Crion Versity

Educated unemployment is a huge concern in India. Unemployment in the youth aged between 20 and 24 increased to 44.49 percent, which was 43.65 percent in the July-September quarter. Similarly, unemployment among the youth aged between 25 and 29 increased to 14.33 percent in the Oct-Dec quarter of 2023, which stood at 13.35 percent in the previous quarter. 83% of the jobless Indians are youth! These statistics are highlighted in the India Employment Report 2024(https://www.ilo.org/wcmsp5/groups/public/---asia/---ro-bangkok/---sro-new_delhi/documents/publication/wcms_921154.pdf) by International Labour Organisation (ILO) and the Institute of Human Development (IHD) and State of Working India Report 2023(https://azimpremjiuniversity.edu.in/publications/2023/report/state-of-working-india-2023-social-identities-and-labour-market-outcomes) by Azim Premji University

Though education levels in India have improved in the last few years, educated youth are still struggling to find jobs. Addressing this problem just with job ready skilling is not necessary as it puts a huge supply on the job sector while demand not matching the requirement. Local economic activity, small businesses and entrepreneurship must be encouraged and accelerated at a very high rate, and the youth have to be motivated, educated and empowered in this direction

There are budding support systems for financial resources through various public and private schemes in place for small businesses once an entrepreneur gets started, but there are no resources to get educated about the aspects of business and entrepreneurship on aspects like customer identification, market positioning, sales, marketing finances, etc.. for an aspiring youth that is widely available across the country. India is a country with highest youth population to leverage, but this high level of unemployment is a huge and immediate concern as the average age rises day by day. This pattern is observed across various parts of the world as well

We would like to impart Grassroots Entrepreneurship and Digital literacy training to the youth across the country to accelerate entrepreneurship and small business activities. We propose to do this at high scale via our own proprietary WhatsApp based Learning Management System (LMS) with features like short videos, multiple choice questions, ChatGPT integrated business planner and selfie based assessments. Our microlearning courses are developed in collaboration with reputed organizations and business individuals and are delivered in vernacular Indian languages like Hindi, Telugu, Tamil, etc.. along with English. Our theory of change is to make Entrepreneurship, small business education and digital literacy education accessible to all youth so that some of them can be successful in creating local businesses generating employment contributing to economic development and reducing burden on the job sector. We believe we can achieve that by conducting business education programs like selling, marketing, opportunity identifying, business processes, funding, incubators, digital tools, AI for all, finance, legal compliances and government schemes available to the unemployed youth in India and diversifying to specialized sector specific programs like food, agriculture, textile, services, etc… and other small business opportunities. Demo of our product can be found in this link -

In India, there is upto 10 million students enrolling into higher education programs every year, and more than 70% of them enroll into arts and commerce streams which are becoming redundant, even termed “worthless degrees” (https://www.deccanherald.com/opinion/in-india-degrees-of-unemployability-1212959.html). Many students in India graduating from STEM and Engineering degrees are also becoming unemployable (https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/why-indian-engineers-unemployable-whats-solutions-harshad-shah-atfqf/). Most youth enroll into these programs just for “college degree status” and to satisfy eligibility criteria for limited amount of government jobs available. Our target customers are primarily these youth in their 20s enrolled in arts, commerce and engineering stream. At a later stage we would like to reach the graduated youth looking for livelihood opportunities and promote our programs

Karthik and Rathees are first generation entrepreneurs from India. Both of them struggled for many years in their initial stages of business. Much of it is because of lack of knowledge and wisdom in terms of right decision making. We also observed that all kinds of business advice doesn’t apply at all times. Since the past 8 years Karthik has studied about startup scenario in India, connected with many startups having incubated his first company with a renowned incubator with 300+ startups in India (IITM Incubation cell). We observed that there is a lot of valuable advice and lessons for technology oriented businesses and startups which could be considered too sophisticated for small businesses and “Me-Too” businesses like starting a restaurant or a fashion boutique or a hair salon, etc… We have observed that there is a lot of scope and need for educating for these business aspirants which could generate good quality livelihoods. 

We had conducted whatsapp based digital literacy and basic data analysis programs to about 10,000 college students across the country. We had observed more than 50% completion rate while traditional online open courses have about 5-10% completion rate. Many of the student gave us high ratings for our WhatsApp based trainings, this is evident from the LinkedIn posts they share upon completion of our micro-courses and sharing of the certificates. They can be found from #crionversity tag search on LinkedIn.

Through MIT Solve, we are looking for support, connections and advice in providing our solutions to markets other than India. We are primarily looking for introductions to potential partners across different regions where our solution can add value. We are also looking for mentorship in adapting our solutions to different cultures and strategies making it more global. In addition to that this would a validation of our work and builds credibility for our work which helps us get recognized more locally. 

We have a novel approach in skilling and certifying learners at a scale and at an efficient unit economics. Our LMS (Learning Management System) built on WhatsApp can stream content directly into the learners’ WhatsApp application in their mobile phones through the WhatsApp Business API. It has features like videos, multiple choice questions, document sharing, etc..

