Ankur Warikoo, Parul Garg: Influencers short courses to upskill job seekers

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What motivated them to start the course?

Ankur Warikoo is an entrepreneur and content creator whose deep and practical thoughts on success, failure, and relationships have made him one of India’s top influencers. Some of his videos have generated over two million in a week. “I started content creation almost 15-18 years back for a different purpose. I was a startup founder and shared a lot of experiences around hiring, culture, and so on. During the pandemic, when I had time on my hands, I started conducting workshops online around the same thing, like how to find a co-founder, how to raise funding, how to hire a team among others,” said Ankur Warikoo adding that he got good responses from people which encouraged him to further the list.

“I love teaching. I run my startup by the name of WebVeda, which is an online school for young Indians to teach them things that school and college should have taught, but unfortunately, never did,” said the author of Make Epic Money.

(Image credit: Ankur Warikoo/ X)

Ankur’s video on how to repay loans quickly remains the most watched with 4.6 million views. In the video, he teaches his audience how EMIs work, and concepts of interest on loans.

For makeup artist Parul Garg, the motivation to start her academy was the lack of professional education in the industry. She claims that the majority of people learn makeup while doing some job and take the industry as a passion rather than as an occupation.

“New makeup artists or people who are just starting need proper education, a formal sort of understanding of how to do the makeup and how to get it right for the clients,” said Garg who teaches 6-7 batches only during months when there are less events (wedding/ festivals).

Mehar Sindhu Batra, a chartered accountant and a certified career coach, with over 120k subscribers on YouTube has been creating content for the last five years. “The reason I started my courses is that I noticed some gaps in the market. My course on UK masterclass informs students about all they need to know before and after moving to the country,” said the influencer.

The success rate of Sindhu’s course is 90-95 per cent with the UK Masterclass course being the most sought after.

Who are the enrollers?

Sharing the details about his courses and students, as of now Warikoo has 4.09 lakh paid students with his most successful course being time management and content writing course.

When asked whether the majority of his course enrollers are his subscribers or followers, he said that a lot of them think that his social media content and the distribution is all that to sell courses, but he claimed that his content has nothing to do with his startup. “They just happen to have the same face, which is mine,” he said.

He claims that two of the unique selling points for his course are cost-effectiveness and lifetime access. He said that as of now his courses completion rate is 72 per cent with just 5 per cent of the enrollers asking for a refund.

To reduce the dropout rates, he keeps the live session interactive with the exchange of information and then use the same recording for those students who opted for recorded lectures. This way Warikoo’s team eliminate the feeling of isolation and the learner felt to be part of the group, thereby increasing their completion rate.

“They feel like, psychologically, they’re part of a bigger thing than just themselves. And that, interestingly, has increased the completion rate of our courses as against any other self-paced course,” he said.

Parul Garg said that several instructors make students learn but her teaching differs from theirs. “They learn real make-up to be done on real clients who are going to be brides and attend functions. Makeup needs to stay intact during the entire duration and therefore, we ensure practical training and that matters in the industry,” she added.

How do they craft these courses?

Garg focuses not just on theoretical learning but practical also. Her students practice from day one with extensive practice sessions being done throughout the course. Makeup, hair, be it dripping or any other aspects of styling for a complete bride are done from day one. “We teach our students for all the occasions be it haldi, wedding, mehndi, sangeet, etc,” she added.

On the other hand, Ankur along with a course designer, looks for the topics and searches the web to give the fullest to the students. Additionally, according to the course, guest speakers are also called in to give a comprehensive perspective of the subject.

The real world and personalised experiences are what make Mehar’s course different from other instructors, claimed she who does not call her courses ‘generalised’. “My courses stand with time as to what goes on in the market, and industry,” she said.

“Having given interview on some of the top companies like EY, KPMG and other London-based strategic consultant firms, I know what a recruiter looks in an employee. These are the mistakes which I have made in the interview and through my courses, and videos educate people not to make them. In the UK masterclass, I share my journey to UK from India, the resources I did not know and other stuffs,” said Mehar.

Mehar became popular after her videos on job interview hacks, chartered accountants struggles and why one should not do an MBA. Some viewers posted gratitude on her social media handles that how they secured a job either attending her workshop or short course.

Mehar also claimed that she solely designed courses with three main ingredients — interaction, designing, and concerns of students through feedback, surveys, and one-on-one coaching of the enrollers. Modification is important for the course that depends upon real-time situations in the market, so sometimes it takes 2-4 months to design a course.

How is the team hired?

Interestingly, Ankur doesn’t look at the resume at first. All they send is a questionnaire with a unique set of questions. “We ask the candidate to share the worst thing about them, how often they get angry, and how they get angry, among other questions followed by two EQ tests and an assignment,” he said. Through this way, Warikoo filter a candidate who has the right attitude and intelligence.

Parul Garg, also the founder and director of AK Dermacare and Aesthetics, said that her team consists of her former students. Having taught makeup for over eight years, she upgraded, modified, looked for the latest styling trends, and accordingly hired and changed the syllabus of the course.

“Once former students successfully gain the level of expertise and competence in doing any sort of make-up they are assigned to, then they become instructors at the academy where they help students learn the tricks of the trade,” said Garg who is also an MD doctor with specialisation in the skin and venereal diseases.

For hiring, Mehar calls her picky and looks for people with long-term associations and have a knack for mentoring people. To achieve the same, she conducts three rounds of interviews to get the best suited.

Will they recognise their courses?

We asked Ankur whether he would ever recognise his courses by competent authority to which he refused. “The intention is to act as an addition to school and college, certainly not as a replacement. I believe that school and college have their purpose to solve and we have our own, and we can both coexist. I have no intention of recognising it and getting into some legal framework that constrains our ability to deliver what we want to do in the process of learning,” said the author of Get Epic Shit Done.

“As of now, the government does not recognise or give a certification to any kind of make-up course due to the vocational education system. Such courses have to be recognised by some university or institute of vocational training as per government rules,” said Parul, adding that the government needs to look into it and she would love if some kind of certification system is provided by the authority.

She also claims that at present certification systems offered by the government in the makeup industry are not really recognised and not very well-valued because ultimately people are judged based on their work and their skill rather than government certification.

As of now, Mehar is looking for accreditation and partnership from recognised institutions so that her students can mention the course on their CVs.