Nine2Five

The World Economic Forum states that significant skill gaps exist in most developing economies. Women & rural youth in developing countries like India, are not able to access vocational skills training as much as their urban male counterparts leading to significant reduced wages, weakened livelihood opportunities and inequitable participation.

By bringing high quality international university courses which are delivered in collaboration with local industry in a blended manner, rural youth and women will be able to access continued, self paced, skills education and gain sustainable employment. Peer learning and community learning will be provided through Apps that use Artificial Intelligence and Virtual Reality.  

Scaled globally it will significantly reduce skill gaps, provide sustainable livelihoods through jobs and enterprise development, improve national GDPs and eradicate poverty. 

70.7% of India is rural of which 54% are youth. Only 54.9% of rural males and 18.2% of rural women are employed (Periodic Labour Force Survey- PLFS, Government of India, May 2019). 

The skills gap in India exists more in rural India will leave 248 million workers with the need to be trained by 2022 (Santosh Mehrotra, Jawaharlal Nehru University; Ankita Gandhi, Institute of Applied Manpower Research and Bimal Sahoo, Indian Institute of Technology, March 2013 article on Estimating India's skill gap on a realistic basis for 2022). 1 in 5 young men and women in developing countries have not completed primary level education (UNESCO Education for all Global Monitoring Report 2012). Due to the lack of educational preparation, 40 million employers worldwide have difficulty filling in positions leaving the businesses stymied (Richard Leblanc, 2020) India has the world's largest youth population; only 2.3% of its workforce has received any skills training (World Bank, Story on Skilling India, 23rd June 2017).

Lack of accessibility of vocational and skills training results in unskilled unemployable people. Nine2Five will facilitate training which will give more  jobs, increasing the income of rural households thus, reducing rural poverty.

Job ready skills training provides better employability. Nine2Five will deliver existing high quality courses from global universities in an online + practical mode by involving local industry to play a role in the development and delivery of these courses. Nine2Five will use AI, online learning tools and industry practice to optimise the blended mode and increase the demand of these courses within the emerging middle class. Industry will have a job ready resource pool to readily hire from, bringing down cost of training and hiring new employees. By joining the same course subsidised by Nine2Five,rural youth, including women in developing countries, will have an incentive to continue education. They will access secure work internships leading to secure and affordable access to jobs in industries located nearby, increasing their participation in skills training and reducing the inequitable wealth distribution. Universities would gain access to large volume driven markets in developing countries, higher revenues and significantly lower cost of delivery through the use of online and blended learning models as opposed to traditional on-campus delivery. Nine2Five guarantees program sustainability by ensuring academic, industry, social impact and revenue agendas are met Nine2Five will have agreements with University and aggregate Industry partners. 

The larger population of youth in most developing countries is from rural areas. Rural youth, including women in developing economies have very low participation in skills education leading to lower access to jobs and enterprise. This leads to rural poverty, severe inequities in wealth distribution and unsustainable migration to urban areas for livelihoods. Nine2Five did surveys with a broad spectrum of rural youth in India and Nepal to understand what would lead to lesser migration and better access to jobs nearby. The results led us to understand the need for industry relevant courses, member based youth organisations managing learning, enterprise development and advocacy for continued education. Nine2Five will facilitate the creation of these youth organisations to incentivise continued education, link them with nearby industries where they will intern for the subsidised skills programs and help them with job placements. These youth organisations will promote access to credit, garner enterprise development and create sustainable rural communities.

Rural youth and women in developing economies do not have access to skill development courses that consider their education gaps, their cognitive abilities and learning pace and the lack of accessibility of traditional learning centers. Skills training is not industry relevant and fails to provide sustainable employment. By bringing high quality international university courses which are delivered in collaboration with local industry in a blended manner, rural youth will be able to access continued, self paced, skills education and gain sustainable employment. Peer learning and community learning will be provided through Apps that use Artificial Intelligence and Virtual Reality.

