Aarav Chhawchharia (Guest): Hi. Thank you for having me here. Great to be here.

Aarav Chhawchharia (Guest): Sure.  Let me tell you a little bit about myself and leading up to this, which led to me kind of shaping this policy.

I was originally born in Mumbai, India, which I lived in for 10 years before moving to Seoul, South Korea. This is where I noticed in a small fishing village actually of Seoul, the capital of South Korea, there was a significant gap for English speaking managers to take care of small businesses and finances which led to me finding professionals that due to Korea as currently a demographic issue, which is very apparent since Korea has a significantly falling birth rate. This led to me connecting the dots between India where there's a huge surplus currently of graduate Indian labourers who are willing to work abroad and are English speaking largely.

This led me to bridge the gap and what just led me to was the policy environment that sustains this. At the moment, India and South Korea have the CEPA, which is the Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement. However, there are significant gaps in this, and there are significant opportunities that I found within these gaps that we can then use to bridge this gap.

That is where I would say the first experience that I had with the international policy specific to economic and labor economics between South Korea and India.

Aarav Chhawchharia (Guest): Sure. There were two big reasons. Firstly, something that's very personal to me is because I lived in Seoul for five years almost, and that was my home where my family and I resided, and it was very close to me that I felt. South Korea's currently experiencing a huge demographic crisis where businesses on a daily basis are facing a shortage of English speaking high skilled workers, whether that be in the food and beverage industry, or more sophisticated industries like ICT, agriculture, Medicare, etc. and this was one of the first things that led me to kind of bridging the gap between India and South Korea specifically, but also economically. There's a huge potential currently to be exploited between these two countries since there's a huge mismatch between India's demand and South Korea's demand and India's supply of labor, which is why I specifically looked at this corridor, which is untapped. Previously, we have had markets like Hong Kong, Singapore, the Gulf and Europe largely between India is quite saturated at the moment and there are already several systems in place, but the India-South Korea corridor still remains highly underdeveloped.

Aarav Chhawchharia (Guest): Sure. Apart from the experience as a whole through this academic journey that I had with not only the embassy but the Indian Chamber of Commerce, I got to learn a lot about how the current economic policy between the two countries, and I learned one of my main findings from this research was putting together the significant supply and demand gap. One thing in particular that I remember is the ICT industry in India produces almost 3.2 times the amount of labour that they actually need whereas South Korea is facing a significant gap of nearly 1 million foreign immigrants required by only 2030, which is projected to increase to 3.5 million in 2040. This was the main driving factor of my research that I found through my academic process.

Additionally, I looked at how Indian immigrants in specific contribute to foreign economies when compared. I benchmarked against Singapore, the UK, the US, etc. and I found that one of the leading factors in this was actually Indian workers. 1% increase in Indian skilled workers correlated statistically significantly with entrepreneurship in the local community and in fact, Indian immigrants generate almost five to 38% higher GDP per capita than national averages across many different countries like the US and Canada in particular.

Aarav Chhawchharia (Guest): Sure. So one thing that I really noticed was that they lack. I spoke with both the universities as you mentioned, and one thing that was, they did have not seen global work environments, and so expectations often going into the job market are unrealistic. This is due to a variety of factors, but primarily breaking it down to two things.

Firstly, it's just exposure to foreign environments through their culture, and secondly, it's the knowledge of global markets, which is not integrated into the Indian education system as much as it is abroad. This ultimately leads to them having a disadvantage in exploring job opportunities abroad which was a significant issue going into this project, given I want to bridge two job markets and lastly, navigating social challenges is also a big issue since South Korea itself is quite a saturated social environment where majority of the population is native to South Korea and very few foreigners are there.

So for an Indian exploring job opportunities abroad, this is important to have cultural education of global markets and global economies, as well as have the basic financial and technological literacy required to work in a foreign country.

Aarav Chhawchharia (Guest): Yes, I'm currently only working on Korea because that was the main corridor that I noticed that had huge opportunity.

I would say one of the biggest skills that is required currently in South Korea in terms of industry would be a technology space, which there's huge already education and job in India for, but South Korea and specific skill that a student will want to develop is cultural and local education.

This could include basic Korean language ability, ability to navigate through Korean technology and Korean apps because there's a significant mismatch between the Indian app and the technological ecosystem as compared to the Korean one and lastly, I would say a more soft skill would be workplace communication as well, Korean norms.

Recent times there's been a huge shift to the Korean kind of culture through the Korean wave. It's known as the Korean wave, and there is getting better slowly as Koreans, as Indian people explore Korean culture through their music, through their food, through their traveling.

But there's still a significant mismatch between them having actual insights into how Korean people function, how the society functions and how workplace culture norms are, as well as their global market understanding and policy understanding.

Aarav Chhawchharia (Guest): Growing up personally in a foreign environment, this was something that was very natural and integrated into my learning ecosystem but I think it's super important as we are working with high schoolers as well, to have career decisions that are made earlier as the global job market becomes more competitive, especially in India where there's a huge surplus of workers and not enough jobs.

