With their e-learning platform Trycle, Arun Chandran and Sujitha Rajagopalan are bridging the talent gap in their home state - Kerala
Trycle made its debut on Instagram in 2019, explaining various topics like art, history, science and technology, in Malayalam. (Supplied)
It was the summer of the second wave of the pandemic when 23-year-old, Thrissur-based Shefeena ES hoped for serendipity to visit her and turn her fortunes, even as the world outside seemed to present a bleak picture. After all, she was a promising graduate with a degree in MCA from Vidya Academy of Science and Technology, waiting for the ‘corporate call’ among lakhs of other fresh graduates.
Yet, it was only three months later, in July 2021, when Shefeena found a ray of hope. “My friends and I had appeared for many placement tests conducted by some of the leading IT companies, but none of it came through. We were really worried. Colleges don’t prepare us for interviews, resume writing and basic interpersonal skills,” says Shefeena.
It is to change this narrative of scores of first-time job seekers that Bengaluru-based Arun Chandran set up Trycle, an e-learning platform, along with Sujitha Rajagopalan, in 2020.
Sujitha Rajagopalan, Arun Chandran, founders of Trycle. (Supplied)
“I am from a remote place called Irulum in Kerala. But thankfully, I always had access to the right books and the outside world from my childhood days, unlike many others living in far-flung places of India. One of my earliest realisations was that right content and accessibility to right content is most important,” says Chandran.
During his early days in 2005, in Bengaluru, he realised that the talent pool in tier 2 and 3 cities didn’t have the means to quality guidance to enter the job market.
It was during her travels for recruitment across the south, in her previous role at a leading investment bank in 2013, when Rajagopalan witnessed a gaping disparity between skills, talent, language, and prospective offers.
Most first-time job aspirants would not make it through the last round of the interview, which gauged them on interpersonal and communication skills, she informs.
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“Colleges never had a plan to prepare fresh graduates for the workplace. Companies were looking for recruits, who could communicate well in English. But language was a barrier and I was addressing it from the operational point of view,” she shares.
Aware that there is no better herald of change than a unified force, the duo formed a fruitful collaboration, one that is equipped with Chandran’s technical know-how and Rajagopalan’s operational expertise.
While the initial plan was to set up a physical school, the challenges were one too many — hiring teachers, sourcing logistics, and making it economically viable.
They say, rethinking is not just a skill set, but also a mindset. And it is this mindset that made Arun realise that he had to bridge this talent gap through technology.
“One cannot compromise on quality and accessibility when it comes to education; they are the pillars. Often, one of these two suffer, but technology is the tool to solve this. This is the purpose of Trycle,” he informs.
Putting its faith in social media outreach, Trycle made its debut on Instagram in 2019, explaining various topics like art, history, science and technology, in Malayalam.
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It helped students ditch the Thesaurus. After garnering a following of 60,000, and catering to the demand for accessibility to topics that weren’t otherwise easily available, it was time for Trycle to graduate into an e-learning platform in 2020, which offered the Malayalam-speaking population across the world to learn different software technologies in Malayalam.
“With quality and accessibility at the vision’s vanguard, our courses were created by professionals with multiple years of industrial expertise. Since both of us are from Kerala and we knew people who could teach in Malayalam, we started teaching tech content like Machine Learning, IOT, Android Application Development etc.,” notes Chandran.
At the core of it all, the intent was to help a fresh graduate transition into the space of employee-citizen, suggests Rajagopalan.
With 18-25-year olds as the target group, the duo initiated a skill plan to help students find the right direction, revamp their resumes and prepare for interviews. Next, they designed a curriculum.
“Today, for a programming student from Kerala who thinks he/she has the skill, and is looking for a job, we are available. We can’t guarantee a job, but at least we can guarantee an interview,” adds Rajagopalan.
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And yet, with 26 courses available on their website, one of their biggest challenges was ensuring students completed the process. With Trycle not guaranteeing jobs, the duo found that the outcome of the course was frequently not in favour of the students.
Stepping up to address this concern, Trycle started a trial run of job placements.
“We got about 50 students to be placed and the total salary offered was around `2 crore (annual revenue). There are tons of training institutes across the country and yet there is a gap. In 2021, 53% of jobs were closed without getting the right candidate; there is a clear skill gap. You cannot survive without quality content and accessibility. So, we did a six-months trial run and started tying up with companies,” elaborates Chandran.
Shefeena is one of the beneficiaries of this campaign.
“My friend Aathira works for Trycle and she suggested I check out their offerings. I signed up for five programming languages of my interest. Arun taught me to clean up my resume and helped me prepare for the interview. Soon after, I was placed with Cloud Vandana,” shares Shefeena.
The duo kickstarted a special women’s empowerment programme, Inniyum Munnoto, in mid 2021.
“There was a lot of rage due to a rise in domestic abuse and dowry deaths. We reached out to corporates with a plan to offer jobs to women who had never worked. And also for those who were returning to the workforce. We ran the programme for three months. The initial course was for anyone and not just those with programming or engineering background. If someone had helped small businesses, they signed up for our digital marketing courses,” Rajagopalan adds.
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To give momentum to this programme, Trycle collaborated with Pink Lungi — a Kerala-based platform for Malayalis.
The duo has also been drawing attention to the inevitability of soft-skills training. Trycle has covered over 100 webinars, and additionally, Rajagopalan has created a course to this end.
With quality as the driving force of its vision, Trycle is also seeing a few many students returning to sign up for more courses.
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“Most of our students come back because the courses are simplified for them, and so they can retain information. Quality is what users have been assured by us. Having upskilling centres, making it mandatory in colleges during internships, and even when companies are going to hire, setting the right expectations from the company are all important factors in bridging the gap. When skills and opportunities are matched, the retention rate is better, and employees are happy, too,” she recommends.
And it is perhaps this relentless pursuit with which change-whisperers like Chandran and Rajagopalan are reupholstering the fabric of India’s loosely knit socio-linguistic framework.
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