India’s skills gap poses threat to promise of economic growth: UpsideLMS

Economic growth determines a nation’s long-term economic well-being and crucially depends on skills. Whether it’s the easy management of your eLearning, mobile learning, classroom training and blended learning, or having a comprehensive L&D suite, complete with Integrations, LMS Mobile Apps, eCommerce and Competency Development, UpsideLMS’ AI-powered recommendation engine along with its user-centric UI makes for an enriched and smart learning journey while a bunch of learner engagement features ensures your learners are hooked on it all times.

Here, Amit Gautam, founder-director, UpsideLMS, tells us more. Excerpts:

DQ: Elaborate on the industry insights on the need for upskilling.

Amit Gautam: One of the most critical challenges faced by Indian organizations today is technological disruption. A big part of that challenge is adapting to the sudden shifts in the nature of skills employees need to perform effectively.

Technologies like AI and Blockchain have being widely adopted by almost every known industry to gain a competitive advantage. As a result, skills like data science, machine learning, python, etc., have now become in-demand skills for almost every business to effectively leverage these technologies.

The manufacturing industry, for example, is plagued with the skills gap in ‘a historically tight labor market’ according to CNBC. Businesses are spending ‘big’ to upskill their workforce. The Manufacturing Institute states that manufacturers will spend $26.2 billion on training initiatives for employees in 2020 to bridge the skills gap, which has been the #1 challenge over the past few years, according to the National Association of Manufacturers’ Outlook Survey.

Likewise, the rate at which technology evolves has put the IT industry on alert. NASSCOM say around 40% of the Indian workforce needs upskilling, and because Indians employees aren’t technically equipped, but the sheer pace of change is startling.

No surprise then why more than 50% of successful enterprises invest in the (skill) development of their employees. With about 46% recent graduates deemed ‘employable’ in 2019 as per India Skills Report 2019-20, it’s about time for corporate India to step up its upskilling game.

DQ: Can you tell us more about skill development and talent shortage in India?



Amit Gautam: Indian businesses are all too privy how workforce development with in-demand knowledge and skills is the call to action to effectively complement the country’s growth. But, let’s face it. This has got to be a combined effort where India’s diverse industries embrace and propagate skills training for their employees with meaningful certifications, including effective and sustainable long-term skills development strategies.

India has been one of the fastest growing economies in the world, for quite some time, and continues to lead the race. This means, India stands to benefit largely from its employable population. However, with 104.62 million-strong workforce set to enter the labor market by 2022, and only 1% of the population making up 22% of national income, India’s skills gap poses a terrible threat to the promise of economic growth.

Insufficient training facilities or opportunities, a stark mismatch between formal education and industry (skills) demands, along with limited industry inputs are some of the nagging hurdles in the way of India’s economic growth. There is a clear need for Indian organizations to define and adopt efficient, scalable and sustainable employee training programs.

With global technology titans like Amazon, Google and Microsoft marking a larger presence across India, the country’s corporate sector is being significantly influenced by global L&D practices. And, leading organizations in India are now leveraging the best learning management systems, modern learning libraries and innovative learn-tech tools to their advantage.

Since India’s Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman suggested in the 2020-21 budget speech that FDI in education would be promoted, there has been a lot of positive movement in India’s education and learning sector. And, learning technology solutions and eLearning will continue to bring key advantages to India’s corporate sector.

DQ: Plethora is a collection of over 20K ready-to-use courses and videos. Can you tell us about the advantages?

Amit Gautam: Historically, one of the major reasons why companies fail at skilling their workforce is because they fail to kick off their skill development programs in the first place, let alone other factors like user adoption, reception, leveraging an LMS etc.

ELearning, online learning via a Learning Management System (LMS) is indispensible when it comes to employee skilling, as it negates the logistics cost of venues and saves time.  However, creating customized training material and eLearning programs from scratch means spending a hefty sum and considerable amount of time on assessing vendors or planning and developing courses on your own.

Businesses often turn to L&D in the face of critical business challenges, ones that require urgent employee skilling. In such cases, they need a quick fix, with hardly any time for developing custom content. As a result, an organization’s go-to-market will happen quickly and easily with the use of an online learning library like Plethora.

