NEW DELHI: Edtech platform Great Learning has released a new TVC that features brand ambassador Virat Kohli meditating on the importance of lifelong learning. The ad film is the third in the series of the multi-film campaign titled Power Ahead – Jo Seekhta Hai Wahi Aage Badhta Hai.
It draws attention towards the significance of taking lessons from one’s victories and defeats alike and showcases how upskilling is a necessary step for students and professionals to power ahead in their careers. The campaign has been conceptualised by Sideways and directed by Cornerstone.
The film opens with Kohli emphasising on the significance of lifelong learning, by sharing his personal journey of learning from victories, defeats, mistakes, right and wrong decisions, critics and fans in order to improve his performance on the field each day and in each match. He further adds that in order to succeed whether it is in cricket or in life, one must always have the willingness to learn new things.
Great Learning CMO Aparna Mahesh said, “Virat’s ethos of pursuing excellence is exactly what we follow at Great Learning while delivering our programs across domains to our learners. We believe his passion to stay at the top of his game will inspire our learners and audience to uplift their careers through mentored learning.”
Sideways co-founder Abhijit Avasthi, “Great Learning's stance of 'Jo seekhta hai, wahi aagey badhta hai' is true of any sphere of life or career. Virat is an embodiment of this philosophy. And the results are there for all to see. We have seen a lot of traction ever since we launched this thought last August. We hope to continue and build on the momentum."
KOLKATA: 2020 has broken all the barriers for edtech players in India, especially the start-ups. With educational institutes being shut for most of the year, a number of new players have gained momentum in their growth journey. Investment by venture capital (VC) in e-learning firms has quadrupled between January and November reaching $1.8 billion.
Practically is one such edtech platform that has come up by leaps and bounds in the last one year to tap into the growing segment. The learning app, which has crossed 330,000 users, raised $4 million in a pre-Series B round this January. With a pan India expansion plan in the works, it aims to surpass one million users within the next year, revealed Practically marketing & brand strategy vice president Mahadev Srivatsa. After reaching this goal, it might take a shot at five million users in the next financial year.
The platform started operations during the pandemic with its b2b solution in the Andhra Pradesh and Telangana market. Under this initial line of business, the product was sampled to schools and institutions across the two southern states. However, the brand later realised the need for a b2c model given the geographical limitations of b2b expansion.
“We are a unique solution. We are working under the b2b2c model,” quipped Srivatsa.
Both the formats are important from a business point of view, added he, but the b2c push will drive Practically going forward. Under the blended model, b2b solution can be accessed by students without any cost as it will be directly provided by their schools. If users want to access content beyond what has been offered by schools, then they will have to pay, he detailed.
For the direct-to-consumer segment, the app works under a subscription model. The app consists of a universal curriculum targeting grades six through 12. Users also get access to free 30 minutes of content every month – a freebie that helps drive engagement, said Srivatsa, terming the app as a one-stop shop as it has live classes, doubt resolution and even assigns mentors to students.
One of the growth accelerators for the brand has been the marketing campaign it did in December last year. It had a two-pronged strategy: ATL was focused on the home market while the digital campaign drove pan-India expansion. The former was targeted to generate more awareness and more conversion. Through the digital campaign, it wanted to test responses from 40 cities identified as potential regions for the future.
ATL activations included a two-week associate sponsorship on Big Boss Telugu alongside a couple of rounds of print ads. Social media messaging had company, features and campaign-led communication amplified throughout the campaign period of December 2020 to February 2021.
The campaign has set a lot of milestones for the app like sparking 3X growth, and improvement in social media metrics. As Practically plans to make inroads into more markets, Srivatsa added that they want to make the platform a household name; the latest advertising blitz gave confidence in that direction.
“At this juncture, considering the learning from the digital campaign and looking at the way business is expanding, the south and western region of India would be our initial foray. You will find us immediately entering this market. We have an eventual entire year plan for further expansion,” he commented. The app may even get into vernacular content and K-5 curriculum in the future.
