21CC Education: Building a skilled workforce

Sanjay Tiwari, co-founder of 21CC Education

The global coronavirus outbreak has shown a new reality—the need for contactless delivery. It is because of this that the future of jobs and professions in the warehousing and logistics space is growing more than ever before. According to a report by National Skill Development Corporation (NSDC), India will need around 28.4 million supply chain workers in its booming transportation, logistics, warehousing and packaging sector. The need of the hour is a vocationally skilled workforce backed with real-world practical knowledge and a deeper understanding of the industry.

Sanjay Tiwari, co-founder of 21CC Education, has built a platform that addresses the pressing need for upskilling and reskilling staff in the logistics and warehouse industry. It aims to empower 25 million individuals over the next five years by helping them advance their careers and enable businesses to accelerate their profitability with a future-ready workforce.

“21CC Education was founded in January 2019 in response to the changing face of logistics and transportation,” says Tiwari. “The accelerated growth track of the sector was facing disruptions owing to lack of skills. Issues like unorganised logistics and packaging operations as well as a lack of administrative capabilities continue to hold the sector back. As logistics gains increasing significance, entering an era of unprecedented change, we recognised the urgent need for scalable and sustainable skill development solutions that could significantly help re-engineer the Indian logistics sector,” he adds.

21CC Education’s holistic mobile platform is backed by an experienced team across Netherlands and Mumbai. Tiwari says, “Our library offers industry-relevant, engaging and adaptive learning content with more than 110 e-learning modules, over 50 courses and eight interactive games, all focused on logistics and transportation sectors. We have worked with market leaders in the logistics space like DB Schenker, DHL Global Forwarding, DP World, Sarjak Container Lines and the Port of Amsterdam to serve their training and recruitment needs.”

21CC Education’s training content is also finding favour with organisations wanting to create social impact through their CSR initiatives. Aligning their CSR projects with skill building drives, 21CC Education is partnering with several leading organisations to help build capability and employability through its immersive and vernacular content. Additionally, through a recent partnership with the NSDC’s eskillindia.org portal—an online learning hub with more than 800 courses in over 20 sectors—21CC Education will be offering its app-based content to help bridge India’s skill deficit in the logistics and transport sector. “This new association with the NSDC, will help build a skilled talent pool in India, ensuring a robust workforce that has the opportunity to be gainfully employed and be contributively aligned with the nation’s growth agenda,” he adds.

21CC Education raised a seed fund round of € 1.1 million in March 2020 through a Dutch angel investor. The funds have been used to build out the tech platform, increase the content library of 21CC Education and of course, to push into the market. “As we ride on the increasing digital penetration to bring our skill empowerment drive to India’s hinterlands, our team is working extensively to build vernacular content and deepen our technology, while working to create an even stronger network,” says Tiwari. “We consistently upgrade and strengthen our platform through a data-backed and research-led feedback loop to ensure we stay ahead and impactful in our mission to revolutionise skilling in India and help provide a ready talent pool for the logistics and transportation sectors.”