The Education Revolution: How Elice is Paving the Way for Technological Upskilling with AI
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By TAM Hock Chuan and Josh JUNG
Introduction: Market Landscape
Coding. Software Development. Data Science. These are familiar skillsets relevant to the constantly evolving tech world. But with automation, artificial intelligence (AI) and new job models reconfiguring the workplace, lifelong learning is becoming an economic imperative – where technological changes have accelerated a reskilling revolution for firms that require different skillsets in their workforce to meet the evolving business priorities.
Globally, industries are experiencing rapid levels of technological advancements which have been further accelerated by the boom in AI. This has reshaped how one lives, work, interact, and learn. This rate of transformation is particularly evident in Southeast Asia, where over the past decade, the region’s technological capabilities have expanded rapidly. A Bloomberg report, on how digital technology is transforming Asia’s economy, indicates that the next decade will see digitally enabled platforms driving 70% of the economy's new value creation in the region [1].
While high levels of growth stimulate levels of innovation, countries must ensure their workforce can keep pace through constant upskilling, reskilling, and education. However, the harsh reality has revealed that technology, with its advancements in AI and cloud infrastructure, is evolving at a pace so rapid that the global skills gap continues to widen exponentially. This is further compounded by the digital transformation aspirations that corporations have embarked on in a bid to remain competitive and relevant.
As a result, industries such as engineering have been critically impacted by this shift with many corporations facing an urgent need to reskill or upskill their workers. Current data from Bain&Company revealed that 73% of engineering and R&D-focused companies have reported talent gaps that will widen further in the immediate future. 54% of all employees within enterprises’ are estimated to require significant reskilling; resulting in a significant cost to institutions [2].
Due to high recruitment fees and to encourage firm loyalty and commitment, firms are increasingly prioritising upskilling and reskilling their current tech workforce as opposed to onboarding new employees.
The Problem
Research has discovered that the current tech upskill and reskill programmes currently available often fail to address the evolving sophistication of engineering roles and the widening technical skill gap. This has become a significant challenge for enterprises where engineers face a continuous re-learning challenge to remain competitive. On paper, this might appear to be an inexpensive issue to address. However, a recent study by Boston Consulting Group suggests that such investments represent as much as 1.5% of those organizations’ total budgets, which, when held up against an uncertain macro environment is a big strategic investment for firms to commit to [3].
According to a study by the National Trades Union Congress (NTUC) and Tsao Foundation, employers identify workforce training as the most effective HR strategy, but the actual implementation of successful workforce training in practice lags behind other measures. The study also highlights that despite upskill efforts by employees, many older workers continue to encounter employment challenges because of too-basic training programmes. Moreover, providing effective tech education at scale to institutions comes with several technical challenges and requires a lot more than just requiring employees to partake in training employees [4].
A comprehensive and reliable solution is critical to plugging this compounding challenge. Without an end-to-end learning platform, organisations will encounter a range of technical difficulties ranging from configuring the appropriate software environments, managing the developmental library, version updates, content management, curriculum design and so forth. This significant challenge could slow down the quick and successful adoption of digital transformation and learning within an organisation.
The Solution
Within Vertex Growth’s portfolio, Elice offers a full-stack solution from a learning platform, educational content, testing and evaluation, to a graphics processing unit (GPU) computing infrastructure. Elice allows organisations to unlock a wide suite of technical capabilities all within one platform, which is critical for institutional education at scale as illustrated above.
Whether its configuring appropriate software running environments, managing software development library installations and version updates, content management and distribution, curriculum design, test and evaluation, or providing Q&A and tutoring services, Elice can provide solutions for every technical capability for AI and software technical skills development. One good example of Elice’s deep technical capabilities is its AI tutor, ‘AI Helpy’, which is a generative AI engine specifically designed for programming education. AI Helpy yields better performance than large models in the specific domain of the target as a result of its fine-tuning through massive Elice’s proprietary student learning data and a purpose-built design.
What also differentiates Elice’s offering originates from its special and unique content strategy. Elice features a ‘project-based learning (PBL)’ solution specifically aimed at workforce training. Elice’s curriculum for institutions includes this PBL, which offers customised and relevant industry-specific problems that are informed by data and developed in partnership with its enterprise clients. This methodology keeps participants at the forefront of essential, contemporary technical skills demanded in the workforce.