Technical and Vocational skills training is the need of the hour in all developing economies in order to reduce existing skill gaps. Although governments invest in skill development centers, that alone is not able to address the problem. The courses offered do not keep up with the changing needs of the industry and ongoing teacher's training remains a challenge. Industry participation with the government is not sustainable as the agendas of each participant is different. While the government is interested in showcasing the numbers of people trained, industry is interested in the quality of education that meets their specific demands. Quality education can be offered by high quality outcome oriented academic institutions. Thus, vocational skills training that will lead to successful job outcomes, require Industry-Academia-Government collaboration. To create and monitor sustainable collaborations, a social enterprise like Nine2Five is required, who will independently work with each collaborator to match their expectations, pace and style of work while remaining focused and committed to reduce the skill gap, create employment for Rural Youth and Women and measure performance on employability outcomes. SafeEducate, an Indian company that claims to be India's largest private vocational skill development company, on the other hand is only able to train 50,000 youth and do not care about the demographics. Being a subsidiary of a logistics company they only focus on providing training in that space, do not have any quality inputs from Academia and do not measure any impact or outcomes for employability.    

Nine2Five is using blended learning platforms to impart skills training modules from Universities abroad. Using AI, Virtual/Augmented reality, online learning tools and content management software, Nine2Five will simplify University courses to tailor them to learner styles and competencies, contextualise them for industry relevance and manage online content. Interfaces for accessing education would be available in rural community centers and on handheld devices like smartphones through learning apps so that women and rural learners are able to easily access content and learn at their own pace. Rural and Women learners who have had limited access to cognitive learning and technology platforms will find it easier to learn on Nine2Five's platforms and interfaces. We will use advanced technology to create learner experiences that are contextualised to both local industry needs as well as learner capabilities.

The book: Artificial Intelligence Applications in Distance Education by Tuncay Yigit and others from T.C. Suleyman Demirel Universitesi in Turkey, speaks about how since 2011, Computer Engineering education at the University is taught with a blended learning method. Blended learning is achieved through a Learning Management System (LMS) by using distance education technology. The LMS is comprised of course materials supported with flash animations, student records, user roles, and evaluation systems such as surveys and quizzes that meet SCORM standards. The blended learning approach has been evaluated by the authors, and the obtained results show that the introduced artificial intelligence supported blended learning education program enables both teachers and students to experience better educational processes. Our first pilot collaborator, University of New England in Australia would be piloting a healthcare management contextualised course in India using their blended learning system. Using Virtual and Augmented Reality, learner experiences can be tailored in a way to enhance skill development outcomes for rural learners who have had limited exposure to technology. In his article: Virtual and augmented reality effects on K-12, higher and tertiary education students’ twenty-first century skills, published in August 2018, George Papanastasiou, a fellow Researcher at IIT N.C.S.R. Demokritos and a teacher for students with special education needs, presents state-of-the-art approaches and examples of virtual reality/augmented reality systems, applications and experiences which improve student learning and the generalization of skills to the real world. 

In a developing country like India which has the world's largest youth population only 2.3% of its workforce has received any skills training as featured by the World Bank in it's story on Skilling India published on June 23rd, 2017. As per the PLFS (periodic labour force survey) conducted by the Government of India published in May 2019, 70.7% of India is rural of which 54% are rural youth. Only 54.9% of rural males are employed and only 18.2% of rural women are employed. The skill gap in India which exists more in rural India will leave 248 million workers with the need to be trained by 2022 as projected by Santosh Mehrotra (Jawaharlal Nehru University), Ankita Gandhi (Institute of Applied Manpower Research) and Bimal Sahoo (Indian Institute of Technology) in their article from March 2013 on Estimating India's skill gap on a realistic basis for 2022. 

Using Blended Learning, Artificial Intelligence and Virtual Reality, high quality university courses from developed countries will be made available to rural youth and women in developing economies. Practical components of this course will be run in collaboration with industry making sure that courses are job ready and the training leads to jobs in that sector. These courses will be cross subsidised by urban high paying youth from an emerging middle class in these countries, who will take a more expensive version of this course which will lead to high paying jobs through high quality International qualifications. Member based communities will be created to enable rural youth and women get access to peer learning and community support.

Rural youth and women in developing countries will be able to access continued education, learn skills at their own pace & their learning levels, find accessible and secure jobs near their communities and generate a decent, sustainable livelihood. This will lead to gender equality, reduction in the skill gap and reduction in the inequitable distribution of wealth between urban and rural areas. It will also lead reduced inequalities and economic growth of countries through active Industry-Academia-Government partnerships for impact goals.  

