Case Study

Empowering over 200,000 Learners Through the Deloitte SkillUp Partnership

Overview

In a strategic collaboration launched in October 2023, SkillUp partnered with Deloitte Southeast Asia as part of Deloitte's WorldClass initiative, which aims to empower 100 million people globally by 2030 through education and skills development. 

This partnership focused on bridging the education-to-employment gap in Southeast Asia by delivering free, accessible e-learning programs in STEM, sustainability, job readiness, and emerging technologies like AI and cloud computing. Over the ensuing 1.5 years, the initiative has transformed the lives of 217,000 learners across the ASEAN countries, equipping them with job-ready skills and fostering innovation in underserved communities. This case study highlights the partnership's approach, execution, and measurable outcomes, demonstrating SkillUp's proven ability to scale high-impact educational programs with corporate partners.

The Challenge

Southeast Asia is facing a noticeable digital and professional skills gap. Surveys across Asia–Pacific show that around three in four employers have roles requiring digital skills, and more than 70% say it is challenging to find candidates with the right capabilities (AWS–Gallup Asia Pacific Digital Skills Study, 2023; ManpowerGroup Global Talent Shortage, 2024). 

At the same time, youth unemployment in Asia and the Pacific remains close to 13% on average, with rates around 10% in many ASEAN economies and some markets, such as Malaysia, higher than this, leaving millions of young people at risk of unemployment or underemployment (ILO, Global Employment Trends for Youth 2024). The OECD’s Skills Strategy Southeast Asia further highlights that a large share of young people and adults still lack the digital and transversal skills needed for emerging jobs, despite rapid growth in technology-intensive sectors (OECD, 2023). 

Against this backdrop, Deloitte, through its WorldClass ambition to reach 100 million people with education and skills by 2030 and its Impact Every Day commitment to social responsibility, sought a scalable way to deliver inclusive, high-quality learning aligned with SDG 4 and SDG 8 (Deloitte, WorldClass / Impact Every Day, 2023). 

SkillUp Global was selected as a strategic partner for its extensive network and shared commitment to empowering students. Its strong connections with schools, universities, and employers across ASEAN, along with a proven track record in co-designing industry-aligned courses and training programs, highlight its capability to deliver a scalable learning platform.

The Solution

SkillUp Global co-developed a customized e-learning platform with Deloitte, integrating Deloitte's industry insights into interactive courses on STEM education, sustainability practices, and job readiness. The platform features:

• Gamified Learning & Student Leaderboards: Mobile-first design with rewards, live leaderboards, and badges to boost engagement, achieving completion rates higher than traditional online courses.

• Industry-Aligned Content: Modules co-created with experts from leading companies like Deloitte, AWS, IBM, BOSCH, National Geographic, covering topics like responsible AI, data analytics, English, and career development, ensuring relevance to global job markets.

• AI-Powered Job Matching: An AI engine that maps learner skills, assessment outcomes, and interests to real job roles and internships across ASEAN and beyond, helping students see concrete career pathways.

• Teacher & Institution Dashboards: Real-time dashboards for teachers and academic leaders to track progress, identify at-risk learners, compare cohorts, and plan targeted interventions at class or campus level.

This partnership leveraged SkillUp's existing network of more than 130 partner schools, over 15 universities, and 30 companies, amplified by Deloitte's regional and global presence and mentorship to create a scalable, data-driven success story.

Approach

• Hybrid Online + On-Campus Delivery: Core learning, quizzes and dashboards run on the SkillUp platform, while key moments happen via on-campus bootcamps, expert guest talks and in-person and virtual career fairs. This keeps the model scalable while ensuring the human-in-the-loop approach, as in-person interaction is still key. 

• Hyper-Localised Experience: Content, examples and assessments are localised in Thai (with the goal to introduce other languages such as Mandarin and Bahasa Indonesia). There are also case studies drawn from local industries and employers. Campaign calendars and messaging are tuned to each country’s academic cycle so learners feel the programme is “built for us.”

• SkillUp University Ambassadors: Selected students act as SkillUp Ambassadors, driving onboarding, running peer clinics and promoting success stories. They create a peer-led movement that sustains engagement between formal campaigns.

• Teacher & Leader Enablement: Faculty and programme coordinators receive short, practical training on using the dashboards to track progress and support at-risk learners. Academic leaders get simple insight reports that inform course design and institutional planning.

• Campaign-Based Onboarding & Re-Engagement: Structured campaigns, such as orientation challenges, two-week SkillUp Skills sprints, and career-readiness weeks, help keep the platform top of mind. Each campaign has clear goals, communication assets and rewards to keep participation high, including prizes and access to internships, as examples.

• Integrated AI Job-Matching Pathway: After completing core modules and assessments, learners unlock AI-powered job and internship recommendations mapped to their skills and interests. This makes the pathway from learning to real opportunities with Deloitte and partners very explicit.

Data-Driven Continuous Improvement: Usage, performance and outcome data are reviewed regularly with Deloitte and institutional partners. Insights from each cohort are used to refine content, campaigns and targeting for the next cycle.

Partners

Implementation

The rollout began with the platform's launch in November 2023  offering initial courses in STEM, sustainability, and job readiness. Below are just some of the events which have been ran, in total we have ran over 49 in person engagements over the last 24 months (which is an average of 1 every 2 weeks):