Mumbai, Jul 14 (IANS): With the aim of diversifying its portfolio beyond travel, online corporate travel platform Yatra.com on Tuesday said it had forged an alliance with upGrad Enterprise, the business-to-business arm of online higher education company upGrad.

The development comes even as the Covid-19 pandemic hit the global travel industry hard.

This partnership will enable Yatra's corporate clients to deliver advanced learning and skill development for their employees, the company said.

"In a tough economic climate, it is important to develop and reskill the workforce to overcome the challenges being presented," Dhruv Shringi, Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer, Yatra.com, said in a statement.

"We are excited to join forces with upGrad to provide a platform to our clients who are looking to develop employees' potential specific to their businesses or a sector," Shringi added.

From deployment-ready workforce within six months, to reducing employee attrition and aligning learning and development plans with business growth strategy, upGrad Enterprise will work closely with Yatra's corporate and SME clientele.

The edtech major will be providing deep skilling programmes that align with the client's desired business outcomes to deliver impact at scale.

Yatra.com said it services over 850 corporate and more than 20,000 SME clients.

"The unprecedented rate of technology advancement is disrupting companies and jobs everywhere. Across verticals, enterprises face barriers to this adoption due to skill-gap in their talent pool," said Mayank Kumar, Co-Founder and MD, upGrad.

"Such barriers can be crippling, hampering business growth. Our strategic partnership with Yatra, which is absolutely the first of its kind and creates a new milestone in the education industry, will be focused towards bridging this workforce skill-gap," Kumar said.