EduBridge

The challenge

There are over 180 million unskilled students in India, the majority living in rural areas with dim prospects for acquiring formal sector entry-level employment. Due to the huge gaps in educational quality, India faces critical shortages in skilled labor availability, despite having nearly two million new job seekers per month.

The innovation

Edubridge charges customers a small fee to enter a customized job training and placement program catering to students with high-school diplomas or dropouts from urban or peri-urban training centers. Edubridge guarantees job placement for all of its customers; if no job placement is found, Edubridge will refund the entire entry fee. Current professional sectors include retail and business process outsourcing, and the company plans on expanding to include banking and financial services. The pay-per-use infrastructure system allows Edubridge to generate a 10x capital efficiency compared to its competitors.

The impact

In the context of rural India where the majority of families are smallholder farmers or low-skill tradesman, Edubridge’s students will typically be the first to be formally employed in their family with salaries as high as INR 6,000 per month. Since its founding in 2010, Edubridge has set up 12 training centers across four states and trained over 35,000 students.