The dream of Ourea was willed into life by three entrepreneurs who wished to see the world transform through innovation in the hands of young, skilled individuals. The journey began in 2017 when Anooja Bashir, a civil engineer, returned home from Dubai to pursue her post-graduation. Following a long stint in the corporate world, she was struck by how the current education system is failing graduates.
“I was sure that the current system of education would not make our graduates employable. Students passing out of our colleges are not proactive and may not acquire any of the necessary skill sets,” she says. Keeping this is in mind and with hope to improve the skill sets of candidates, the organisation was first set up as an HR venture. But in 2019, Anooja set up an IT sector within Ourea with the help of Vinod Chacko and Naman Modi, her partners.
The team aimed to extend humanitarian support and social entrepreneurship through various campaigns. With each programme, they trained graduates in workplace and corporate skills that were being missed out in the training they received in educational institutions. All the verticals that form a part of Ourea work toward mentoring fresh interns and transforming them into skilled employees later. Their office which is located in Kakkanad also manages a cloud hosting company called FlexiCloud.
Anooja explains, “This model really worked when we partnered with various corporate entities. Over time, it was successfully implemented in a few other companies as well. Our team believed that talent can be transformed into skills. We function with the motto that every problem is a solution to innovation with the right strategic application.”
The team introduced their simple algorithm which combined all of the skill sets that employers look for in the current scenario. Named LIKES - Learning Innovative Key Employment Skill, it takes into account all the hardships faced by graduates and helps them identify the main strengths they have in whichever industry they work in. She says, “We find the best in you, enhance it, fine tune it and present it in the best possible way. LIKES is a place that supports fresh graduates to become job oriented.”
When the Coronavirus pandemic hit, the team brushed up on their original HR skills and began employing people from various industries who had recently lost their jobs. Their model was aimed at showing other companies that talent could be nothing but a benefit, through a number of workshops and training sessions. Recently, Anooja was chosen to be a part of Kerala’s largest e-summit, hosted by Kerala Startup Mission, to speak about this very experiment among other great entrepreneurs from the state.