India has more than 400 million people in the unorganised and blue-collar segment. Traditionally, this section of workers had no access to classrooms, significantly limiting their skilling options and on-the-job productivity. With the emergence of digital blue collar workers like app-based cab drivers, food delivery workers, e-commerce delivery staff etc, the smartphone and internet economy is slowly organising this unorganised sector. But, training to improve productivity of this massive influx of into the formal economy is lacking. In India alone, 78 per cent of the workforce is blue collar and only 22 per cent is white collar. Yet, nearly all e-learning platforms are targeted towards white collar workforce alone.
Solution
Utter addresses this challenge through its AI-based multilingual mobile-education platform, which uses a combination of chatbots and live tutors to offer byte-sized micro-learning content (each module being <10 minutes) for workplace skills and English.
Utter empowers the blue-collar workforce by providing on-demand skill learning in more than 109 local languages through smartphones at a very low cost of INR 30 per month.
Utter’s success story lies in the wide appeal of its learning platform to both institutional and retail learners. Its content is available at 1/5th of the cost and 1/3rd the price of traditional online education platforms. Courses can be published on the platform in less than 30 days and content upgrades/changes can be done within 48 hours allowing companies to save tremendous time, money and efforts in online training.
Impact
In less than six months, Utter has successfully clocked 500,000 institutional (B2B) and 100,000 retail (B2C) learners and is inching towards profitable unit economics. Utter’s impact is already seen in the average time users spend on the app – a typical institutional learner spends between 3-½ to 4 hours on the app every month and an active retail learner spends an average 55-60 minutes – both above industry standards.
Utter is focusing on global growth through B2B reseller partnerships with training providers and telecom operators. In the next three years, it is aiming to target 1 million paid learners globally. In addition, Utter is now building AI and Machine Learning capabilities from its bank of over 20 million chatbot interactions on the platform so far.
