Arthan- Connecting millions to economic opportunities

“30% of India’s youth are neither employed nor in education or training.” We propose equipping rural school children with skills of the future and enabling the rural youth to achieve their potential and live better lives by creating awareness and connecting them to local economic opportunities.

India will have the world’s largest youth (15-34 year olds) population of 479 million by 2021. While 69% (833 million) of India's population is rural, income-earning opportunities for rural youth is limited because skills, jobs, locations do not always match. This skill mismatch makes youth unemployable. India faces a paradoxical situation. On one hand, youth are jobless and on the other, industry suffers from unavailability of skilled workers. Progress toward poverty alleviation requires a focus on economic growth in rural areas. We address the unemployment challenge by working with children through the entire spectrum of school education till gainful livelihood. 

Our career preparedness curriculum for government schools will directly impact children’s understanding of the future of work with the goal of improving their prospects for employment and self-employment. After school, we will support rural youth in developing the foundation skills necessary for employment by connecting them to training institutes imparting these soft/hard skills. Once rural youth are skilled, we will connect them to local job opportunities through our employment platform and provide mentorship once employed. Equipped with career preparedness, foundation skills, access to the employment platform and mentorship, rural youth will be prepared for the workforce of the future. 

Our goal is to link rural youth from low income background to sustained employment. Outputs are: 1) Deploying career preparedness programme through 10,000 schools, 2 million youth by 2022; 2) Enable employability skills training for 1 million youth by 2022; 3) Enable 3.3 million youth in accessing employment opportunities by 2022;

Key outcomes: 1) Youth make better career choices, choosing to stay in school;  2) Youth have the right skills to cater to the market needs; 3) Youth directly access employment opportunities; 4) socio-economic benefits to communities as young people achieve better incomes;

- Student assessment : career aspirations, income expectations and personal ambitions.

- Teacher assessment : student participation in discussing career aspirations, understanding of career trajectory, influence of career planning on academic - Rural youth have clear sight of their career aspirations

Test/ examinations to be built-in to the curriculum to gauge levels of skill development - Rural youth have the right skills for market needs

Youth: 1) Success rate of securing jobs 2) No. of users accessing information on education/skills development

Employers: 1) Track employee skills, influence on business growth. 2) Track the income scales to measure financial progression - Rural youth can directly access employment opportunities.

Our unique position is supporting children from the time they are in school till the time they are ready to enter the workforce. Our blended approach connects rural youth to employment opportunities and prepare them for their respective career choices by assessing their aptitude, skills and provide mentorship post placement. Arthan will employ a state of the art, multi-lingual employment platform/mobile app, delivered through superior machine intelligence specifically designed for rural youth to navigate the world of work.

Our collaborative approach to delivery will enables us to maximize resources, achieve scale and create a comprehensive ecosystem for systemic change. 

Labour markets are demand driven, we want to reframe the way labour markets work by applying the lenses of empathy from the job seekers perspective. Rural youth lack job search abilities. They spend significant time, effort in travelling to find work or to access information. They need mentors/counsellor’s and a community support system to help them navigate the world of work. Our unique model of preparing children for the future of work and supporting youth in accessing economic opportunities comes from the perspective of using technology as an enabler and putting our users at the core of learning.  

Education: Our career preparedness programme will be delivered within the government schools system through a blended learning methodology, where we will train the school teachers to deliver the programme.

Labour: The employment platform/mobile application will be accessible to every youth to find jobs, explore career options, information about college, skill development institutes, access free assessments, career counselling and learn about various state specific government schemes and government jobs.

We have a hybrid structure, a for-profit arm linking rural youth to employment opportunities and a non-profit arm implementing career preparedness programme for rural school children. 

For profit arm: We have generated a revenue of USD 11,538, raised pre seed equity investment for the private arm.

Financial Strategy: Our aim is to raise seed investment of USD 350,000 for the private arm and USD 50,000 for the charity arm.

The funds raised would be used for hiring key staff members, career planning curriculum development and digitalisation, product development [employment platform and mobile app], research, marketing and sales.

Research: Conduct industry specific research to map out activities where employers are active to identify what differentiates high-performers form the rest; understand what are the core employability skills employers expect for the entry level jobs, use the findings to build the employability curriculum.

Mentorship: Technology mentors to guide us on product development front-employment platform, mobile applications, digitalisation of employability curriculum.

Internet penetration: 55% of India’s rural population will have access to internet by 2025, but youth is not digitally literate. A digital literacy curriculum will be needed to ensure that youth use our product and services.

https://www.facebook.com/ArthanCareers/

https://www.linkedin.com/company-beta/13283526/

https://twitter.com/ArthanCareers

We believe in the power of human-centred technology and need a community like SOLVE to validate our assumptions, help us in designing & conducting rigorous research activities informing product development, developing a market-linked employability curriculum, helping build our technology capabilities and introducing us to people/organisations aligned with our mission of supporting millions of youth from low income background. We want to re-frame the recruitment industry by looking at it from supply perspective and supporting them long term ensuring upward mobility and placement in target industries, increasing the earning USD 3/day to USD 16/day.

Curriculum partner: Edulever 

Implementation Partner: Tech Mahindra Foundation

Media Partner: BKP Media Group  

Saral Rozgar, Aasaanjobs, Babajobs, Idreamcareers and Mindler