Major Metric of our differentiation is that while other crash courses have 5 to 10% completion rate, we have achieved 50% completion rates. Other benefits are Bite sized learning for engaging current era mobile users, Flexible Learning. Multi language content. No complexity in installation and setup. Trackable Progress and Scoring. Personalized training delivery to each learner and Certify at scale. Daily training content & reminders help in better retention than single time trainings.

We are a certified Meta Business Partner in the WhatsApp Ecosystem, we are using the WhatsApp Business API to manage messages in the front end and building an Microlearning LMS on the server. We are also building Generative AI based content authoring tool which breaks down conventional content like manuals, instructions, etc.. into bite sized content to be delivered as messages in vernacular languages. We plan to integrate, selfie video based assessment as well in the future

We choose WhatsApp because it is an app with more than 50 million users in India itself and growing at the rate of 16.6% every year. Clearly it is a well penetrated platform across the country and the world and creating utilities on top of the platform is bound to give more engagement benefits quickly than creating a separate application and promoting it. Moreover, content over WhatsApp gets shared easily which can be used as channel to reach more audiences

Our theory of change is to make Entrepreneurship, small business education and digital literacy education accessible to all youth so that some of them can be successful in creating local businesses generating employment contributing to economic development

We believe we can achieve that by conducting high scale business education programs like selling, marketing, opportunity identifying, business processes, funding, incubators, digital tools, AI for all, finance and legal compliances curated by top business and management experts and delivered in vernacular languages to the unemployed youth in India and diversifying to specialized sector specific programs like food, agriculture, textile, services, etc… and other small business opportunities

The problem we are targeting and the solution we are working on addresses the Sustainable Development Goal number 8 which is decent work and economic growth. Specifically it focuses on goal 8.3 which focuses on supporting decent job creation, entrepreneurship, creativity and innovation and encourages the formalization and growth of micro, small and medium-sized enterprises.  More specifically we contribute to social impact by Enabling business enthusiasts with easy access know-how and skills required to set up their businesses, Accelerating local economic activity, increasing local jobs and improving good quality livelihood options thereby reducing burden on jobs sector of large companies and governments. Along with that, we also aim to enable more digitally and financially literate youth to navigate livelihood options better. Through our solution using technology, we also enable measuring our results and success through various metrics like completion rates, engagement rates, startups created, surveys, etc… We would like to train 15,000 students with 3 microlearning programs on “Developing a Business Plan”, “Marketing your business to customers” and “Finances management for your business” within a span of 9 months. The programs will be made in 4 languages including English, Hindi, Telugu and Tamil. We are also targeting a goal of at least 150 students of those 15,000 students who take our program end up starting a business like identifying the opportunity and are at least reached an idea stage. We also would like to reach a goal of at least 300 people working on these 150 initiatives generating a path for employment and livelihood

The core technology that powers our solution is app based messaging services that comes under mobile technology. Or solution is currently built on WhatsApp, but it can scale to other messaging platforms like Telegram, Viber, Signal and other apps which are popular in different parts of the world. We are a certified Meta Business Partner in the WhatsApp Ecosystem, we are using the WhatsApp Business API to manage messages in the front end and building an Microlearning LMS on the server. We are also building Generative AI based content authoring tool which breaks down conventional content like manuals, instructions, etc.. into bite sized content to be delivered as messages in vernacular languages. We plan to integrate, selfie video based assessment as well in the future

Full-time staff : 5 employees

Part time staff : 4 employees

We have been working on this solution since 1 year

As an organisation completely operating out of India until now, we focus mainly on gender equality. Our team has 40% female and 60% male. We also offer work from home option which is mainly comfortable for women. We do not follow any discrimination or prioritization in hiring, and go by purely merit based, however developing this principle as a company policy is yet to be done

We operate as a social enterprise with impact as our first goal. We primarily prioritise the learning outcomes of the trainees through our solutions. We have designed a sustainable monetization model to keep our venture sustainable.  We partner with business gurus and reputed organisations for creating content on starting small businesses like, a restaurant, food delivery business, fashion boutique and teach aspects like marketing, finances, etc… Our revenue model is through fees charged for the programs, our programs cost from Rs.150 (USD 2) to Rs.3000 (USD 40) where we also include LIVE sessions from various business experts in different languages on a weekly and monthly basis where students can come and interact. Our aim is to reach a large number of learners through digital channels and partnerships. We plan to promote to various universities across state and national level. At a later stage our vision is to connect the aspiring entrepreneurs to various stakeholders like financial institutions, digital marketers, equipment manufacturers, etc… building an ecosystem, however its at a later stage after we perfect the coaching model.

To fund for the development of content, we have been relying on grants. We plan to depend on this route. To help us in promotions and administration of the programs, we plan to achieve break even through the sale of the certifications priced between Rs.150 (USD 2) to Rs.3000 (USD 40). We had made a sale for about 98 students for a program priced at Rs.3000 (USD 40) during our pilot. We have subsequently signed an MoU (Memorandum of Understanding) with IIT Madras Pravartak Foundation (of IIT Madras - Top technology institute in India) to jointly offer certification training programs in digital skills. Our work has secured a CSR grant from HDFC Bank under Parivartan Smartup scheme (about USD 10,000) and a USD 6000 grant through Startup India Seed Fund Scheme.