BG Staff
E-Learning is becoming one of the most popular trends all over the world and is expanding in Pakistan too. It lets you get a particular certification while using internet without going out to a learning institute.
E-Learning doesn’t just “happen”, It requires careful planning and implementation”. People usually get bored by eLearning because of the language barriers. One of the Pakistani Startup wants to change that and prove, learning is fun and easy. Upskill is Pakistan’s first MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) online platform.
Upskill wants to help students learn practical skills that would change their life and help in their career development. The company is co-founded by Ali Abbas who is the CEO. Abdul Basit holds the position of COO and Zeeshan Jehangir is the CFO/CMO.
Ali and Abdul Basit came across the idea of UpSkill and later they brought in Zeeshan after discussions.
Abdul Basit mentions while being interviewed by a Being Guru:
Our Ambition is to use technology to spread knowledge online with easy, scientifically approved learning principles
Upskill is planned by addressing the drawbacks and some additional features in order to stand out from hundreds of internationally-recognized MOOCs platforms. After doing a couple of surveys from students (15,000) and companies (150), they found out about the learning patterns and also the skills that are lacking in fresh graduates therefore the courses are designed accordingly. They also discovered that the dropout rate at MOOCs was pretty high and as a result, have added a gamification factor which is a unique factor..
The biggest challenge here is, the online courses on international learning sites are not designed keeping Pakistani audience in mind, naturally because they cater for the global audience and we have majority of students from the rural areas who understand Urdu far better than English language.
Upskill will offer all initial courses in Urdu but will also offer the courses in English later to get on to the international market. UpSkill has also collaborated with several leading institutions, training organizations, and universities. It aims to offer short, certification courses online. The website is currently under production as courses are being populated and will be launched soon. It will offer some of the courses including but not limited to, Public Speaking, Freelancing, Certified Hacking Countermeasure Expert and Video Editing.
Upskill is foded to increase the number of courses to 50 and above by end of this year. The initial response to Upskill is very positive and helpful, as the COO Abdul Basit mentions:
The company already has received around 15,000 registrations from the students all over from Pakistan.
UpSkill’s team is expanding rapidly as they have over 300 eXceller ambassadors promoting their platform from their universities all over Pakistan. Upskill is not only getting recognition in Pakistan but also in Oman, Sydney, Malaysia and India.
