HUL’s Fair and Lovely Foundation partners with NIIT and Liqvid English Edge to promote mobile skilling for women

To launch a women-focused mobile skilling platform that aims to enable access to skill-based courses for 5 million women by 2020

Hindustan Unilever, India’s largest Fast Moving Consumer Goods Company has partnered with NIIT Limited and Liqvid English Edge to support the Government’s ‘Skill India’ initiative and achieve its sustainability objectives. The company plans to launch a women-focused mobile skilling platform via the Fair and Lovely Foundation that leverages NIIT and Liqvid English Edge courses, thereby taking forward the brand promise of making a meaningful difference to the lives of women by empowering them to become self-reliant.

With experience of working in women’s education for 13 years, Fair & Lovely Foundation recognized that some of the key barriers to women accessing higher education and job skills are physical distances to quality institutes and cultural norms. Mobile skill-based courses help women overcome these barriers by allowing them access to training materials anytime, anywhere. Fair & Lovely Foundation’s mobile skilling platform will not only help women achieve their educational and skilling goals through quality courses, it will also offer career guidance and scholarships for online and offline certification.

Announcing the partnership, Mr. Sanjiv Mehta, CEO of Hindustan Unilever said, “Empowering women is a business priority for Unilever. Fair & Lovely Foundation was launched by the organisation with an aim to empower women through education and support their quest to create an individual identity. Fair and Lovely Scholarships has transformed the lives of over 1500 women over the past decade and the launch of our state-of-the-art mobile skilling platform will further this cause. We aim to enable access to an array of skill-based courses for 5 million women by 2020 and are glad to be partnering with NIIT, one of the world’s most foremost training and talent development companies, and Liqvid English Edge, leaders in language training for this initiative.”

Speaking about the association, Chief Strategy Officer of NIIT Ltd., Mr. Udai Singh said, “NIIT has been at the fore front of leveraging technology to make available skill-based training to every digitally connected Indian. NIIT.tv a disruptive innovation, offering over 5400 live and on-demand courses, has removed the barriers of time, place and language, to make skill based training available to every Indian for free. We are now delighted to join hands with consumer goods leader HUL to use our technology platforms to empower the women of our country.”

Speaking about the association, CEO of Liqvid English Edge, Mr. Vivek Agarwal said, “English language and soft skills are essential to gain entry to many skill-based careers especially customer facing roles in retail, beauty and hospitality. These skills are particularly hard to disseminate through physical training centres for lack of quality trainers. We commend HUL for taking responsibility to promote widespread access to English and soft skills education for women on mobile, the most widespread interactive media available in the country today.”