According to a study by the DC Workforce Investment Council, Washington D.C. has a number of high-demand careers, including education, healthcare and information technology. As technology continues to evolve at a faster clip, constantly training the workforce is becoming an integral part of keeping these in-demand positions filled throughout the city.
Ruban Phukan, a technologist and co-founder and CEO of GoodGist, believes that if not addressed, the skills gap could “escalate into a crisis for the corporate world.”
“Traditionally, it costs up to $50,000 per finished hour of content for an entire multi-hour course. Remarkably, less than 30% of these courses are initiated by learners, and even fewer are completed. This highlights the urgent need for a paradigm shift in corporate skills development pedagogy,” said Phukan.
His company aims to tackle the existential crisis facing the labor market. GoodGist, a corporate skills development and knowledge management automation platform, just announced that it has raised $1 million dollars to help further its mission of re-skilling and up-skilling the global corporate workforce.
“We are fortunate to have the backing of investors who fully support our vision and mission,” said Phukan. “Together, we aim to address and avert what could soon escalate into a crisis for the corporate world if not properly addressed.”
The founders of GoodGist are serial entrepreneurs with several successful exits of technology startups. The team comprises industry veterans in AI, Enterprise, and Consumer technologies, LMS, and LXP platforms with experience from companies like IBM, Yahoo, Cornerstone OnDemand, Saba Software, EdCast, PayTM, Progress Software, Huawei, Toshiba, Netscout, and others.
According to the founders, their product vision was born from firsthand experience navigating up-skilling and knowledge management hurdles in startups and large corporations.
The issue of a lack of up-skilling, of course, expands outside of D.C. According to the World Economic Forum, an estimated 1 billion individuals globally will require upskilling or reskilling by 2030, with failure to meet this demand potentially resulting in an $8.5 trillion hit to the global economy.
According to a company statement, GoodGist plans to address these key issues by deploying an advanced AI Curator, leveraging its patent-pending technology designed to personalize learning and research journeys for individuals on-demand to expedite workforce up-skilling and re-skilling.
The new funding will enable GoodGist to launch their multilingual GoodGist.com platform into global markets, expand their team to bolster research and development efforts, and enhance product offerings to mitigate skill gaps and information overload effectively.
Investors in the round include FortyTwo VC, Cedar Ridge Ventures, DX Partners, and prominent angel investors from leading tech companies such as Microsoft and Amazon.
Kirti Reddy, founder and Managing Partner of Cedar Ridge Ventures, said, “The possibilities here are immense – across the whole value chain of L&D and in many different sectors and markets. We are excited to partner with Ruban and the team to execute against this bold vision.”
Asutosh Upadhyay, another investor in the round and co-founder of FortyTwo.VC said, “The current L&D systems are designed to address the common denominator and cannot deliver the desired ROI as these models struggle to balance scalability with personalization. GoodGist Inc. aims to challenge this bottleneck. Our investment reflects our confidence in the transformative power of AI to reshape enterprise learning and development, and we could not have envisioned a more capable team to lead this endeavor.”