With so many players eyeing the booming market, experts have already predicted a spurt in mergers and acquisitions, and consolidation in the sector in the next three to four years. Srivatsa said the similarities between telecom at its early growth phase and ed-tech is significant. It is evident that 3,000-4,000 players will not be able to survive, with media spend being the biggest differentiator. There are certain players who are dominating media spend, brands that have been here for close to a decade and aggressively expanded in the last few years. In this space of cut-throat competition, investment in branding is critical for ed-tech players. It's necessary to communicate the USP of the platform and what it is as a brand, he explained.
KOLKATA: Edtech platform UpGrad is all set to add yet another milestone to its credit by impacting additional one million plus professionals in the workforce through its b2b offering, UpGrad for Business.
Realising the importance of reskilling and the pace of digital transformation accelerated by Covid2019, companies across various sectors such as PSUs (Power Grid Corporation of India), ITeS (Hewlett Packard Enterprise), manufacturing (Welspun Group), consulting (PwC), analytics (Fractal Analytics), BFSI (HDFC Life Insurance), media (Bennett, Coleman and Company Ltd) and PR (Adfactors PR) among others have chosen upGrad for Business as one of their most trusted learning and development (L&D) partner.
With industries racing towards being data-driven, organisations seek to have the twin power of data and technology to add to their competitive advantage. Data skills have turned into the single largest skill gap in organisations followed by digital technologies. In order to address these skill gaps, UpGrad for Business has aligned its programs across the critical pillars of data, technology, management and behavioural skills.
According to a report titled, The Human Impact of Data Literacy by Accenture and Qlik, despite nearly all employees (83 per cent) recognising data as an asset, few are using it for informed decision-making. While 53 per cent of employees trust their decisions more when they are based on data, four in five (80 per cent) still frequently defer to a “gut feeling” rather than data-driven insights when making decisions.
UpGrad for Business president (head) Minaxi Indra commented, "The UpGrad for Business team is customer-obsessed and takes pride in ‘hyper-contextualising’ learning for our customers. We build industry-relevant case studies based on the customer's industry and their business needs. Our focus on creating a specialist-level workforce makes us a pioneer in the online b2b learning space. We ensure our customer's workforce contributes to their organisational business outcomes by learning from our world-class university partners. UpGrad for Business enables leadership competency building and a future-forward business across entry-level and middle management employees."
PwC US Advisory director Deepesh Hiran further added, "UpGrad has a very strong brand name from an analytics perspective in the market and a very strong client portfolio. We realised that the maturity of understanding the analytics business and the maturity of the analytics content was reflecting while we were evaluating upGrad as a partner."
UpGrad for Business aims to build a lifelong learning partnership with firms and organisations to deliver expected and exceptional outcomes. Today, as companies are continuously transforming, the L&D culture is evolving too. Organisations need to adapt their corporate training strategies to keep abreast with the changing business needs. Keeping the speed and scale of digital transformation in mind, UpGrad for Business is focused on delivering measurable business efficiencies for organisations across employee productivity, business profitability and growth.
NEW DELHI: 2020 threw up education headlines that were previously unimaginable. Closure of schools and university campuses across the country, cancellation of exams and ensuing protests, resumption of exams and protests thereof, and learning going truly digital – it was a year of chaos and disruption for education. With the threat of the virus showing no signs of abating, educational institutes remained shut and students moved in front of the screens. The obvious beneficiaries of this unprecedented surge in e-learning were ed-tech start-ups, which lapped up the opportunity to jumpstart their growth.
Several education technology enterprises which had been vying to establish a steady financial footing managed to secure their place in the market as the pandemic ensured people remain indoors. Riding high on the digital wave with rapid adoption of mobile phones and penetration of the internet, these platforms emerged as convenient options for students to continue learning within the four walls of their homes.