Nine2Five is prototyping it's first blended learning module for contextualised healthcare management from University of New England in Australia to be delivered in collaboration with already identified healthcare providers in urban and rural India. Currently we do not serve anyone. In the next one year, our pilot in Western India will reach out to 5000 youth using 1 course. Within the next five years we are going to scale this to 20 courses offered by at least 10 universities from around the world available to 50 million rural youth in at least the 5 developing countries of India, Bangladesh, Nepal, Sri Lanka and Zambia.  

The skill gap that exists in developing economies are increasing and isolated efforts by Governments, Industry or Academia have not managed to reduce it. Nine2Five will play the lead role in driving this impact goal "Reducing the skill gap by creating more employment through high quality, contextualised, easy to to learn, job ready courses"; with the other 3 stakeholders. We are prototyping a process by which a healthcare management course contextualised to fit the needs of the Indian healthcare industry is created by University of New England in Australia, under a grant funding from the Australia India Council, to be delivered through a blended learning mode in collaboration with a local healthcare delivery partner (hospital) to reach out to a large population of urban middle class who would pay for an international qualification and a high paying job on completion. Revenue earned from this will cross-subsidise the learning for the same number of rural youth using the same platform, through apps and community based interfaces that will enable them to learn healthcare management in a rural setting and get access to jobs in the healthcare centers setup and being upgraded by the Government of India. Better hospitals, better healthcare delivery will need better managers and our program will provide job ready high quality staff in rural India to address this future skill gap. In the next 5 years,  through replication, we will take this model to 5 developing countries and create employment for 50 million rural youth.

Nine2Five requires funding to bring the prototype to the market after completing the UNE pilot launch. We need key staff experienced in the use of blended learning management systems, Artificial Intelligence used in education, Virtual Reality used to drive learner outcomes and to lead our app development to optimise delivery of conventional courses in a contextualised manner. 

Post Covid depression has led many Australian Universities to abolish many of their courses. Nine2Five already has interest from some of their existing University partners to have their courses converted to blended mode & contextualised for India or Nepal, so they can look at new revenue streams from developing economies. But courses being axed could leave Universities with limited courses as well as limited resources to work on modifying these courses. Travel between countries that maybe required for scaling and product development might be an obstacle or come at a premium cost if the flyer population shrink, aviation industry does not recover from losses,  and international borders remain closed.  

New jobs might not open up readily in many industries which will be in struggling to manage their bottomlines post covid recessionary impact. This could lead to slowing down of our scaling strategies.

Healthcare facilities in Mumbai and other tier 2 cities in Western India might not have an appetite for new collaborative ventures in skill education as they might still be involved in fighting the pandemic and with no need for new staff might find it counterproductive to pursue the pilot.      

We will raise debt, startup or social capital funding through institutional impact investors to the tune of US$1.3 to fund our pilot, our investments in technology, marketing & sales spends and hiring of key resources to convert more international university traditional courses to job ready blended courses using superior tech. We will raise US$3.3 million in sales revenues in 2021 from urban middle class accessing international blended learning courses and use 50% of this revenue to subsidise our rural training and employment generation. If we are not able to raise capital, we will collaborate with existing online education provider companies. 

To ensure that we have a large portfolio of University courses to choose from for potential employers near beneficiary communities to be able to provide jobs and collaborate in running the practicals, we will approach universities from other English speaking nations.

Our scaling efforts in other countries might slow down due to covid. We will then implement replication methods where some other company will replicate the course in their country, market it and use the brand of Nine2Five to deliver courses. We could also explore captive franchise models for expansion.

If our pilot looks unfeasible for a launch, we will find locations where the spread and impact of Covid is minimal or under control and approach healthcare providers there to launch our pilot.     

Nine2Five is unregistered as an organisation and is currently a project undertaken by Beyond Borders Learning Programs (India) Pvt Ltd, a social enterprise incorporated in 2008, based out of Mumbai, India which has a collaboration agreement with University of New England to develop this pilot solution through a grant from the Australia India Council and Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. Beyond Borders is committed to creating Nine2Five as a globally scalable social enterprise which will provide employment to rural youth in developing economies. 

