Online food delivery platform Swiggy on Tuesday announced a skill initiative to offer free learning opportunities to thousands of delivery executives and their children. 

Swiggy has partnered with Khan Academy, a non-profit educational organization to provide courses and certifications via its ‘Skills Academy.’

The company’s latest programme will help delivery executives (DEs) train for new roles and upskill, while their children get access to several online education courses.

The academy will offer courses on non-functional topics such as spoken English, time management, hygiene and dressing, computer use, personal finance, and mental-physical health and wellbeing.

In a blog, the company said that after a detailed survey it learned about DEs aspirations of acquiring new skills which will benefit both the company and delivery partners. The most common wish of delivery partners was to learn English.

On the basis of survey’s data the company has pledged to work on four pillars which include skills for all, skills for children, skills for growth, and skills for life.

Currently, the first two pillars will focus on providing courses on spoken English and financial literacy to all DEs and Maths, Grammar, and reading comprehension lessons to the children of DEs.

“The idea is to build the right skills in our delivery partners. We want to make sure they upskill to the level that not only do they meet Swiggy’s future requirements but it has a great impact on their future as well,” said E. Thomas Henry Mathuranayakam, AVP – Learning & Development, who is heading this project.

The company has also partnered with Google to use Read Along, a speech-based reading tool, to help children of delivery partners improve their reading skills.

The best part of this programme is that even if any delivery partner opts out of Swiggy, their children will continue to access these courses.

“With Swiggy Skills, we have taken a step in fulfilling our responsibility towards our executives with the focus to create an opportunity for their growth and progress,” said Girish Menon, Head of Human Resources at Swiggy.

As many as 30,000 children, as well as young siblings, nieces, and nephews of delivery partners can choose to access educational support through Swiggy Skills Academy, said the company.

Within the first few days of its launch, 24,000 children and out of 3,05,049 DEs 37,000 have already signed up and 18,990 have started the course with the Swiggy Skills Academy.

(with inputs from IANS)