Plethora came into being with the sole purpose of helping companies adopt a hassle-free and more efficient and cost-effective solution to address their skilling needs. It means getting away from the hassles of custom content development, negotiating with eLearning content vendors, checking device compatibility, and other related tasks that are both, time and cost intensive, while reaping the benefits of a ready-made library of limitless learning that not only will help businesses stay relevant but also compete at the highest level.

With Plethora, companies can deploy effective skilling programs ‘quickly’ with a strong focus ‘on what the learners have learnt and what they have gathered from it’, rather than how the course has been designed. Plethora houses over 20,000 courses and videos that have been pre-created for you, and are available online for ready usage. The library covers a comprehensive collection of eLearning, mLearning and Microlearning courses and videos, covering in-demand topics critical for today’s workforce.

Plethora promises significant effectiveness for newer eLearning projects as the courses are readily available to use whenever and at the point of need.

DQ: How is it a unique content library with a modern approach?



Amit Gautam: When it comes to choosing skilling courses, organizations are often spoilt for choice as there is no dearth of content vendors. But, when it comes to choosing the most appropriate and effective courses from the legion available online, businesses need to make informed decisions.

With the help of seasoned experts, Plethora helps businesses by providing solutions that best fit their skilling requirements, without having them to bother with trends, course design, subject matter efficiency, mobile (device) compatibility, and other prerequisites associated with custom content development.

All Plethora courses and videos are sourced from the world’s leading content providers, content is curated by Subject Matter Experts in their field, while the courses are designed by top Instructional Designers and Graphic Designers, making them mobile-ready and deployment-ready on any learning platform or app (LMS/ LXP).

One of the great aspects of Plethora is the availability of limitless courses on diverse topics. Ranging from topics that help employees learn specific skills to more general ones, there is an abundance of learning for every employee. Above all, Plethora is a must-have for the continuous professional development of workforce through highest-quality content that has been tested for ultimate success.

DQ: What are the USPs for housing in-demand courses critical for today’s employees?



Amit Gautam: Plethora gives businesses instant access to over 20,000 off-the-shelf eLearning courses and videos that are fast to deploy and effective in addressing diverse learning needs. The solutions are highly effective and engaging, and include courses and videos on a wide-range of topics, including Leadership Development, Business Skills, Soft Skills, Sales & Service, and many more.

One of the key USPs of Plethora is that it is an ever growing content library, so that businesses enjoy the benefits of latest and in-demand courses that offer an instant solution to urgent skilling challenges. The robust collection of courses includes thousands of high-quality courses and videos covering topics that are not only critical for today’s workforce but also in-demand for future-readiness.

Today, businesses must be prepared to compete at a global level and the expert behind Plethora understand the criticality of having a highly-skilled workforce to satisfy the increasing global pressures and ever evolving market demands. However, when it comes to employee skilling, businesses often struggle to find the right approach to address the widening skills gap. As a result, the desired level of productivity is not achieved and the proposed benefits are long from being realized.

With a strong belief that successful employee skilling programs must be pre-defined from the get-go, where the business has identified the skills gap in its workforce, along with the set of competencies it needs to address that gap; Plethora offers a three-pronged competency-based approach to help businesses make employee skilling an effective and successful investment of time, money and expertise.

DQ: How are the collaborations with content partners for high-quality courses created by experts in their fields helping?



Amit Gautam: What makes Plethora a one-stop-solution for skills training content requirements are the content partnerships that provide a wide range of the highest-quality courses on diverse topics, which are constantly updated in sync with industry demands and trends.

Plethora’s collaboration with leading content providers means businesses get access to the best of industry-specific skills training courses. Be it Sales & Service, IT & Digital, Banking & Financial, Interpersonal Development or Business Skills and more, Plethora truly satisfies the skilling needs of almost every industry out there.

With a strong presence in the Indian eLearning market and a keen eye to the industry demands, Plethora is strategically placed to offer world-class learning to Indian organizations that sometimes lack the awareness of and access to quality learning based on global best standards and practices.