Abhishek Patil, Founder & CEO of Zcientia Labs (www.skillatwill.com) is a Mechanical Engineer and holds a Masters Degree in Innovation Management and Entrepreneurship from Manchester Business School, UK. He has worked in the sales, marketing, operations and business development functions at Daimler (Mercedes Benz), India and Mitsubishi Fuso, Japan.
Let’s get to know the journey of why Abhishek left his high paying job in Tokyo to come and solve the problem of unemployability in India.
Before we start with your journey of solving unemployability, we would like you to explain “What does employable or unemployable mean”?
That’s a good question, let’s go by the dictionary meaning, employable means: “having the skills and qualifications that will make somebody want to employ you” & employability means “the extent to which somebody has the skills, knowledge, attitude, etc. that makes them suitable for paid work“.
So, if individuals do not have the necessary skills, knowledge and qualities that make them suitable for paid work, they are said to be unemployable.
Why do you think students remain unemployable even after 3-4 years of full-time college education?
In today’s world, would people need bike riding skills or horse riding skills for daily commute? Of course bike riding skills, right? Unless horse riding is your passion.
The same way, graduates, to be employable, need the skills to work with the new technologies, systems, processes that are required in the market. But in reality, most graduates don’t even know what is happening in the outside world, let alone having the skills to work in emerging tech domains. If you see the 8th edition of India Skills Report (ISR), only 45.9% of graduates today are employable, rest are unemployable.
How are you solving the problem of unemployability in India?
Through www.skillatwill.com, we provide every individual the access to various courses in the emerging technologies such as Web & App Development, Cloud Computing, Cybersecurity, AI-ML, Data science, Digital Marketing and many more.
Learners can search, compare and enroll in these courses based on their preferences. They can even take a free demo class before enrolling.
By learning the new-age, job oriented skills through our platform, the students become employable and get access to the best jobs in the market.
Is Skill At Will like LinkedIn learning or Udemy, if not, how is it different?
LinkedIn learning and Udemy provide recorded classes. Skill At Will provides class-room based and online-live courses. Our verified training partners provide live training to ensure an interactive and enriching learning experience for the students. Most students love it because they have the push or the motivation to be there for the class on time, a social environment to learn and they can get their doubts cleared in real-time.
What were you doing before starting Skill At Will?
I was working in the area of remanufacturing business development for Mitsubishi Fuso, Japan. I was also involved in the development and implementation of ERP systems for business optimisation. I was fortunate to have got the opportunity to work on emerging technology projects such as Big Data, Business Intelligence, Electric Trucks, Telematics, 3D printing, etc.
Why did you come back to India and start skillatwill.com?
The plan was always to come back and contribute here. From my experience and exposure, I knew that unemployability will be a massive problem in India. Moreover, students here do not have the awareness and access to quality training that is affordable. So I decided to create a platform where students of all classes and financial backgrounds could enroll in emerging tech courses that are affordable which can ultimately get them a job.
So how’s your Skill At Will platform doing now?
We are doing alright, we have 45+ training partners offering 300+ courses on our platform. We also have 10,000+ registered users/subscribers on our platform. However, we still have a long way to go to reach potential learners who would benefit from our services.
How can a student who doesn’t know what to do with his/her life benefit from your platform?
Great question. Students who are confused usually follow someone blindly i.e., that’s the herd mentality. To enable students to make their own decision based on their interest, we have developed a career prediction quiz which recommends possible tech domains and roles suitable for them.They can take the quiz at https://www.skillatwill.com/career-prediction-quiz.
After taking the quiz, they can take a free demo class on the recommended domain and explore it. If they like it, they can enroll, get trained, and get a job.
Students who are ready to take up any job can build their profile on our platform and can apply to the latest job openings from top MNCs and Startups that are posted on our website.
Visit www.skillatwill.com/explore to check out the latest job postings!