According to the Indian Private Equity and Venture Capital Association (IVCA) and PGA Labs data, Indian ed-tech start-ups witnessed a total investment of $2.22 billion in 2020 as compared to $553 million in 2019. Byju’s raised the most capital of $1.35 billion, followed by Unacademy which raked in $264 million this year.
Behind the boom in e-learning
Credited as India’s first ed-tech unicorn, Byju’s emerged as a key player in the e-learning space. The start-up had already been in robust growth mode after its collaboration with Disney last year to make learning fun for young students. It gained a surge in its usage after the government enforced a 21-day lockdown in March. Students reeling under increasing academic pressure began exploring digital alternatives as they navigated new rules of online schooling.
Another Bengaluru based start-up, Unacademy, which began its journey almost a decade ago on YouTube, also recorded as many as 30 million registered users as demand for e-learning soared. Students aspiring to qualify in various competitive examinations, turned to the platform after traditional coaching centres also faced closure.
Data states that Indian online education platforms have raised $4 billion in the past five years (2016-2020) and Byju’s Unacademy and Vedantu have led the charts and attracted the highest funding.
Coursera, Toppr, upGrad, meritnation, Getmyuni, Brainlyand Flintbox were other major players that held significant market share in the country in 2020. With their live online classes, course videos and personalised doubt-clearing sessions with online tutors, the platforms managed to make inroads into student groups.
Apps like eduTinker helped teachers – used to chalkboards and notebooks – to navigate the unfamiliar space and overcome challenges posed by new digital tools. These apps are not only aids to school education but also prepare students to pick up new skills. Among these extracurricular activities, coding is currently hot property thanks to White Hat Jr, which was recently acquired by Byju’s. Vendatu, too, launched Super Coders to provide coding lessons.
Apart from children, youngsters too migrated online to learn new skills or explore hobbies. Universities also began offering free online courses for those committed to learn digitally. Ed-tech start-up Yellow Class did just that. It offers a chance to children to get into new hobbies like drawing or dancing. Some platforms like Elearnmarkets.com and StockEdge.com also provide certified courses in the stock markets and other financial market courses for small investors.
Long road ahead
A recent report by IVCA pegs India’s education market at$117 billion with around 360 million learners in 2019-20.
While 2020 may prove to be a watershed year for e-education in India, there is still a long road ahead. Online platforms have proved to be convenient options when institutions were shut, but their real test would be when schools reopen and online sessions are replaced with actual classrooms. There are still no clearly defined benchmarks of how efficiently students learn in these virtual classrooms. But, going ahead, ed-tech start-ups could collaborate with schools and other educational institutes in a way that ultimately benefits students in the post-pandemic world.
How well these ed-tech platforms would complement the traditional system of education in India in the time to come is a story waiting to be told. Nonetheless, the groundwork has been laid in 2020.
NEW DELHI: Controversy’s favourite child WhiteHat Jr got major relief in its defamation lawsuit case against the angel investor Aniruddha Malpani, who in a series of social media posts had accused the ed-tech platform of hiring people with no coding skills, as the Delhi high court asked the accused to take down selected social media posts. The HC has also passed an interim order restricting him from posting, publishing or sharing any content derogatory or deprecatory of WhiteHat Jr or its content or management.
The court has also sought Malpani’s written response in the matter by 14 January 2021.
WhiteHat Jr, an edtech platform that offers online coding classes to school-going students had filed a $1.9 million case against Malpani alleging that he was defaming the company to promote his own start-up.
Malpani was earlier banned by LinkedIn for criticising WhiteHat Jr’s parent company Byju’s.
Earlier in the week, the Delhi HC had also asked software engineer Pradeep Poonia to restrict his criticism of the quality of teachers at WhiteHat Jr on social media platforms and pull down specific content, in another defamation case filed by the ed-tech company. In this $2.6 million lawsuit, WhiteHat Jr had alleged that Poonia was in violation of the Trade Marks Act of 199, The Copyright Act of 1957 and Code of Civil Procedure of 1908.
