Navigos Group fosters e-learning ecosystem

Navigos Group is dedicated to providing both quality and value for its customers

Thuy Trang, a human resources director at a major pharmaceutical company, said that her company has undergone rapid changes over the past three years, partly because of the requirement to improve productivity and governance for the company.

Moreover, investors and foreign shareholders have been putting pressure on the company to make changes. Therefore, Trang’s company has implemented a series of training courses for employees, which put a burden on her shoulder in trying to build them.

Trang has been given much more work to do now, from collecting feedback from employees and leaders to contacting lecturers and organising classes. She realised that she needed a third-party partner experienced to provide training programmes for the company. Such a professional partner could help the company to improve business performance while satisfying the versatile needs of employees, leaders, and stakeholders.

This was also Navigos Group’s goal when acquiring stakes at Kyna.vn and KynaBiz.vn in December.

Dream Viet Education was founded by three young people seven years ago with the view to connect students and teachers through useful online courses. However, like many startups, the founding members quickly felt stuck and desperate as revenue grew slowly.

After years of experimenting, they decided to place emphasis on two key customer segments – employees and parents – while improving quality and tailoring their offers to customers’ demand.

Thanks to these efforts, the startup began to see an improvement in revenue. By the end of 2018, the founding members decided to separate the startup into three independent online projects, Kyna.vn – a learning platform for adults, KynaBiz.vn – e-learning solutions for businesses, and Kynaforkids.vn – a learning platform for children.

After the decision to merge with Navigos Group, founding member Nguyen Thanh Minh said that they spent two years researching, exchanging, and learning about the partner.

The merger is built upon a shared vision of creating value for employees to develop themselves, improve productivity, and enable them to climb up career ladders. “Quality-focused is our philosophy,” Minh stressed.

Navigos Group is pursuing the same principle of quality and value for customers. Gaku Echizenya, CEO of Navigos Group, said that the group wants to support Vietnamese employees to improve knowledge and skills, and become more professional and successful in their careers.

Navigos Group’s strength lies in its extensive experience in recruitment and its understanding of employers and employees. Meanwhile, Dream Viet Education has shown to be strong in developing user-centred online learning platforms. “By leveraging each other’s strengths and capabilities, we can save time and efforts to develop a comprehensive e-learning ecosystem, empowering millions of Vietnamese citizens,” Echizenya stated.

The merger relies on two factors to secure success in the education field. First, it offers many attractive and useful programmes for learners to solve problems and discover valuable insights.

Second, Navigos Group’s extensive experience and understanding to create specialised products and courses for each industry enable the group to support employees with the diverse knowledge and skills for their career advancement.

After nearly seven years of development, Kyna.vn and Kynabiz.vn are offering around 700 courses, attracting tens of thousands of customers. However, the startup behind these platforms also faces some challenges such as how to create more attractive courses and new technology to draw more customers and improve user experience.

The investment of Navigos Group into this startup is expected to complement its shortcomings. With the backup from Navigos Group, Kyna.vn and Kynabiz.vn are expected to offer new products to the market, replicating the impressive success of Navigos’ platforms VietnamWorks and Navigos Search.

Following the acquisition, Nguyen Thanh Minh was officially appointed as the managing director of NLV Training, a subsidiary of Navigos Group including Kyna.vn and Kynabiz.vn. The young teams will contribute to the development of Navigos Group’s education segment in Vietnam and further across the region with their innovative thinking and deep enthusiasm.

As online education has become a popular trend worldwide due to its utility and effectiveness, the tie-up promises to open up vast opportunities for both parties.

While online education can be par of the course these days, not many platforms are addressing the needs of businesses at the same time as their employees. Navigos Group CEO Gaku Echizenya told VIR’s Lan Phong about the company’s ambitions to become a leader in this field. It is rather difficult to see quick investment returns in education. Why is Navigos Group so dedicated to this industry? Navigos Group has invested in education after inheriting the 3E-Method development strategy when becoming a member of the en-group, one of the largest human resources (HR) groups in Japan. The 3E-Method strategy covers evaluation, employment, and education. For evaluation, we launched IQ and EQ capacity assessments to evaluate future employees. With regards to employment, we are offering recruitment services through our website VietnamWorks as well as middle and senior-level, executive search services though Navigos Search. Finally, for education, we have completed our product portfolio with investment in education in order to achieve our long-term vision “Success After Joining” for both businesses and their personnel. At Navigos Group, we believe that each employee constantly experiences the iterative cycle with stages of evaluation, employment, and education. Hence, education is an indispensable part of the development cycle of an employee. Given the advancement of technology and rapid market changes, each employee must develop knowledge and skills day by day. To facilitate this goal, companies should provide training to staff while employees actively grasp education opportunities. The training industry for employees is fragmented with few platforms providing these services. What is your view on the demand and potential for this industry? We aim to develop a comprehensive education platform with diverse services and content. There are a number of online course platforms connecting suppliers and customers. However, these websites have yet to provide comprehensive services meeting the demand of businesses. While employees are looking to brush up skills, enterprises understand the importance of workforce training and development. Thus, they have searched for different education methods for their companies. With this investment, we can offer more for this segment to meet the demand of both employees and enterprises. What has changed for Navigos Group’s education segment following the acquisition of Kyna? We highly appreciate diversification and innovation, so Kyna’s team is expected to bring new ideas and experience to develop better products for our customers. Kyna is strong in developing courses for business-to-consumer users, while Navigos Group has a deep understanding of enterprises and candidates as well as extensive experience in HR development and consulting business. The acquisition of Kyna.vn and Kynabiz.vn is expected to bring about more comprehensive courses for corporate customers and the Vietnamese workforce. We have a clear understanding of the skills and knowledge that enterprises are looking for. Thus, we not only offer well-prepared content but also build tailored courses for employees based on the practical demand of enterprises. We will make use of the strengths of Kyna.vn and Kynabiz.vn to connect users and introduce more informative courses. In addition to online education, we will branch out into other educational segments to further boost workforce development here in Vietnam. What is your plan for the Vietnamese market in the coming time? Navigos Group aims to become the leading HR ecosystem in Vietnam. Our strategy is to develop a strong and sustainable system by continuously launching new products and services, in order to help people and companies achieve their dream that related to recruitment and development. To fulfil the ambition, we will not only take advantage of cutting-edge technologies but also focus on developing our workforce, which plays an important role in mastering technology and growing our business.