We're forgetting the world belongs to humans too: XBillion Skills Lab CEO

In a Q&A, Samyak Chakrabarty says jobs surviving automation will need skills involving communication, critical thinking, negotiation and storytelling

During a panel discussion at Microsoft's flagship event, the Future Ready, serial entrepreneur and co-founder and chairperson of edtech platform UpGrad, Ronnie Screwvala stressed that while industry is talking about talent crunch, one area that needs more focus is developing soft skills. “The lowest hanging tool for everyone would be that if you're a good communicator and if you're a good storyteller, half of your work is done. I do a class every Saturday and Sunday on just soft skills. There's no point in being a data scientist if you can't get through your interview,” he said. According to a research that Accenture conducted along with the World Economic Forum (WEF), of the top 15 skills that will be important in 2025, just five are tech skills. The rest are skills focused on social influence, active learning, emotional intelligence, complex problem solving. This is where startups like XBillion Skills Lab (XBSL) come in.

Founded in 2017 by Samyak Chakrabarty and Gaurav Jain, XBSL was conceived from the fact that students from category B&C colleges often do not get exposure to soft skills like their counterparts in tier-A colleges or even in big cities. To solve this inequity in exposure and to help students from tier-2 & 3 cities to be the future ready smart generalists XBSL has developed a e-learning and assessment platform focused on delivering India's most effective 21st-century workplace skills training for the masses. In an interview Samyak Chakrabarty, founder and CEO tells Shivani Shinde the need to focus on soft skills, how XBSL is handling this and road ahead. Edited excerpts:

What is XBSL all about and why the need to focus on soft skills?

I would say we exist to keep humans relevant, especially in the midst of a phenomenon that is making the world more virtual and automated. I also believe that we are not into soft skills but teaching 21st century workplace skills. I personally feel that we have a lot of degree holders but few intelligent people. What we're forgetting is that the world belongs to humans too. What makes us human is the ability to take risks, to critically think, and emotional intelligence. This also means that jobs that will survive automation will require skills that need communication, critical thinking, negotiation, storytelling, and so on.

A report by the World Economic Forum (WEF) claims that 50 per cent of all employees will need reskilling by 2025, owing to rapid digitisation and automation. The report also adds that as automation gradually replaces humans for rote tasks, skills such as critical thinking, problem-solving, storytelling and more are the ones that employers believe will grow in importance in the next five years whether one is a coder, accountant, project manager or sales person. The WEF ranks these among the top 10 job skills of the future, and the Government of India's new national education policy lays special emphasis on them as well.

The genesis of our model came from what I saw around me in my earlier stints. For instance, I was running a mentoring programme and also adopted a school in Dharavi in Mumbai, but students would come to me and say they never get good jobs. On the other hand, companies or senior executives would say new job entrants are just plain Joes and they cannot think creatively.

So joining these two dots is our focus. I also realised that only those will survive who can apply innate intelligence in work.

How has XBSL created the curriculum?

We are into 21st century workplace skills (and are) taking it to the masses. We have a three-month course for college students and this online course covers topics that WEF also identifies as 21st Century workplace skills. These are: analytical thinking and innovation, complex problem solving, critical thinking, creativity, leadership and social influence.

Soft skills are the hardest to teach as the curriculum is not standardised or readily available. We researched over 1,000 working professionals from 120-170 companies on how exactly they use these soft skills for creating outcomes at work on a daily basis and then we created scenarios out of it and converted them to animated content. We are a content first company, which has invested time and research in creating content from scratch because this is not a space where content is readily available.

We are, rather, the only company that has 100-plus hours of content on soft skills for the 21st century workplace created for the first time.

Our content is divided into categories like ‘how to’. These are task-oriented modules that could have, for instance, (guidance on) how to talk with a vendor or a client. Another category is ‘must reads’. We also have a ‘master class', where senior executives and people in leadership roles come and speak and share their experience.

I think what differentiates us is also the fact that students are evaluated at the end of the programme. It is not just a certificate course, where at the end of the curriculum you get certified. We use ML and algorithms and our intention is to evaluate each and every student and to see for themselves where they stand. Also we also have our content in regional languages. We are now offering courses in Hindi and English but soon will also be available in Gujarati, Tamil and Marathi.

What is your business model?

The government has modified National Education Policy, and there is special emphasis on these 21st century skills, which means that colleges are being softly mandated to focus on these areas. This also means that this impacts their NAAC accreditation. Problem is that India has a huge number of colleges and the majority do not have the infrastructure or the faculty or the mindset to teach these skills.

We partner with colleges who make these courses mandatory and if it’s a private institute then they can pay. But so far we have not had to work too hard to convince colleges or students to take our courses.

So far, we have partnered with 75 colleges who are partnering with us and these colleges have budgets to cover our course. We have crossed 100,000 learners milestone so far. This number is of significance because though we started in 2017, till 2020 we were in stealth mode. It was only after that we launched commercially.

Is there a need for standardisation of content in this segment?

Soft skill is a very abstract subject; our focus is the intelligence part where one needs to apply mind or their innate intelligence to come out with solutions. At present, Harappa Education is the only other institute that has a similar focus.

In terms of achievements or milestones, where is XSBL?

We crossed 83 per cent course completion, which means 83 per cent learners have completed the course, which is really high. We have 72 per cent placement preference. We are a profit making company unlike several of the other edtech companies. We are growing organically.

What are your future growth plans?

In terms of expansion we want to increase our college tie-ups to 250 in the next 6-7 months and take the learners base to 500,000. We are also looking to expand into overseas markets like Sri Lanka and Vietnam. We are now also tying up with institutes to come with sector specific content. For instance we have tied up with Grant Thornton to come up with a customised course for the finance sector. Similarly, we are working with large IT firms as well. We are doing a small project called 100 smart generalists for 100 smart founders.