upGrad launches job-enabled courses for college freshers and working professionals

upGrad, Asia’s higher edtech major is doubling down on the massive demand as India goes through its Skilling Revolution to create the largest upskilling program portfolio that will allow first-time job seekers and working professionals to take their own upGrad branded courses. 

The thrust is based on five key offerings and opportunities:

1. 80 percent of those joining the workforce find it impossible to crack a job. The upGrad course portfolio is committed to make them employable with the right skill sets.

2. Hiring costs for corporates are soaring and this saves time and cost for both employer and employee.

3. Today upGrad works with over 3,700 companies around the world for their training needs and this value proposition dovetails very well.

4. upGrad understands the employee needs with its 3 million+ learner-base over the last seven years and therefore, is best positioned to identify all the training elements that go into these courses. 

5. The programs are majorly online and partly blended, with a few offline centres coming up in major cities, thereby allowing upGrad to take this opportunity to scale and drive massive employment within the country. The commitment will further accelerate the Prime Minister’s ambition of making India a developed nation by 2047.

“Our own branded certification courses for job enablement allows us the flexibility to focus on what makes the first-time employees or working professionals move up in their jobs or shift careers in order to upgrade themselves. It fits in directly with upGrad’s mission to enable India to be positioned as the global skill talent capital of the world,” said Mayank Kumar, Co-founder and MD, upGrad.

 “This is an offering readied by us for the last many years and we believe we have the right content, product offering, technology, and trainers to build a strong sense of aspiration for everyone to be job ready. Our fully online learning experience will be for a six to eight-month part time course”, said  Subramanyam Reddy, Founder and CEO, KnowledgeHut upGrad.

 “We are seeing a lot of demand from Europe and the US for these programs while India is a massive opportunity that we aim to focus on for the first one year. The world needs a 20 million developer talent pool by 2030 and we see this as a core need to transform our workforce and is a strong offering for all our corporate partners,” said Ashish Sharma, VP - New Business, upGrad.

 As upGrad builds into the largest integrated LifeLongLearning company, this revenue pillar is an important part of its high growth plans and aims for this job-enabled segment to contribute USD 200 million of its revenue in the next 24 months.