Do you have a passion that you want to share with others? No matter how niche, Zoho Corporation's brand new launch, TrainerCentral, will let you share your skills with learners seamlessly. The past two years of lockdown and restrictions have provided an immense boost to the EdTech industry. But it also came with problems like overly complicated systems to conduct classes online and costly subscriptions. TrainerCentral claims that they have found the middle ground.
Setting up an online training business is easier said than done, says Aarthi Elizabeth, the Chief Brand Evangelist at TrainerCentral. "Trainers and creators need the right tools to create content to build a community to generate revenue. Imagine a yoga instructor who wants to set up her online business. So what would she need? A website for her business, a ticketing solution. And of course, a web conferencing platform. There's no doubt that there are tools in the market with these capabilities. But these tools, work in silos and don't interact with each other. She'll be spending most of her time putting them together instead of doing what she really loves — teach yoga," says Aarthi. "And on the other hand, there are these enterprise-level solutions that can be overwhelming for an individual creator like her. These tools, are too complex and have a very steep learning curve. What she really needs is a simple solution that comes with the right set of tools to easily launch and get her business started. And here is where we see TrainerCentral fit perfectly," she adds.
READ ALSO : Learn how to make process automation apps from Zoho, in six days flat. Here's how
How is it different you ask? Aarthi tells us it's a "no-code platform" and extremely easy to use and includes everything from its own video conferencing app to the business tracker and marketing toolkit. "TrainerCentral is a complete no-code platform. It comes with its own web conferencing capability. Once they've created the courses, they can market them with a built-in Marketing Toolkit. Engagement, as we all know is key to building an active community. Trainers can continuously engage with their learners through the learner portal and the breakout rooms," adds Aarthi.
But as you progress, the platform will have options for peer discussions, cohort-based courses, CRM tools and availability in more languages — it's now available in Tamil and English. "Along with that we also let trainers gamify the entire learning experience. So, learners can set goals and compete with each other," says Aarthi.
And you get all this for a little above Rs 1,000 for a year. The courses are not stuck to a curriculum. You can find anything from Sports Journalism to Guitar lessons and effectively anything under the sun. But will it help your career? While Aarthi says you can add it to your CV, the certificate does not come from an accredited body or isn't recognised by one. But then, adding to your skillset is never harmful. To be a trainer on the platform you don't need to pass a test, Aarthi says, the community they want to build should have a strong cohesion of trust. "This is not a portal where we check the qualification of a trainer. It's basically a trust that is built between the teacher and the student," she says.
The TrainerCentral team has also worked with a considerably big organisation — National Health Mission, Tamil Nadu. "When they initially approached us, their requirement was that they had a lot of offline content which they wanted to take online. They were pretty much new to this kind of digitising. They definitely needed some hand-holding with respect to getting accustomed to the technology building at that site. Our team of pre-sales engineers sat with them — we just gave them an initial demo of how this can be done," says Gopal Padmanaban, who was an integral part of the NHM project.
Another major problem that they had was not all of these learners had desktop access, because these are all rural healthcare workers who add access to this content from their mobile phones. "The content needs to be mobile optimised as well. Besides that, they also wanted some of the content in Tamil. We also have the translator integration within our website builder, which means all the content that they can upload can be translated into Tamil, and the learners can also access the localized content from their mobile phones. Earlier, they were sending out these trainers to different tier II and tier III towns to run training programmes. But now they could digitise the entire experience. And all these learners could access the content from their mobile phones itself," says Gopal. "With TrainerCentral, we can deliver both on-demand courses and live training, distribute digital content and monitor every individual’s learning progress from a single console. Learners are finding the courses built on TrainerCentral easy to access. TrainerCentral’s compatibility with mobile browsers gives them the flexibility to complete the coursework even when they are travelling," says Dr B Viduthalai Virumbi, Nodal Officer, PHR-NHM, Tamil Nadu.
