India Is Upskilling While Commuting: Harappa Shares 2021 Online Learning Insights

Harappa, a homegrown edtech startup and online institution for behavioural skilling today shared annual online learning insights from its community of  400k+ learners. These insights capture skilling need gaps, priorities, learner behaviours and types, across career cusps.  

In 2020, online learning became the only avenue of upskilling and reskilling, but in 2021, as workplaces evolved into remote and hybrid setups, so did the skill requirements of professional learners. Young learners (25-35 Y/O) shared that the biggest upskilling challenge they aspired to overcome in 2021 was acing interview prep.  Mid-level and senior learners (36+ Y/O) found adapting to new workplaces (remote/hybrid), leadership and presentation skills to be their top three upskilling priorities. One of the biggest roadblocks encountered across learners was not knowing where to start their learning journey.

Harappa also unlocked a 1.2x year-on-year increase on its average weekly learning time per user—learners spent 60 minutes per week upskilling and reskilling online in 2021, as compared to 27 minutes in 2020. What’s more, in breaking down their long-term learning objectives, young learners shared that they look for online courses that can help them decode their ladder to success and to make themselves stand out in the sea of talent that exists in India. Mid and senior-level learners, on the other hand, leveraged online learning to break the stagnancy of their career growth graphs.

Elaborating on the insights, Shreyasi Singh, Founder & CEO, Harappa shared, “Learning is most powerful, when it's continuous and sustained (truly lifelong!), and the fact that our learners often come back beyond completion is a testament to what our teams have been able to do to create learning experiences that genuinely make users into learners!”

Harappa also uncovered that across the diaspora of learners, a self-paced learning model was preferred to that of classroom setups. In accordance with their learning pace and habit, Harappa classified its learners into Bingers, Munchers and Snackers. Bingers are learners who complete 100 per cent of their course in a week, they are most likely to be in mid to senior career management roles.  Munchers complete 33 per cent to  36 per cent of the course in a week, they are most likely to have early to mid-career management roles. Snackers complete 21 per cent to 25 per cent of the course in a week. 

Harappa witnessed the following peak learning hours at 2021: 8 am to 10 am and 5 pm to 7 pm, which incidentally is also peak commute hours. Peak learning days for online learners as showcased by Harappa’s learner data are Fridays and Mondays. 

Harappa has been successfully championing the adoption of Thrive Skills, an essential set of cognitive, social, and behavioural skills that enable professionals to continuously succeed, at every stage of their career.