Understanding and making career decisions earlier into your academic and general career journey is super important and waiting till university or beyond is too late and cultural immersion like the Korean programmes that I've offered to the Global Perspectives Program that Indoro has built really shifts perspective on safety, identity, and opportunities that are able to offer global recognition.

This could also mean high school students exploring opportunities to work in higher education or to study in South Korea, and they have some great institutions where there's huge scholarship opportunities for Indian high schoolers to go and study, as well as the future labour market needs culturally flexible talent.

Early exposure in high school would build that foundation such that later when they are searching for jobs, it's much easier for them to explore global opportunities but particularly in South Korea is what IndoKorea is focusing.

Aarav Chhawchharia (Guest): I have built the Indoro platform, which includes partnered with the Indians in Korea, for which is around a 20K people non profit that works towards Korean cultural education in South Korea, as well as the Indian student researchers in Korea and Scale Plus. All of these three organisations are kind of a gateway into helping Indian students in particular explore the South Korean market, and these tools are available for free on the website as well as I've built AI powered labour market tool that anybody can do for free of cost.

It's around 10 questions, and this will help you particularly identify a job that is currently available based on your expertise, based on your salary expectations, based on your skills, and your future job, career exploration. This is something that can be accessed through our website and it can provide an instant result to where you can explore your jobs in the future, as well as our partnerships with several organisations.

We have built the AI powered tool is called the Indoro Labor Market Survey, which is a survey that can be done in less than two minutes. It is around 10 questions, and it gives you a clear AI powered solution on which exact job role is available in which company, as well as salary expectations, skill sets required, policy and visa prerequisites that are required for the job. This is easy to access for anybody living in or outside of India.

Aarav Chhawchharia (Guest): The programme that you're referring to is the Global Perspectives Program that I've introduced that allows students who typically would not have the opportunity to explore global markets for their future career, have the opportunity to do so.

Learning about different economies, learning about different cultures and issues is a must for future employment and is particularly increasing in a globalizing world and this is the main tool that I've provided, the main module that I've provided for Indian students to learn. This is not only for cities throughout India, not only the tier one cities, but also the tier two and three cities where students really would not have the opportunity to explore even outside their city or outside India.

But now they do through this programme.

Aarav Chhawchharia (Guest): I think there's two things that I do. One is I think I treat every opportunity as my learning journey.

I started in IndoKorea when I was 15 years old, so around two years ago and this began like many things just as a personal experience I had in Seoul, in Korea and this moved on to an academic research that I pursued with the embassy and the Chamber of Commerce where I constantly learned new things and I think just streamlining my work such that I explore every opportunity as a fun endeavor rather than a task, has been core to how I've continued to build the platform and build the following and I think this is what has continued to empower me through this process and will continue to do so.

Aarav Chhawchharia (Guest): It's a great question because it's something that is really integral, and if somebody had the power, it could really make a big impact. For me, I would say mandating a Global Learning Perspectives Program that I've created specifically that includes learning in areas like technological, financial, and economic, and global market literacy.

This would mean students have the opportunity to explore markets outside of India through different perspectives, whether that be culturally, through economically or socially and this is really beneficial because students can learn about job trends, about different economies, about different skills required to pursue jobs in the future, because this would avoid last minute career panic and misinformation because in India currently millions of students would be able to make more informed decisions simply by understanding how their skills mapped to actual opportunities and this could have huge global and huge GDP and economic benefits to the Indian market as less people are underemployed and unemployed going into their job search and they have more education about how the world functions and how the global markets outside of India also function.

Aarav Chhawchharia (Guest): Currently, as I said, I've conducted several workshops for thousands of students across the country to gain access to the Korean job market, teach them about skills required for it.

My quest for this is now to work more on the policy side because one challenge that I've faced over the past few years working on this is that policy is not able to keep up with the action and ambition of the Indian people to go abroad and to study and to work hard whether that be through entrepreneurial ventures or otherwise.

I think on the policy, and I want to work with governments and advocate to them to create more pathways that allows Indian workers to work in a foreign environment more easily because there are two parts that really social integration, as well as economic opportunity. They both make up the bulk of what happens when you move outside of India.

Working on the policy end is going to be my key focus in the next coming months and coming years as I continue to work on the mission, I do plan to continue. This is kind of key to the mission, which is India-Korea Bridge, but I think there's few other markets that I'm looking into currently, which is Japan, Singapore, and Hong Kong, because these are the four markets around Asia that are experiencing significant demographic challenges and are going to continue experiencing this in the next coming years as birth rates fall to record low levels.

These are the four Asian markets that I'm looking at. Of course, there's going to be future opportunities in Europe and other places, which I'm very excited about. But I think starting with Korea is the main foundation for what my work is going to look like, but as well as other Asian markets, which I think is soon going to expand as people are more willing to relocate to other countries.

Aarav Chhawchharia (Guest): Yes. Thank you for having me here. It was great speaking to you as well, and I hope you have a great evening.