Furthermore, the company is pioneering in the AI data center arena. With the significantly surging demand for computing resources, notably GPUs, typical existing data centers in the market fall short of efficiently handling AI workloads, particularly in terms of power efficiency, power density, and scalability. The market also lacks quality offerings of AI-specific services (like ML APIs) and computing modules optimized for intensive GPU computations. Capturing this opportunity early from their education use cases, Elice has initiated and piloted its GPU clouds for its education platform with a portable modular data center (PMDC). The company’s PMDC has shown the best power usage effectiveness (PUE) in Korea, and plans to scale up its know-how and offering with bigger-scale data centers.
Elice’s success is underscored by its substantial growth in recent years, reflecting a strong alignment with market demands. Major Korean enterprises such as Samsung, Hyundai Motors, SK Group, and LG Group, have enlisted Elice’s platform for workforce training. Notably, SK Group, an early adopter, has implemented Elice’s Learning Experience Platform (LXP) and project-based learning (PBL) content for over a thousand employees. Using Elice’s LXP, SK Group conducts IT skills, including AI and data analytics, as well as design, semiconductor, and energy solutions training for all its subsidiaries. By tailoring industry-specific practical programs and providing a user-friendly platform, technical efforts required to conduct conglomerate-wide online education were reduced significantly making Elice’s LXP the ideal choice for SK Group.
Beyond corporate adoption, Elice’s impact extends to the academic sector with leading Korean universities, such as Seoul National University and KAIST, implementing the platform. Additionally, Elice is spearheading initiatives in K-12 education by developing an AI-powered digital textbook, aligning with the Korean government’s educational strategies and ambitions.
Elice is one of the few startups that have garnered interest from conglomerates seeking edutech solutions that can enable massive talent pool upskilling and reskilling effectively. To date, the company has served more than 1,800 globally and counts South Korea’s major conglomerates, top universities, and government ministries among its clients [5]. Their LXP platform has since accumulated more than 1.3 million users and logged an average annual revenue growth rate of over 111%.
Why Vertex Growth believes in Elice
The attractive value proposition of Elice has resulted in a successful series C funding round which was led by Vertex Growth. The funding round raised KRW 20B (approximately USD15m) and will fund their APAC expansion. As part of its strategy to expand globally, Elice has established strategic partnerships with top education content providers, including Pluralsight, a leader in the U.S. B2B education sector.
Elice’s philosophy on bridging the largest upskilling and reskilling needs of the digital workplace aligns with Vertex Growth’s commitment to identifying startups that offer scalable solutions that solve real-world problems. Further, their end-to-end full-stack learning solution effectively addresses the specific enterprise needs enabling them to capitalise on the significant B2B education opportunity in Asia Pacific.
Tam Hock Chuan, General Partner at Vertex Growth is confident that the B2B education sector in APAC will continue to reap successes. The region is at an inflection point in its digital transformation journey and its dynamic workforce will continue to propel APAC to the forefront of technological advancements. Through leveraging synergies from the partnership, coupled with a strong foundation and clear vision for the future, Elice is on track to emerge as a leader in AI education.
To learn more about Elice, drop us an email here.
References
[1] How Digital Technology Is Transforming Asia's Economy. Bloomberg. https://sponsored.bloomberg.com/article/axa-investment-managers/whats-driving-asias-digital-evolution
[2] Bridging the Talent Gap in Engineering and R&D. (2023, June 1). Bain. [https://www.bain.com/insights/bridging-the-talent-gap-engineering-r-and-d-report-2023/\]
[3] Your strategy is only as good as your skills. (2023, September 29). BCG Global. [https://www.bcg.com/publications/2023/your-strategy-is-only-as-good-as-your-skills]
[4] Population ageing and slowing workforce growth. (2023, November). NTUC, SUSS and Tsao Foundation. [https://www.ntuc.org.sg/uportal/resource-hub/all-reports/population-ageing\]
[5] Elice Inc. raises KRW 20B Series C round from global investors to accelerate APAC expansion.