GMAC Aims To Bring Together Employer, Certified Skilled Workforce
Elaborate on the inception and journey of ‘Get Me A Course’ and the need for such a platform?
Most of our graduates are stuck learning by rote from decades-old curricula that doesn’t help them gain the critical skills the new economy needs. Over 80% of India’s engineers are unemployable, as per a recent report from industry body NASSCOM. Even after landing a coveted job, the spectre of not having the right skills to build a satisfying and profitable career path haunts professionals. In order to stay current in their respective industries, professionals are expected to constantly acquire new knowledge and to keep upskilling.
Get Me A Course was founded with the aim to help professionals succeed in this extremely volatile environment. We are a one-stop solution for lifelong learning and development needs. We bring learners and learning content providers on to a single web-based platform with a separate, sharp focus on each segment’s requirements. We specialize in recommending the most relevant courses and jobs to learners and connect learners to qualified and experienced mentors.
Also, In the ‘one-click’ economy where flights, hotels, groceries, loans, and medicines are available where you are in a jiffy, looking for the right course still involves hours of nightmarish searches online, reading hundreds of reviews and blogs still, having to take a chance! For learners Get Me A Course brings this one-click efficiency to finding the right course. For trainers, Get Me A Course solves the ‘Discovery Problem’: where top trainers struggle to make themselves visible and reach students. Get Me A Course removes the chance factor from learning.
What kind of acceptance or interest have you seen till now?
We have seen that everyone has an inherent hunger for learning – the sense of accomplishment that one gets on learning something new, is like none other!
We have learners of ages ranging from 18 to 65+ from a whopping 172 countries logging into Get Me A Course, using 1800+ keywords - the data we’re getting about learner behaviour is just mind-boggling. The top 5 countries logging in are the US, India, Canada, Iran and the UK.
We’ve derived startling insights that runs contrary to the ‘trends’ that people tout about data science or AI/ML being ‘hot’ topics for learners. For instance, our data shows that Networking, Java, Medicine, Health and Fitness, Cyber Security, Finance Management, Architecture, Web Development are the top searches currently. These are key insights that trainers and course creators should be aware of!
With a customer retention rate of 24%, we have seen over 48,000 courses being discovered from our platform. Being an affiliate of all major course providers from Udemy, Coursera, Pluralsight and many others, we have mover 500 independent trainers who are using our platform for their daily course advertisements and student acquisitions. The best part is that this has all happened in less than 8 months!
What are the services that you offer? What are its key differentiators?
We are the world’s largest aggregator of courses. We understand users’ backgrounds - their career aspirations, aptitudes and current skill levels - and provide them with useful information on the skills they can acquire to fill vacancies in the industry.
We curate courses from various learning platforms - you get to choose the course that fits your needs the best. We want both learners as well as training providers to see the infinite value and possibilities that Get Me A Course offers. We help trainers by solving the all-important “Discovery Problem”: we connect trainers to interested students from anywhere in the world who want to gain those relevant skills. The model is very similar to travel aggregation sites and apps that list all the different airlines, hotels and travel service providers: Get Me A Course is bringing the same efficiency to education and skilling!
This month we have also launched a new product “Get Me A Course Elite” for global universities and institutions. Based on requests from multiple institutions we have provided them with access to this product where they are helping their students be skill ready and at the same time reconnecting their alumni. The future of work is not about degrees. This is the most advanced technology platform that keeps your students and alumni connected to you!
Every startup comes across different kind of challenges, what were the challenges that you faced and how did you overcome them?
Building our AI-based smart recommendation engine that helps learners identify their current standing with respect to skills and pay scales, and identify the set of skills needed to climb the next rung on the ladder, has been THE biggest challenge that we have faced in our journey so far.
It was a herculean effort to sift through data and map to disparate APIs to get information on learners, courses, trainers, career levels and trends globally over the course of several months. We have built several proprietary algorithms to derive insights into the industry.
How are you planning to expand Get Me A Course going forward? What new products, offerings, and new markets are you planning to target?
We have recently launched Smart Career Path Recommendation Engine that helps individuals answer the crucial question: ‘Where do you see yourself in five years?’ by directing them to a custom-built solution for learning and career growth need. The proprietary Smart Career Path Recommendation Engine goes one step beyond addressing the reskilling needs of individuals. It is an AI-driven Career Path Recommendation Engine that helps individuals identify their current standing with respect to skills and pay scales. It then outlines the succeeding levels in the career ladder they can upgrade to, along with the expected pay range and skill sets required along the given trajectory. This is supplemented by suggestions of top courses for the learner’s particular skill-building needs.
In times such as the current one where fewer jobs are being created, and many organizations are reducing their workforces owing to the downward trend in the world economy, the proprietary Smart Career Path Recommendation Engine is a reprieve to professionals. The recommendation engine’s personalised paths and recommendations help individuals— whether they are job-seekers or senior professionals—obtain the necessary skills to be market-ready. The recommendation engine caters to 800+ job titles, identifies 750+ skills and covers a wide range of professions from technology to marketing to management, and includes niche professions such as patent law, child psychiatry, and aerial photography.
Can you share some success story or how have you impacted till now?
On a day to day basis, we are touching many lives and making an impact. For instance, for users from 15-55+ years of age we help them to easily find what they want to learn, for working professionals we guide them on what jobs they can apply before they even sign up for a course. For many, we help them find the ideal mentor and move forward. Our career recommendation and learning engine has guided thousands on what career options they have and how they can achieve it by adding missing skills - easily and absolutely free!
For thousands of trainers, we are helping them reach global students that they never expected. We have hundreds of success stories from trainers on why they used our product AdSmart and how it has made their life easy with customer growth.
We are making a deep impact with universities - We asked them the below questions and helped them overcome with our product.
Please suggest us about your initial investment?
Being a bootstrapped company, our initial MVP was launched in just three months. We were able to meet series of mentors and advisors who have always made us navigate through both product and company growth. Being a very agile team of just four members we were able to touch initial 10,000 users in just less than three months' time organically. These and a few other very promising business success matrix helped us interact with Mr. Henning Wolf (a seasoned professional, professor and entrepreneur who had been on BMW global board for 25+ years), who found it fantastic and investable. With our seed capital from Mr. Wolf, we had the extra muscle to further scale our product and focus on scaling the business.
What figures will you suggest for collective wealth generation with Get Me A Course till now?
Get Me A Course has, to date, helped more than 100,000 users launch or grow their careers via upskilling and reskilling. The best part has been that we help global users (from over 190 countries) and that too for FREE! We strongly believe that everyone globally needs to be skill ready and hence we are putting all efforts required to equip the global users, training providers, universities and colleges with our product to overcome this. We help global trainers growth hack their users through our product “AdSmart” and on average, the listed trainer of Get Me A Course advertises for USD 1450 per month and earns over USD 8000. This gives you an idea of the immense wealth that the platform is helping generate.
What goals have you decided for this year and the coming 3-5 years?
Our vision is to be a pathbreaking Data and Technology-driven aggregator connecting the lifetime needs of an individual for learning, employment, and mentorship. We are working towards bringing more value to the ecosystem by organizing it and at the same time working deep in the AI-built recommendation engine. Our plans include further enhancements to our product to inspire, engage, and delight our users by directing them to finely tailored solutions for every learning and career growth need. At the same time, we are on a mission to create a layer in the ecosystem between the employers and training/degrees that actually verifies and certifies the skills of every individual, consider a LinkedIn of verified skills with millions of users accessible globally.
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