Poonia was also pulled up for sharing the name and numbers of lawyers who have filed the suit in the public domain, and hacking or unauthorisedly accessing the internal communication platform Slack and displaying communication between WhiteHat Jr’s employees on his YouTube channel. Poonia was also restrained from downloading any curriculum from WhiteHat Jr and circulating it to third parties.
Founded in 2018 by Karan Bajaj, WhiteHat Jr has been beset with wrangles since it was bought out by Byju's in August this year for $300 million in an all-cash deal. Byju's acquired the platform with a clear objective to drive its ever-widening reach in the ed-tech space in the country. The acquisition led to the fastest exit story at this size in the Indian start-up ecosystem. At the time of signing the deal, WhiteHat Jr claimed it had achieved an annual revenue run rate of $150 million. It had over 5,000 teachers and was dedicating one instructor to each student. Byju's then decided to make significant investments into the start-up and help it expand beyond Indian shores.
The tides of fortunes turned in WhiteHat Jr’s favour with the Covid2019 pandemic, as students were unable to attend school and many parents enrolled their children in the platform's coding program to help them learn more about technology.
Post-acquisition, WhiteHat Jr has aggressively worked towards gaining new users. It launched an ATL campaign that ran through IPL 13, creating a buzz for the brand. The film showcased multiple investors and recruiters fighting to hire a young kid who had developed an app. The positioning of the brand was very clear – that it helps children learn more about technology from a very young age.
The campaign was supported with a strong digital and social media strategy. However, the brand had to face the ire of consumers on the digital front as it was continuously bombarding them with ads. On another occasion, it used the images of global leaders such as Sundar Pichai, Steve Jobs, Elon Musk and others to attract users, by urging them to be the next bigwig in Silicon Valley. Some of its ads were also in question and in October this year, the Advertising Standards Council of India (Asci) asked WhiteHat Jr to pull down several ads for making misleading claims.
The ed-tech platform that teaches coding to children has definitely created a strong dent in the Indian start-up ecosystem and made inroads in the country – but not without more than its fair share of legal and PR hassles on the way.
NEW DELHI: The pandemic has proven to be a boon for the edtech brands helping them clock more downloads and bag new subscribers. Students, across age groups, have adapted to online learning as schools and learning institutions were forcibly shuttered and and moved online.
Both professional and school-level courses witnessed a spurt in takers. While professional courses are expected to make job search easy in this competitive market, the school courses prevented students from compromising on their learning during this time.
Experts say that the edtech space has accomplished more in the last 100 days than it did in the past five years. A white paper released by Ficci indicated that 92 per cent of learning leaders have confirmed the adoption of online learning journeys from 68 per cent in the pre-Covid2019 period.
A testimony to the growth of this sector is that investors are now keenly doling out hundreds of millions of dollars to startups with even edtech as part of their business plans. Media reports quoting Venture Intelligence data state that $998 million from just January 2020 to July 2020 as compared to $310 million a year ago has found its way into edtech startups.
A large part of that cash is going into category building and customer acquisition – through both digital marketing and promotion and expensive TV air time. With reason: they are trying to change old habits of physical face to face learning. And with that out of the question for a while now, it definitely would not harm anyone if they went in for an upskilling course which would give them a shot at getting a better job or designation or fancier increments.
The Ronnie Screwvala funded edtech venture upGrad has over the past month or so running a print, TV and digital campaign, Sirfnaamkinahin, kaamki degree’ to spread awareness on the importance of getting a degree which will help execs get kicked upstairs into a better position and role.
Based in an office, the TVC features a donkey – or an ass in common parlance – whom employees come and lick in the hope of pleasing him.. The donkey symbolises the boss who gives higher priority to smoothness over talent. Towards the end, the protagonist appears who refuses to lick the donkey and ends the film by saying that he needs specialisation, not ass licking to get ahead in his career.
