR in the next five years to reach around $320-330 billion. Thus, if the future-ready workforce of skilled professionals is made proficient in warehouse practices, logistics, digital inventory management, space optimization, exposure to IT, verbal and written communication, the sector has the potential to make India a global leader. Here's where 21CC Education comes in.

21CC Education provides training and e-learning in logistics. It has off the shelf interactive and usable content ready for Air Cargo, Warehousing, Freight Forwarding, HSE, etc. 21CC Education creates compelling training content for the transportation and logistics industry using visuals, gamification and humour. 21CC Education creates a steady and large funnel of aptly skilled resources for organizations and maps opportunities for reskilling and upskilling for individuals. It helps increase their earning potential and enable them to build lucrative careers. With CiOL, Mr Sanjay Tiwari, Co-Founder, 21CC Education talks about the industry and the contribution of 21CC Education to the same.

What makes mobile app technology a sustainable skill building solution for a country as complex as India?

Last year India celebrated 25 years of the internet. In just a quarter of a century, we have seen India leapfrog towards a digital revolution, unlike any other market, despite its diversity and complexity. We have seen e-commerce make steady inroads into our day-to-day lives; we have seen digital transactions and payments become a mainstay especially in the last year owing to the pandemic. Almost all aspects of our lives, from social to professional to personal are touched by technology. They are breaking down geographical and cultural boundaries. With the growing ubiquity of digital tools in our lives and a digitally native audience consisting largely of our young workforce, migrating to skilling solutions from the brick and mortar world to an online platform was a no brainer.

Cutting through the urban-rural divide, digital and mobile solutions for skilling create a level playing field for equal opportunity across our vast nation. They have become true social enablers, empowering aspiring users across the nation to access opportunities to build skills and employability. It is safe to say that mobile-based ed-tech will be the way forward for India to create a sustainable future-ready workforce that can contribute to the nation’s economic growth.

Why is legacy in-house training not enough for large organizations and startups alike?

The advent of the digital age has necessitated business transformation and process transformation to thrive. However, the progress is interrupted due to the lack of training and in-house capabilities of most large and small organizations to prepare their workforce to operate in this transformed environment. Rupert Murdoch encapsulates the current reality perfectly, “The world is changing very fast. Big will not beat small anymore. It will be the fast beating the slow.” That is why large organizations and start-ups alike need to shorten the learning curve.

Legacy models of in-house training cannot withstand the pace of change in today’s business landscape. Thus, they are often low on the priority list for any businesses because it is not the core business. We have seen many businesses benefit from Peter Drucker’s mantra over the last decade or two. “Do what you do best and outsource the rest”.

The need for training has become more palpable in a rapidly changing business landscape; experts provide technology-enabled solutions to solve for many of the shortcomings of legacy training methods; customizing content to meet the need of the hour; addressing a unique audience; introducing updates easily on already existing content; using bite-sized audio-visual tools and gamified content to drive better retention rate. These also allow flexibility to the user and are more cost-effective without wasting resources.

The outcome of digitally delivered training content is also quantifiable. The most important quality of app-based training technology is that it offers scalability and is core to what the provider offers to businesses that engage in training services. We can take the thinking and plan out of training for businesses that partner with us, leaving them free to run with the solution and enabling rapid scaling for their workforce and more revenue optimization.

How does app-technology in skill development fulfil the growing need for lifelong learning?

As we move towards a potentially automated future, we are witnessing technology’s consistent and rapid transformation. Thus, training can no longer be one-and-done or on the back of sluggish content. A recent IBM report predicts the need of upskilling-reskilling of more than 120 million people in the next three years. The report also reveals that the average length of training time required to bridge the skills gaps has gone from 3 to 36 days in just five years.

There is an immediate need for the workforce to be skilled. The same will hold even more in the future. To ensure efficiency and a future-ready workforce, consistent skills enhancement is non-negotiable. It creates an unprecedented need for lifelong learning for employees. Continuous skilling will rightly enable any workforce to keep up with the progression in technical knowledge and required human skills. This will help them become an integral part of the future jobs availablity.

Employees too are acknowledging the need for consistent development, preferring to work with dynamic and flexible organizations that offer opportunities for learning and growth. The Pew Research Center found 87 per cent of adults in the workforce acknowledge the necessity to get training and develop new skills throughout their careers to keep up with a changing workplace.

Workplace demands and constraints can make taking time off for training a challenge for employees seeking career progression. The forgone wages can also make the opportunity costs of pursuing skill-building very high. This is why app-based solutions will find growing patronage, making industry-relevant content available anywhere, anytime, through any device.

What features make the 21CC Education app different from others?

The gamified training modules specific to the logistics and transportation sector allows 21CC Education app users to learn about the business activities along with skills training. The simulations allow users to truly experience the industry, think on their feet, take risks and come up with real-world problem-solving abilities. It is a great way to earn relevant work experience before even getting hired.

But other than the learning experience, the job portal is the one feature that sets the 21CC app apart. The app has job seekers who are the mobile app users on one hand and the hiring companies on the other.

A map view displays the jobs matching their filters, but it doesn’t just stop there. Before recommending jobs, it calculates the skills of the candidate basis the learning content used on the app. It also takes in their existing job experience to do a Skills Match. The skill match is given in a percentage. The candidate needs to match at least 80% of the skills to apply for a specific job.

If there is a skill match, the user can straightaway apply for the job. If not, the app smartly assesses the gap and suggests games, modules and other content to provide the candidate with the required skills to be eligible to apply for the job opening.

How does the 21CC Education app quantify the skills learnt for the employer?

All content on the 21CC app is measurable making a skill assessment of qualifying candidates more accurate for hiring companies. Some training modules have assessments at the end while some don’t. The progress of the ones without assessments can be measured through stars assigned with levels of content completion. PDFs and videos allow users to earn stars depending on the duration watched. There are default thresholds for the minimum score that help the user assess their progress.

The in-app games have scores and levels to keep users engaged and motivated. The 21CC Education leaderboards make learning intuitive and easy. They also allow candidates to see how well they have performed wrt their peers. This further motivates the candidate to re-do the content to improve their own result.