2 full time staff, 2 contractors and 2 advisors

Arunabha Pal, CEO and Director Beyond Borders and principal project lead, has a Post Graduate Diploma in Global Sales and Marketing, worked in for-profit BFSI managing large teams for a decade and then in not-for-profit and social enterprise development space for another decade. He has experience of not-for-profit management, experiential education management and business planning for social enterprises. He has won and worked on a Canadian government grant to find sustainable solutions for clean drinking water. He is a co-applicant in the Australian Government grant which has considered this concept note as the next big opportunity in the education space for India and Australia. This allows him to reach out to other Australian Universities, with whom Beyond Borders has existing relationships, to launch more courses in developing countries. 

Dr Prafullata Rajput, Executive Director and Head Health Intervention for Beyond Borders, has 15 years of experience of rural and urban healthcare delivery and 5 years in managing existing Beyond Borders relationships with healthcare delivery facilities in urban and rural western India. She is a key resource, responsible for the performance of the pilot for healthcare management courses and will ensure the social impact on employment of rural women and youth.

Dr Debra Dunstan, Executive Strategy Advisor, University of New England is the receiver of the DFAT AIC grant and is the principal stakeholder of the pilot and has an MBA in Educational Leadership & Administration from Charles Sturt University. She is fully committed to making this pilot a success.    

University of New England, Australia has an agreement with Beyond Borders to collaborate on a Australian Government (DFAT & AIC) grant to run a pilot blended learning contextualised course on healthcare management in India. DFAT, AIC and the Australian Department of Education believes blended learning modules offered by Australian Universities is the next big revenue earner by allowing volume driven developing country markets to access more affordable courses without the need for physical travel and international qualification leading to more and better jobs for rural youth in these countries. We are their chosen implementation partner for the pilot.

We are connected with many large scale, mid scale and regional hospital and healthcare facilities in Western India for over 4 years as Beyond Borders International Interns do their clinical rotations in these facilities. This helps us with direct access to the managing & strategic teams of these facilities who find us a credible partner to discuss future opportunities that are mutually beneficial. We have also conducted workshops with them to discuss the pilot and their expectations of the curricula and industry relevant information has been captured in the workshops held in India, in February 2020. 

We are connected with 5 major public Australian Universities who have used our services for credit driven programs offered to their students to come to India and Nepal and explore the work culture there. These Universities would be happy to partner with us for converting their traditional courses to blended learning modules for developing economies.    

The Nine2Five Social Business Model offers the same product to financially diverse group of customers and beneficiaries in a developing country. Our key customers are youth who belong to a growing, affluent middle class in developing countries, who covet an international education and qualification to gain access to a high paying job in a emerging sector of the economy, for example healthcare. They either found it unaffordable to go overseas for a traditional Higher Education or Professional course or had social issues preventing travel outside their own country to study as a resident, which is the case why many urban young women from developing countries cannot access higher education abroad. We bring the same high quality International qualification, contextualised to the local job market at a fraction of the cost of a traditional foreign education, in a blended delivery mode, allowing the student to learn at their own pace without having to travel outside the country. For each person who takes a course, Nine2Five subsidises the same course contextualised to the rural setting for a rural youth by 80% providing them with skills that will allow them to enter the job market and generate sustainable livelihoods. Nine2Five will bring many such courses to the rural underserved population in developing countries and bridge the skill gap.

In year 1 & 2, Nine2Five will raise money through grants to fund their pilot, their initial investments in bringing key personnel on board and their investments in technology used to convert traditional courses to easy and job relevant blended modules.

In year 2 & 3, we will then raise capital through sales and direct revenue, to pilot the same interventions in 2 more countries where we have presence and existing partnerships.

Finally in year 3& 4 we will raise money through debt and equity to scale our work into other developing economies and impact 50 million rural beneficiaries in 5 developing countries of the Global South.

Winning a Solve Challenge would give us additional funds which will create the infrastructure needed to bring the prototype into the market, create marketing strategies for course enrollment, hire key staff experienced in the use of blended learning management systems and invest in digital platforms required to reach the remotest villages.

The Solve network could help us gaining mentorship and guidance for development of Artificial Intelligence modules used in education, Virtual Reality components used to drive learner outcomes and our app development to optimise delivery of conventional courses in simple and contextualised manner. 

Funding by Solve could also help in travel between countries that may be required for scaling and product development which might otherwise be an obstacle or come at a premium cost if the flyer population shrinks, aviation industry does not recover from losses, and international borders remain closed.

We would require networking with funding institutions and investors. 