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upGrad is clearly pushing its specialised courses and positions them as a tool that can help executives to rise. The media plan for the campaign includes 50 plus TV channels.
upGrad CEO Arjun Mohan says, “At upGrad, we have reiterated our age-old principle of ‘life-long learning’ across all our marketing efforts and brand campaigns, making it a new norm for individuals who are looking to upskill and re-skill. Especially during the current pandemic-induced lockdown period, where concerns like job loss, insolvency, and career ambiguity are looming, this mantra helped us resonate and connect with our audience better.”
Currently, it is running the TVC across Disney+hotstar and on TV during the Indian Premier League and hopes to grow by 300 per cent by this fiscal year-end.
The edtech brand had previously launched a campaign in February 2020 ‘Raho Ambitious.’ The previous campaigns from the online learning brand were mirroring the sentiments of working professionals. “With the changing times, we realised that what they lack is a means to achieve and materialize the ambition. Hence, a brand only claiming to fuel ambition will not serve a definite purpose in their lives, because it isn’t providing a solution that they urgently need now. Hence, we let go of the previous brand propositions and moved to ‘Sirfnaamkinahin, kaamki degree’, with which we promise to provide outcome-oriented specialisations, to help learners achieve the ROI on education; job/profile switch, increment or promotion, thereby supporting employability,” adds Mohan.
Since the beginning of the pandemic, upGrad has registered a massive upsurge in the traffic. Around 1,00,000 learners are logged in to the platform and over 8500 hours of live sessions have been conducted in the past three months (May – July). Media reports suggest that upGrad has a 500,000 -strong learner base, of which 32,000 are paid users. The company expects to close the current fiscal year with revenues of around Rs 1,200 crore. Small towns and non-metros are playing a key role in fueling the growth of the brand.
The brand is now ready to scale the number of learners to one million. Mohan says: “Moreover, given the Covid2019 scenario, we are now looking to double our quarterly revenue numbers. (We are considering Q4 – Jan, Feb, March is the pre-COVID-19 quarter and Q1 – April, May, June is post-COVID-19 for the data). While all verticals have grown in Q4 vs Q1, the MBA vertical has grown by 63 per cent in terms of revenue and 82 per cent in terms of learner base, making it the biggest winner.”
Other programs such as an MSc in data science witnessed a 60 per cent growth and PG certification in digital marketing and communication with Mica witnessed a 70 per cent growth in terms of revenue and learner base.
He further shares that the brand had to move from quarterly to monthly cohort launches, in order to cope with the increased demand for the online programs that it is experiencing.
upGrad has gone the whole hog on social media marketing as well, with the #DontBeAChaatuin August to synchronise with the release of the TVC. The campaign connected with the youth as did its funny short film ‘How to impress your boss’ with YoutuberBeYouNick (BYN), shortly thereafter. The sequence of activities triggered pop – culture influencers across platforms, who then contributed to the buzz and shared their personal experiences. Abhiand Niyu, Barkha Singh, AnkushBahuguna, Saloni Gaur, and AyushMehra amongst others joined the bandwagon to promote the idea of upskilling. Twitter heavyweights like Gabbbar, Sagarcasm, Trendulkar, also shared their views on corporate world culture to support the drive.
Mohan says, “At the beginning of the year, we announced a budget of Rs 175 crore for marketing. We will be largely present on TV and digital. We are strong on social media as well.”
He further explains that the brand is now expecting an overall surge in the television viewership. “This will increase the co-viewing window. Therefore, keeping the current situation in mind, the idea is to look at more mass media such as TV and accordingly shift our spending towards the same, supplementing it with digital. While we will continue to advertise targeting the metros due to new launches that we have in the pipeline. The consumers and prospective learners will now see upGrad more active in the smaller towns,” adds Mohan.
upGrad has recently announced a corpus of Rs 500 crore to expand internationally, especially in APAC, Europe and west Asia. Mohan is optimistic about the shift in the education space. He believes online learning is here to stay and the sector will continue to boom going forward.
