Youth4work.com is a talent assessment platform with 2 million users and a plethora of information and skill development tools at their disposal. It’s CEO, Rachit Jain tells SPO India of his company’s take on skilling and its aim to help the right talent get the right opportunity –
Could you tell us more about your company and your initiatives in the area of skilling?
Youth4work is a Youth centric platform where assessment is a tool that helps identify the talent that each individual pursues; how talented they are amongst the others who have a similar talent.
There are basically 3 aspects on our product –
Prepare/Assess yourself > Improve yourself > Showcase your self
• Prepare/assess – Here we actually help the youth to prepare for exams (http://www.prep.youth4work.com/) & assess their own skills (http://www.youth4work.com/onlinetalenttest)
• Improve – here based on their skills, rank and pursuit we suggest the right online course to people (www.ed.Youth4work.com)
• Showcase – The Tested and Ranked profiles are showcased. They can be searched by anyone – http://www.youth4work.com/talent.
Apart from skill tests which are free for all, we monetize on freemium models on Prep, Online courses & connecting youth to companies.
Youth4work’s USP is wholly based on the advanced technology. We have always been stood up when it comes to helping our users, like going multilingual, or a tie-up with AICTE to facilitate jobs and internships. We are mainly a Tech company with Product and tech being the core part of our DNA and serving the users to the best of what we can as the blood that flows in our veins.
We have built and captured each and every interaction with our users using advance machine learning algorithms got deep insights on every user for their skills, interests and profiles. We even have a advance AI that helps us compare millions and come out with relevant details vs others and learn from other users to able to enhance data that we show to the other users.
What is your take on skilling in India? How far is skill gap a challenge in the country?
Youth4work relies in its offerings. We are the only platform that starts the support right from the finding of college/ institute to getting the dream job. Youth4work.com is a ‘People Platform’ which empowers youth to assess themselves, improve their talents and showcase themselves for their talents and professional achievement. We call what we are building ‘Human Tech’ which gathers intelligence and deep insights on each and every member of Youth4work.
Youth4work is a platform which helps individuals to assess their innate abilities, improve their skills and then connect them to right employers. We are concentrating on skillset whereas all the competitors are working on numbers. This approach has also impacted the engagement of Tier I and Tier II candidates who are not able to cope up with current skills required in the market. We have observed that many candidates are also actively taking up our online courses made available through our partners in order to add feathers to their professional profile.
Which are your flagship skilling initiatives?
An initiative by ‘Youth4Work’ is taken in providing unique opportunities in the need of the hour — practice modules for 600+ skill job roles to prepare for NSDC’s final certification exams, which help youth to understand the job requirements in a unique way. Over 20000 youth from nearly 20 top skilling institutes across the country have tried and tested themselves on these practice tests to improve their candidature for certification. This talent pool automatically gets matched with industry requirements of skilled manpower. We have signed a MoU with AICTE to help the engineering students to get employability.
NSDC’s training partner, Brilliant Computer Institute along with its premium partner ‘Youth4Work’, unitedly with partner companies like Swarn Management had become a part of Rojgar Mela, organized by Brilliant Computer Institute, in Dibiyapur, Auraiya near UP to provide employability.
How do you try to meet the skill gap that still persists today with your initiatives?
I started with an aim to help the right talent get the right opportunity. And I never got deviated from my mission in spite of the challenges. Our Mission Statement is – Be the Human Technology that proactively assists people in their professional understanding & journey in a transparent & intelligent way, Inspire Creativity and Passion & Optimism in Individuals and Help organizations tap the true potential inside youth in India, with the effective talent matching.
What is your perception about Government of India’s emphasis on skilling? Has it changed post the launch of programmes like Skill India?
Skills and knowledge are the driving forces of economic growth and social development of any country. Since the government introduced National Skill Development Corporation (NSDC) in India to support livelihood opportunities, many private as well as independent enterprises have emerged to partner with it with an objective of encouraging skill development for youth by providing monetary rewards for successful completion of approved training programs.
What is your 5-year vision for the company?
We feel the opportunity and the need is bigger than only jobs. The need is to build people intelligence, which personalises information and guides people to connect and collaborate. That is important as about 300 million people will enter India’s workforce in next few years. We would like to be the de facto platform where every youth, who is connected to the Internet, comes on board with us to improve oneself and become part of a talent community.
