Upskilling solutions that drive growth

Skillinabox, startup by Prateek Bharadwaj, offers online fashion design courses, earning revenue of ₹2 crore a month

- Namita Shibad

PUNE: Fortune favours the brave and those with good intentions.

When Prateek Bharadwaj completed his Mechanical Engineering degree from VIT Vellore, he followed a path familiar to many graduates: he got a job.

"I worked with IL&FS Skills, the NSDC, and several other government initiatives at the grassroots level," he recalls.

This on-the-ground experience taught him a valuable lesson: for any education to be meaningful, it must empower the learner with skills that lead to financial independence.

"Vocational skills represent a massive sector," says Prateek.

"While the government has been proactive with its Skilling India program, the execution hasn't quite met the mark."

Recognising this gap, Prateek launched his first start-up, CSB Education & Skills.

"We set up offline skill centres for rural youth, focusing on practical job roles like retail sales, electrician, fitter, plumber, sewing, and more. Our vision was to build a solution that could reach every household in India—and eventually, the world."

However, offline centres had their limitations.

In 2019, a new idea took shape: what if a training centre could fit in a box? And so, Skillinabox was born—with a clear mission to enable learners to gain skills from the comfort of their homes, using training kits and online instruction.

Prateek believed he had struck gold with this concept. But just as momentum was building, the COVID-19 pandemic brought everything to a halt.

"We had to pause everything," he says. "I went back home and sat with the idea, waiting for the right moment to bring it back to life."

However, the whole purpose of "Helping people" didn't leave my mind, and with a friend, we started EMPOWERX—where we trained our house help in making masks and sold them online.

"In 2022, we built a small website, an Instagram page and started launching our Online Fashion Designing Program."

Selling without a product?!