Bangalore, September 13, 2022: Swiggy, India’s leading on-demand convenience platform, today announced the launch of the Swiggy Skills Academy, a specially curated, multiskilling, and multilingual learning offering for its delivery executives and their children.
Swiggy Skills Academy will offer free access to various learning and development opportunities to help Swiggy’s delivery executives grow professionally and personally, and act as a stepping stone to acquire the skillsets required to be future-ready professionals.
The academy’s course content has been developed based on a detailed study conducted to understand the aspirations of Swiggy’s delivery executives better. The findings showed that aspirations range from acquiring skills that will help them perform their current roles better, take on new roles at Swiggy, earn the respect of friends and family, and prepare them for opportunities beyond Swiggy. Accordingly, Swiggy Skills Academy is structured around four pillars, namely:
- Skills for All – Will offer courses on non-functional topics such as spoken English, time management, hygiene and dressing, computer use, personal finance, and mental-physical health and wellbeing.
- Skills for Children – Close to 40 percent of Swiggy’s delivery executives have children, with 70 percent of them being over the age of 5. As many as 30,000 children, as well as young siblings, nieces, and nephews of delivery partners can choose to access educational support through Swiggy Skills Academy. Children of all age groups will be eligible to receive career counselling and high-quality online educational content and will continue to have access to it even after the delivery partner moves on from Swiggy. Within the first few days of its launch, 24,000 children have already signed up with the Swiggy Skills Academy marking a significant milestone in Swiggy’s efforts to facilitate learning among its partners and their families.
- Skills for Growth – Designed for those who want to explore new roles within Swiggy, like that of a fleet manager or team lead, this course has a formalised structure focused on skills eligible for these roles. Partners opting for this course will also receive certifications from various national institutes and government bodies that Swiggy will partner with.
- Skills for Life – Collaboration with educational institutes and universities to support the executives to complete their matriculation, intermediate schooling, higher education, or professional certifications.
Partnering with leading experts
Swiggy has partnered with Khan Academy, an educational, non-profit educational organization to provide courses and certifications. It has also partnered with Google to use Read Along, a speech-based reading tool, to help children of delivery partners improve their reading skills.
In June this year, Swiggy ran successful month-long pilots under the pillars of ‘Skills for All’ and ‘Skills for Children’ in Mumbai and Hyderabad. The ‘Skills for All’ pilots saw participation in the Spoken English & Financial Management courses. Children of delivery executives completed Math learning support and reading comprehension courses in the ‘Skills for Children’ pilot. While these two pillars are already accessible to Swiggy’s entire fleet of over 3 lakh delivery partners, ‘Skills for Growth’ and ‘Skills for Life’ will be made available in a few months.
Mihir Rajesh Shah, Head of Operations at Swiggy said, “In this digital-first economy, our delivery executives must be equipped with skills that support them to grow and be ready for more opportunities. Swiggy envisages a fleet of empowered delivery executives who are skilled, confident, and ready for success both within and beyond Swiggy.”
Commenting on the initiative, Girish Menon, Head of Human Resources at Swiggy, said, “With Swiggy Skills, we have taken a step in fulfilling our responsibility towards our executives with the focus to create an opportunity for their growth and progress. Providing our delivery executives with an avenue for well-rounded learning and development not only benefits them in their current role but also plays a key role in their long-term aspirations and success.”
Chandrakant Yadav, a delivery executive from Mumbai who has enrolled with the Swiggy Skills Academy said, “This initiative by Swiggy will not just help us improve and expand our knowledge but will also help with career progression. The biggest benefit is that we can manage these courses alongside our delivery job. With the acquired knowledge and skills, I hope to start my own business in the future.”
Another delivery executive from Mumbai, Sanjay Annadate shared, “I’m very happy that Swiggy is helping us and our children. Usually, the focus is on partners alone. But involving my children makes it even better. My kids can now come back home from school and revise English or even Math through this program.”
Earlier in April, Swiggy had launched ‘Step-Ahead’, an industry-first accelerator program for its delivery executives to transition into full-time, managerial-level jobs with a fixed salary and additional benefits. With the ‘Swiggy Skills’ academy, Swiggy has focused on providing all the resources for building and honing skills that will enable a delivery executive’s growth at Swiggy and beyond.