Mentorship to understand technology and resources to convert the International courses into contextualised curricula for the rural youth. Guidance about available resources and industry partners to deliver these courses in the remotest of villages.

Board members and Advisors who understand the education and skills development sector, guide us through the prototype phase and help us create a successful venture that would impact the global economy.

We would be working with multiple countries so would need assistance in legal and regulatory matters pertaining to those countries.

Experts in monitoring and evaluation would be needed to make sure that Nine2Five performs consistently on impact parameters.

Marketing, Media and Exposure will ensure that Nine2Five reaches out to a wider audience which is crucial for its success. 

We would like to partner with Global Universities who would like to make their courses available to rural populations in developing countries using our blended learning modules.

The skills gap in rural spaces is a lot more than in urban areas. Only 18.2% rural women are employed as against 54.9% rural men (Periodic Labour Force Survey, Government of India, May 2019). The reason is a gender gap with inequitable access to education and literacy programs. Women are more likely to be denied access to education or to discontinue education. Illiteracy and incomplete education results in lesser jobs, low financial understanding, gap in availing credit facilities, male dominance and lack of awareness of individual rights. 

Nine2Five is committed to bridging the gap by subsiding the courses that it is offering to rural women by 90%. This would help more and more women access skills training that will find them more jobs and bring about financial empowerment. The continued education and peer support group program would help in advocacy of women’s rights and empowerment.

Nine2Five community based member organisations doing peer based education will also help in creating awareness for women’s rights amongst the men and women of rural India.

Innovation for Women Prize will help us create outreach programs for making these skills and vocational training courses available to the women of rural India thus empowering them and elevating their financial status.

Significant skill gaps exist in most developing economies. Women & rural youth in developing countries like India, are not able to access vocational skills training as much as their urban male counterparts leading to significant reduced wages, weakened livelihood opportunities and inequitable participation.

By bringing high quality international university courses which are delivered in collaboration with local industry in a blended manner, rural youth and women will be able to access continued, self paced, skills education and gain sustainable employment. Peer learning and community learning will be provided through Apps that use Artificial Intelligence and Virtual Reality. This would enable working age adults to build their skills and obtain better paying jobs and entrepreneurial opportunities.

Our team will use the GM prize in facilitating skills and vocational training through industry academia partnerships thus ensuring job ready youth who could apply for better jobs or engage in their own enterprises.

Most developing economies are reeling from a skills gap created due to lack of industry relevant quality education. Women & rural youth in countries like India, are not able to access vocational skills training as much as their urban male counterparts leading to reduced wages, weakened livelihood opportunities and inequitable economic participation.

By bringing high quality international university courses which are delivered in collaboration with local industry in a blended manner, rural youth and women will be able to access continued, self paced, skills education and gain sustainable employment. Peer learning and community learning will be provided through Apps that use Artificial Intelligence and Virtual Reality. This would enable working age adults to build their skills and obtain better paying jobs and entrepreneurial opportunities.

Our team will use the AI for Humanity Prize by creating and investing in Artificial Intelligence and Virtual Learning platforms ensuring continued education for the rural youth. We will create skills and vocational training through industry academia partnerships to be delivered in a blended format thus creating job ready youth who would get better jobs or engage in their own enterprises.

Most developing economies are reeling from a skills gap created due to lack of industry relevant quality education. Women & rural youth in countries like India, are not able to access vocational skills training as much as their urban male counterparts leading to reduced wages, weakened livelihood opportunities and inequitable economic participation. According to UNESCO Education for all Global Monitoring Report 2012, 1 in 5 young men and women in developing countries have not completed primary level education. Due to the lack of educational preparation, 40 million employers worldwide have difficulty filling in positions leaving the businesses stymied (Richard Leblanc, 2020)

By bringing high quality international university courses which are delivered in collaboration with local industry in a blended manner, rural youth and women will be able to access continued, self paced, skills education and gain sustainable employment. Peer learning and community learning will be provided through Apps that use Artificial Intelligence and Virtual Reality. This would enable working age adults to build their skills and obtain better paying jobs and entrepreneurial opportunities.

Our team will use the Future Planet Capital Prize in facilitating skills and vocational training through industry academia partnerships thus ensuring job ready youth who could apply for better jobs or engage in their own enterprises. Closing the skills gap will provide the industry with skilled staff, and add US$11.5 trillion to global GDP by 2028 (World Economics Forum)