Creating a lifelong ecosystem with online learning
In an exclusive conversation with Hindustan Times, Mayank Kumar, Co-founder & MD of India’s largest online higher education company, upgrad, speaks about the online learning ecosystem in the country, the ROI of online education and the state of hiring in a post pandemic world.
A few decades earlier, our parents had one job for their entire career which involved the same skills. But today, all of us have multiple jobs in our career ecosystems for which we need to regularly keep upgrading out skill sets. To keep up with this transition at the workplace, our education system has also undergone a complete evolution.
This was among the many interesting insights shared by Mayank Kumar, co-founder & MD of upgrad, India’s largest online higher education, while speaking at Education Founder Series, Empowering People through Knowledge, an initiative by Hindustan Times to seek the major trends in the education sector. Some excerpts:
The virtual transition in
the field of knowledge has enabled people to open up to various possibilities of growth. Where do you think upgrad fits into this picture?
There are multiple things that we are noticing in this ecosystem of the transitions happening in the knowledge field. The first thing that all of us are witnessing at this point in time is this entire context of skills getting obsolete and everything that we learnt is no longer relevant today. As we go to a more experienced level, we start tending to lose the skills that we learnt earlier. This brings a massive push for a lifelong learning ecosystem.
In today’s ecosystem, all of us have got multiple jobs and therefore require a lifelong play to happen at a macro level. Given this macro thesis in mind, where not everyone has the option to quit their job and go back to learning, a platform like upgrad provides the right lifelong learning partner for a lot of working professionals as also for the student community. Our philosophy is that we are not just a content library but a wholesome education with a very strong human touch. We believe that human-led learning
is the future and that is where upgrad comes into the picture.
Now that things are moving online and we see individuals enrolling for online courses, there is also an underlying apprehension of whether or not that degree with enable a successful professional growth. Can you tell us a bit about ROI of online education?
Today, online education is seen as a convenient mode of learning. Going to offline is seen
as more complicated. If I breakdown the entire journey of online education, the first phase was all about access – you could get access to content from the best global universities online. Phase 2 was more about engagement – completion rates were very low. But, we are now in the third wave which is the most crucial wave of online education, which is purely based on outcomes. Without a good outcome, you cannot build and sustain such ecosystems.
People do look at ROI from online education very strongly.
It may not be viewed the same way as it is done for offline learning where they need to leave their job for the education. When a working professional does our program, they get anywhere between a 50-60 per cent increment in salary on an average.
So, how people see ROI is whether the course will enable them to get an increment that will cover the cost of their education. The general rule of thumb on ROI in an offline world is whatever you have invested, your salary should recover that in a 2-3 year period. For online, this happens within 6 months to one year.
There is a thought that various universities in the country offer degrees in different fields but do not serve as a guarantee for employment or even promise vital skill sets. Do you agree to this?
This is true to a certain extent but there are also a very large number of universities doing cutting edge stuff. Many places are taking the old form of curriculum and running with that. But, in today’s competitive environment, every university is questioning it on an ongoing basis. And that is why we are seeing a lot of universities coming up with various elements in the curriculum to make it more wholesome and meaningful. I truly believe that things are changing and shifting rapidly and coming together of different ecosystems definitely helps in allowing us to go for it much faster.
Do you think that the traditional education has some flaws, pertaining to creating adequate space and opportunities for a person seeking their best potential?
I feel like there is no one medium better than the other. Sometimes we don’t realise that the value of school is not just the knowledge that they impart but the fact that they teach students to just sit in a single seat for eight hours so they can be more focussed and concentrated on doing things. I do believe that the existing infrastructure and existing form of education does have a role in its own right. It allows people to interact and make friends physically. But in the current context, once you are out of that offline ecosystem, you are on a treadmill to constantly pick up new skills to move up. Online fails to provide the right convenience and the right ROI that an online ecosystem can provide. In that context, offline has a significant role to play while online can play a much bigger role in the larger ecosystem of lifelong learning.
In 2020, upgrad group had 100 per cent revenues and it tripled its course offerings with three acquisitions. What is your success mantra?
We believe that if our learners are successful, we will be successful. More successful learners will pull even more number of aspiring learners to us. But that is the focus that we need to keep to make sure that learners are the centre and we design everything to make sure they are successful. For us, revenues and valuations are a side effect of what we do at the core.
We are very focussed on working professionals. One of our acquisitions allows us to offer blended offline and online campus learning experiences and the other one focuses on test prep for government services for those seeking those right after graduation. The third acquisition was in the placement and recruitment space as a lot of our learners want placements and we want to offer them that solution. So, that is how all those three acquisitions fit into the larger play. We are actively looking at multiple opportunities in this ecosystem to partner with like-minded folk.
The pandemic has affected various sectors and the youth has been facing a lot of trouble finding the right job. What message would you like to give to them?
Things were really bad at the peak of the pandemic. Most companies found two challenges – subdued demand and the challenge of online induction. So, many companies were conservative in terms of hiring. A lot of things are changing significantly. Demand is coming back and hiring has picked up. I cannot say with certainty that the worst is over but I do see that given the people are far more cautious and the economy is slowly opening up. With that, we see a significant hiring requirement coming up. The market is now shifting more in favour of talent, making it a golden period for skilled talent force.