The company has also introduced a wide range of free online programs across the areas of tech, management, and data to encourage users to utilise the extra time at hand, meaningfully. It has introduced ‘upGrad higher’, which is a free platform for all job portals for Covid2019 impacted professionals.
Screwvala and his teams have honed a special skill which can hopefully be imparted to other execs wanting to turn entrepreneur through upGrad: how to scale up companies from scratch, and in the process build high valuations.
NEW DELHI: Great Learning has launched its first multi-film ad campaign featuring brand ambassador, Virat Kohli. The campaign consists of a series of ad films titled, ‘Power Ahead – Jo Seekhta Hai Wahi Aage Badhta Hai’. It focuses on the importance of lifelong learning and showcases how upskilling is a necessary step for students and professionals to power ahead in their careers. The ad films will air across 40 national channels like across sports, entertainment, news, and music. The ad films will also be aired on OTT platform Disney + Hotstar throughout the Dream 11 Indian Premier League 2020, for which the brand is an Associate Sponsor. The campaign has been conceptualized by Sideways and directed by Cornerstone.
The ad films open with Virat addressing the audience while reflecting on Great Learning’s philosophy of lifelong learning as a necessity for success. Virat himself personifies this philosophy and believes that career success comes to those who are always looking to learn something new, especially in a world where things are changing so rapidly around us. While striking a conversation with the viewers, Virat emphasizes the need to keep learning to stay on top of one’s game. ‘Cricket ho ya koi bhi career jo seekhta hai wahi aage badhta hai,’ he quips in these films.
Great Learning CMO Aparna Mahesh said, “We are excited to launch our first set of commercials with Virat Kohli during the biggest sporting event of the year, the IPL. Virat represents the aspirations of Young India. He is someone who is so passionate about his game, pursues excellence relentlessly, and keeps improving through disciplined effort. We believe he will inspire millions of learners to chase career excellence with the same passion and reach their goals through high-quality education provided by Great Learning. This campaign with Virat will elevate the Great Learning brand to a higher level in terms of awareness as well as a preference when people think of high-quality professional education.”
MUMBAI: Bharti Airtel (“Airtel”) has acquired a strategic stake in Edtech startup Lattu Media Pvt Ltd (“Lattu Kids”) as part of the Airtel Startup Accelerator Program. Mumbai based Lattu Kids specializes in digital learning tools for children. Its highly popular Lattu Kids app focuses on improving English vocabulary, English reading and Maths skills for children under the age of 10 years through entertaining, fun learning animated videos and games.
At over 500 mn, India has the second largest number of internet users in the world, driven by affordable smartphones and the lowest 4G data tariffs globally. This deep penetration of internet has also led to wide adoption of online learning tools. The COVID-19 pandemic and closure of schools has further accelerated the adoption of virtual classrooms and digitally enabled learning. It is estimated that in India Edtech will become a USD 2 bn plus industry by 2021.
The investment will enable Airtel to add Edtech to its premium digital content portfolio and give distribution scale to quality learning material from Lattu Kids. Airtel already has over 160 mn monthly active users across its digital platforms – Airtel Thanks app, Airtel Xstream app and Wynk Music.
Bharti Airtel product officer Adarsh Nair said: “At Airtel, we aspire to support the growth of the start-up ecosystem through our digital platforms. And now more than ever, online education is a critical need for millions of young children who do not have access to regular classrooms. We believe that Lattu Kids can make a positive impact in the space of online education and are excited to have them in our accelerator and partner in their growth.”
