India’s first alternative education platform

The main challenge was to craft a course that would fit the short attention span of the youth. Second, was to craft an engaging platform that could break-through the existing clutter in education domain. Research helped us gauge that youth were looking to learn the practical fundamentals in the domain that would help them land a job. Hence, the app combined these requirements and served as a one-stop solution, while it also broke the traditional stereotype of Indian parents and helped them understand the earning capabilities of these contemporary careers.

Mento is an alternative education platform and is conceptualised with an aim to bridge the gap between ‘degrees’ and ‘skills’. The app provides an in-depth learning from the legends themselves for 30 odd careers and is divided in three phased approach for ease of learning.

In India there are over 2000 career alternatives that do not require a degree but are high in demand and pay better compared to traditional degrees. The app had to encourage creativity and instill a sense that every skill matters.

We conducted two-fold research with the target audience and the influencers. Questionnaires, focus group, discussions and interviews were done with the target audience to gauge their field of interest, observe their online learning pattern and discover the pain points with the existing platform. Whereas, the influencers were researched to ideate on the feasibility of learning the skill online and to discover the best module that would help learn the career fundamentals.

Two major learnings were found; first being that 3 minutes was the optimal attention span time where everyone was learning and paying complete attention. Second, we were able to discover that youth were looking to learn the basics that could land them in the job and were not looking for a masterclass. We also discovered that parents had to be educated about the opportunities that these fields offered by providing a transparent picture of the challenges, the road to success and earning capabilities.