RevoU Offers Technology Education, Adjusting Materials to Startup Needs

The rapid development of businesses and startups in Indonesia, in fact, still leaves unemployment which continues to increase because it doesn't fit skill prospective workers with industrial needs. This homework must be completed jointly by the government, educational institutions and various other parties.

Engineer is the most sought-after job for startups, but its availability is so limited. As a result, making startups take talent from abroad to work for his company.

RevoU took part in this opportunity by inaugurating its presence in Indonesia since early June 2019. Startup edutech this is actually a blend of startup edutech in China and the United States, with localization for Indonesia.

RevoU was founded by Matteo Sutto, a former executive at Zalora and the iPrice Group. This startup positions itself as a career acceleration platform for anyone as long as they have a strong will to learn, regardless of background, education level, or previous career.

According to him, the root of the issue of this inequality does not occur because of the incompatibility of the curriculum taught by educational institutions. However, due to the lack of tools to train skill so it better suit the needs of the industry.

One of these factors, at least he discovered while working at iPrice. Many Indonesians have skill capable thanks mentoring and proper training is taught there.

"So it's not a lack of talent, but a lack of tools to practice developing skill appropriate to the needs of the IT industry. This is a fundamental issue that we are trying to solve through RevoU," explained Sutto to DailySocial.

"Career Track" program and participant screening

He continued, RevoU prepared a career choice that each participant wanted to pursue, called "CareerTrack"The curriculum is a combination of existing online materials, 1-on-1 live mentoring with startup actors, and mix and match routine tasks that are correlated with real work in the field.

As a result, each participant is expected to have skill more mature and not short-term. Because the knowledge taught from the mentors can be directly put into practice in real work.

Mentors who fill in each meeting, he continued, are real practitioners who work at startups and are willing to share experiences and tips for participants.

The educational program that can be selected in the current Career Track is Digital Marketing. Sutto said that his party will continue to add career options that are most needed in startups, such as Data Science, Engineer, Computer Science, Data Analytics and so on.

"RevoU is tasked with training prospective talents, so that when working at startups, companies don't need to train anymore because we have already worked on it. So the graduates we produce are ready to work immediately."

Take for example, for Digital Marketing, the commitment required to join this program is 15 weeks. During the program, participants will not be taught the necessary knowledge basic, what is SEO like, and so on. Instead, it invites them to create an analytical framework, and be active by working on assignments that come from real-life examples of work.

"We give periodic assignments to make sure they understand what they have learned during the week. They are also invited to use it." tools commonly used by startups, such as Slack, to communicate with other participants or mentors."

According to him 15 weeks is the right time, not too long nor too fast. However, the duration will be adjusted for other Career Track programs, if needed.

Sutto said that RevoU is intended for anyone, whether it's a final year student or a worker with early experience, but there is a strict selection. The reason is, the company has a rule that every participant who fails to be accepted into the startup, they are not required to pay a fee.

If successfully accepted into a startup, participants have the opportunity to pay in installments by paying a small down payment and paying it off from 12 months to 18 months after they receive their salary in a new office. The cost of the Digital Marketing program starts from Rp. 15 million per person.

Before the participants joined, they actually had the opportunity to take an introductory class for free for three weeks. In this introduction, anyone can join and hopefully get a big picture of the choice of Career Track programs that suit their interests.

"This three-week program is free for anyone, but to join the Career Track there is a strict selection because we invest for every participant who enters RevoU. If they are not accepted, we make no money at all."

RevoU's next plan

In the early stages of RevoU, Sutto and his team will expand the choice of Career Track programs. However, it does not mean that it directly focuses on increasing the volume of participants because it is feared that it will reduce the quality of graduates.

For that, the company will focus on the supply and demand by increasing partnerships with startups so that it is easier for them to accept recommendations for graduates who are ready to be recruited. Several startup names that have collaborated include Lazada, Shopee, Traveloka, Zalora, and Gojek.

From the side supply, in collaboration with universities to encourage students to take part in programs at RevoU.

"From this strategy, we hope that slowly awareness The public's interest in RevoU is increasing because we have a big mission, not just a business, we want to improve the ability of graduates in the country."

Sutto was reluctant to say how many participants had joined, but it was claimed that there were student associations that participated in the first month of its operation.

RevoU is said to have received funding from angel investors with an undisclosed amount. The RevoU team is spread across Singapore and Europe. However, the RevoU core team will be based in Indonesia.

The presence of RevoU certainly enliven startups edutech in Indonesia. Other players with different concepts offered by startups such as Udemy, Zenius, Ruangguru, Competent, GreatEdu, Labster, Class.com, Quipper, and many more. As for the business model that is very similar to RevoU, there are Binar Academy and Hacktiv8.