Edtech Startup Grou Connects Job Seekers Through Virtual Experiences

The rapid growth of digital startups in Indonesia has encouraged the birth of new types of jobs that never existed before. This condition ultimately creates a gap in expectations between job seekers and employers.

To overcome this, employers generally carry out a series of tests to obtain job seekers' expected abilities. It could be said that to go through this process, the investment required is not small.

Aleisha Fiona (CEO) and Unggul Reynawa (CMO), who met while working at Gojek, offers a different solution to overcome this by launching Grou. Grou is a startup EdTech which provides the platform marketplace special virtual work experience for students and job seekers to gain virtual work experience.

In fact, Grou is a result rebrand from the career development community forum ReLearn which has been around since February 2020. ReLearn, which is based on a social media account on Instagram, was started with the initial intention of simply spreading tips about the world of work for students and job seekers who are just starting their careers. Then it develops by presenting programs mentoring.

Regarding reasons pivot and rebranding, Aleisha explained that there was a gap between the philosophy and the previous brand name. ReLearn means learning again. The learning context itself is very broad. Meanwhile, the philosophy that ReLearn always carries is that it is a career travel companion. On the other hand, the ReLearn brand is a bit similar to similar startups that were already present in Indonesia, some think subsidiaries-New.

“In early 2022 we will start researching what the ReLearn persona looks like. They remember their career friends because of the jargon we use.'grow with ReLearn' because we want people to grow with us. We keep digging until we are finally convinced [for rebrand]," Aleisha told DailySocial.id.

Three years into developing ReLearn, Aleisha learned that the program mentoring alone is not enough to solve the problems experienced by recruiters in the field. Before pursuing a professional career, Aleisha was a career advisor abroad. Every month he reviews 300 job applications that come in, most of these candidates are still unsure about their career goals after graduating from college.

In Indonesia alone, according to the data he quoted, there are 8,3 million fresh graduates which is not working at the moment. Of this total, only 15 thousand people have access to the intership program.

Various experiences and research in the field have strengthened him to take this virtual work experience solution seriously. Moreover, he also saw success Drilling, a startup similar to Grou from the United States, with a concept that is believed to be adopted in Indonesia.

“Indonesia has more than 10 million fresh graduate, while internship opportunities in Indonesia are still very limited every year. As is marketplace "The virtual work experience launched by Grou, we hope can build more democratized work opportunities, so that anyone can get work experience, even those who are interested in a career across majors."

Grou Products

Grou Products Currently there are two, namely virtual work experience and community. This first product, although conducted online or virtually, Grou's virtual work experience program has a great opportunity to help company recruiters screen qualified prospective employees easily.

This is supported by free program access for job seekers, as well as the Digital Profile feature which can help recruiters filter candidates more easily according to their needs. Users can come from students, fresh graduates, professionals, and even industry practitioners who want to join as mentors.

From the company side, they can listing various job positions by including case studies through the dashboard access provided by Grou. Prospective workers can work on the case study, according to the type of work they want.

"So drive from the side job seekers So, he wanted to know what he was doing. But from the company side, they can control what work they want to do.post. They have the potential to need these candidates or amplification employer brandingThis is because many people don't know what they do like that How."

Aleisha continued, “From job seekers they get knowledge about the company. They can know if for example it happens finance manager In that company the syllabus is what must be studied. This is the syllabus missing in college. That's what we are trying to solve. "

This first product was just released on October 14. Prospective workers are not charged a fee for using this solution because the business model adopted is B2B.

Grou also has a virtual mentoring program to support the career development process of the younger generation. It is claimed that the company has collaborated with 150 industry practitioners to carry out a career mentoring program with more than 500 community members in Grou. These mentors come from technology companies, big 4 consulting, and other prestigious companies.

“Now it's still in the early stages, we're still looking product-market-fit. Meanwhile we expansive community members because whatever form of product we produce there will still be an element of community inherent in it."

It was stated that Grou had received funding of $40 thousand (Rp. 628 million) from five angel investors. The backgrounds of these investors are varied, some are from the gaming industry, entertainment, and so on. Aleisha said that this pre-initial funding is still ongoing and is targeted to raise funds of $175 thousand (Rp. 2,7 billion).

"We are still small very"So what we need is to find strategic investors, who can be mentors for me as a founder," he concluded.