Lattu Kids co-founder and CEO Vivek Bhutyani said: “Our Vision with Lattu Kids is to impact learning outcomes for young children in Nursery to Grade 2 and lead this category in India by using Digital content, Gamification and Technology. With Airtel, we have found an equally passionate partner and our synergies in this space will allow us to scale Lattu to millions of kids in India across classes and make it a much-loved home grown EdTech brand.”
Lattu Kids becomes the fourth company to join the Airtel Startup Accelerator Program, which allows start-ups to leverage Airtel’s robust ecosystem, including its core strengths in data, distribution, networks and payments. This includes access to a vast online and offline distribution network that touches 300m+ customers, deep market understanding and platform of global strategic partners. Further, start-ups also get access to advisory services from Airtel’s executive team.
MUMBAI: upGrad, an online higher education company, and Big Bang Music, the new-age pop culture label, is driven towards creating unique musical expressions and experiences have come together to create what can aptly be called the upskill anthem of the nation. #AageKiSoch encourages the youth to spend this time at home productively and engage in activities that will upskill their existing knowledge base in order to prepare for the new world post the COVID-19.
Written by reality show ‘Dil Hai Hindustani 2’ winner Akshay Dhawan and composed by Shashwat Singh, whose melodies will be featured in AR Rahman's next movie ‘99 Songs’, this never-seen-before collaboration also witnesses leading singing star Jonita Gandhi, rapping for the first time. The music video consists of an ensemble star cast that includes Radhika Apte, Vikrant Massey, Naveen Polishetty, Anto Philip, Fatima Sana Sheikh, Shantanu Maheshwari, Rohit Raj, Aparshakti Khurana, Karan Tacker, Abish Mathew, Akansha Ranjan, Elnaaz Norouzi, and ‘Jordindian’ – Naser and Vineeth.
Link to the music videos:
Video 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k-Um4rDO9vE
Video 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X1zo4UrrBvI
Video 3: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1pd7l1IEiNQ&feature=youtu.be
Conceptualised by the higher education company upGrad to drive the productive habit of learning from home during quarantine and produced by Big Bang Music and KWAN, the partners have joined forces to bring together this eclectic mix of pop culture icons across film, music, corporate, TV and comedy for the upskill anthem. The three video renditions for the same song have been conceptualised, written, shot and edited in all of 72 hours, being directed remotely on video calls.
Big Bang Music CEO and co-founder Gaurav Wadhwa said: “These are unprecedented times and while it’s important to keep the spirit alive, it’s more important to gear up for the world to come because we all know there is light at the end of this tunnel. World over, life will now be viewed as before and after the virus – BC and AC will have a new meaning in ‘Before COVID’ and ‘After COVID’ and we need to prepare for that! At Big Bang, we truly believe that music unites like no other and no better time than now to encourage people to use this ‘forced’ time at hand meaningfully."
“Influencers are an integral part of any campaign, and more so today as they become custodians for keeping the morale high and mindset positive during the pandemic. We have carefully put together renowned and diverse names to be able to reach out to a large cross-section of people and encourage them to be productive while locked down in their homes. It’s been an amazing collaboration where an edtech major has chosen music as their preferred route of disruptive communication,” added Kwan founding partner and COO Dhruv Chitgopekar.
“While everyone is adapting to the new normal, it’s time we to be cautiously optimistic and look at the silver lining of the pandemic. With this upskill anthem, we want to encourage people to stay home and use the time meaningfully to enhance their skillset which otherwise would have parked in their to-do list. Preparedness for the coming economical storm is essential so that the youth and the working professionals can smoothly bounce back to their careers or make a new transition once we resume to our regular lives,” concluded co-founder and MD upGrad Mayank Kumar.
As a part of the campaign #AageKiSoch, influencers in the music video will tag their friends and urge them to "Bahar Nahi, Ab Tu #AageKiSoch" epitomising the future-forward thinking that, we need to do during the lockdown. The idea is to create a chain of audience propagating the message of strictly staying at home and using this time to upskill oneself with upGrad's educational programs in the areas of Data, Technology and Management.
