Online courses are an Indian professional's new best friend. Ever since upskilling at the workplace went from being a workshop or two to an actual necessity, online courses have become quite the rage. Indians have enthusiastically taken to these courses as it offered access to the kind of knowledge that was not available locally. A recent study done by Google and KPMG titled ‘Online Education in India: 2021 underlines the trend and forecasts the sector will 'grow eight times over the next four years, to eventually become a $1.96 billion industry in the country by 2021.'
Tribr, an online courses aggregator launched in January this year, hopes to cater to the growing number of students and professionals looking to up-skill themselves. What sets it apart from other similar platforms, co-founder and CEO Krishna Kumar says, is that it 'builds a community of learners', both online and offline. "The completion rate of online courses stands at an abysmal 5 percent as it is self-paced. Students need a strong system to ensure completion. It requires a push, incentives and celebrations. A feeling of belonging can create a sense of urgency to complete the schedule of courses on time. Tribr community celebrates the learning accomplishments thereby creating a social pressure to complete scheduled courses," he says.
Tribr organises meetups every month to share learning, celebrate achievements and act as a source of strength. And unlike many other online platforms, it provides a Tribr Kit which includes an essential handbook, learning only internet dongle and merchandise for students.
The germ of the idea for Tribr came from Kumar's experience as a hiring specialist. The army of graduates without necessary skills remains a huge problem for companies in the lookout for fresh recruits. "It was clear that college environment was unable to train students in new skills. This led me to try using online learning platforms like edx, Coursera, Udacity, Udemy and FutureLearn. I was convinced that the learning is five times better than a traditional college environment as the access to the faculty, experts and masters in the online course platforms and it was the making of a world-class system," he says.
Kumar created a globally distributed team of specialists who are into learning content curation in a tool called Slack and started working with them to create a list of curated courses from 60+ learning platforms, thereby making it easier and economical for the people signed up on the platform. Tribr currently has over 3000 courses on wide-ranging topics. "It includes programs for the digital economy like programming, digital marketing, data analytics, machine learning and courses for creativity, liberal arts, accounting, business management and even filmmaking," says Kumar. It has tied up with universities and colleges to set up Tribr Hubs at campuses. In the first six months of its launch, when the membership was restricted, as many as 100 students have completed courses from this platform.
