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1. 5/27/2014 India's young demography: To drive growth, 500 million Indians need to be skilled and made employable - The Econom…
http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/industry/jobs/indias-young-demography-to-drive-growth-500-million-indians-need-to-be-ski… 1/5
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By Devina Sengupta & Anumeha Chaturvedi, ET Bureau | 13 Mar, 2014, 02.02AM IST Post a Comment
In an economy where the unorganised sector accounts for 30%
of the labour demand, the mammoth task of skilling 500 million
Indians is indeed no mean feat.
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India's young demography: To drive growth, 500 million
Indians need to be skilled and made employable
In a May 2012 address to global audience, S Ramadorai, advisor to the Prime Minister on
PM's National Council on Skill Development referred to the task of skilling 500 million
people by 2022 as a task with no precedent in the world, with no previous models to follow.
"We have to chart our own path for achieving this massive and highly aspirational target.
While the task may seem daunting, the global demographic indicators point towards a huge
opportunity — an opportunity that is available to every country only once in its history,"
Ramadorai stated.
In an economy where the unorganised sector accounts for 30% of the labour demand, the
mammoth task of skilling 500 million Indians is indeed no mean feat. And if India has to
make use of the huge demographic dividend in the years to come (India's working age
population will be far in excess of those not working unlike other developed nations),
employment outcomes of skilling programmes and more robust publicprivate partnerships
are going to be key.
Training and skilling firms will have to build scalable sustainable models and collaborate
with the industry to identify job opportunities for those being skilled. As Rituparna
Chakraborty, cofounder and senior vicepresident of TeamLease puts it: the only
programmes that will be successful, will be those that pray to one god; 'jobs'.
Last month, finance minister P Chidambaram launched India's first 'skilling card' under the STAR Scheme, encouraging students to open
bank accounts and be included in the banking system. The National Skill Certification and Monetary Reward Scheme, branded STAR,
seeks to motivate 10 lakh youth to voluntarily join skilling programmes by rewarding them financially on completing approved courses. This
should help in meeting the target of skilling 500 million people by 2022 by rewarding students at an approximate cost of Rs 1,000 crore.
But, it also indicates the challenges faced by the government and skilling agencies in helping people become gainfully employed.
For starters, being skilled doesn't necessarily translate into immediate employment. In 20122013, of the 402,506 people trained as part of
National Skill Development Corporation (NSDC) programmes, only 216, 741 could be placed in jobs. In 201112, NSDC skilled 181,691
people, out of which 144,238 got jobs. "Apart from being volatile due to macroeconomic parameters, the labour market in India is also
quite elastic. The fact that over 30% of labour requirement is from the unorganised or informal sectors is certainly a challenge, and
innovative models and mechanisms need to be evolved," said Dilip Chenoy, MD and CEO of NSDC, tasked with the objective of getting
150 million trained in skills by 2022.
NSDC is developing a labour market information system to address issues related to supplydemand mismatch, and ensure appropriate
capacity is developed to meet demand in terms of quantity and quality. New job roles and partners are being added periodically to ensure
at least 80% of all entrylevel jobs are within NSDC's ecosystem by March 2014.
Over the past few months, the council has been expanding targets and processes. "It took us three years to cross our first million, the next
million would come in another one year and the million after that would come in next six months. This would give you an idea of the scale
at which we are operating," said Chenoy. Since its inception in 2008, NSDC has trained 13.5 lakh people. "Our target for 201314 is to train
10 lakh and we are well on course to achieve the same. Next year our target is to train 33 lakh people across the country," says Chenoy.
The 29 sector skill councils affiliated to NSDC are also part of various central government schemes such as STAR and Ajeevika of the
rural development ministry. The IT sector skill council has the maximum number of certified candidates (61,828) followed by security and
retail.
2. 5/27/2014 India's young demography: To drive growth, 500 million Indians need to be skilled and made employable - The Econom…
http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/industry/jobs/indias-young-demography-to-drive-growth-500-million-indians-need-to-be-ski… 2/5
The sector skills council for the IT and ITeS industry was formed by Nasscom in partnership with NSDC. While the IT and ITeS industry
has the potential to provide 30 million opportunities by 2020, the objective is to standardise and streamline hiring and training, said
Sangeeta Gupta, senior Nasscom vicepresident.
Hiring patterns have shifted owing to changed priorities and skills now in demand include mobile applications, cloud virtualisation and
platform engineering besides the need for data scientists, she said. "Besides curriculum and policy changes, there is a need for better
technology and policy adoption as well as an overhaul of the education system," Gupta said. Policy paralysis, and economic and
demographic challenges have not discouraged training partners and sectoral councils from launching ambitious initiatives.
TeamLease chaired a committee at the Prime Minister's National Council on Skill Development, which proposed 14 specific changes to
the Apprentices Act of 1961, which got stuck in Parliament and will now have to wait for the next Lok Sabha.
"India has only 3 lakh formal apprentices while Germany has 3 million, Japan 10 million and China 20 million. Given that parliamentary
changes take time, we decided to move from talking to doing," said Rituparna Chakraborty, cofounder and senior vicepresident,
TeamLease.
TeamLease aims to go ahead and appoint 2 lakh apprentices every year for the next 10 years in 21 trades for a duration of three months to
two years. In an attempt to bridge the gap between employability and education, the firm formed a publicprivate partnership with the
Gujarat government to launch India's first vocational university in April last year.
"Our aim is to design and put into practice course syllabi focusing on academic, vocational, professional, technical and life skills domains,"
Chakraborty said. Efforts are also under way to work with youth from states such as Jammu & Kashmir and in the North East through
diverse projects. The Indian Institute of Skill Development (IISD) is working with the ministry of home affairs on a project called Udaan, now
in its second year.
Centum Learning manages 14 Bharti Walmart Training centres located at Amritsar, Aurangabad, Bangalore, and Delhi and provides end
toend manpower management involving sourcing, training and hiring. It has also partnered with Jharkhand's Ministry of Women & Child
Development to offer training programmes in candlemaking to girls aged 14 to 18.
It also provided skills training to over 7,800 youth from the Mahadalit community of Bihar under the Dashrath Manjhi Kaushal Vikas Yojana
along with the Bihar Mahadalit Vikas Mission (BMVM). The Agriculture Skill Council of India (ASCI) is trying to come to grips with the
unorganised nature of the sector besides projecting farming as a vocation. Started in 2012, ASCI aims to train 56.49 million people by the
end of the 10th year.
The most pressing question in skilling is who pays, said Chakraborty of TeamLease. "There is a bit of a market failure in skills. Companies
are unwilling to pay for training, but willing to pay for trained candidates. Candidates are not willing to pay for training, but jobs. Banks or
microfinance institutions are not willing to pay for training unless a job is guaranteed. And training companies are unable to fill up
classrooms, because deserving candidates can't afford the fee. So, individuals, government and companies will have to work together to
find a financing solution that's scalable, sustainable, transparent and honest."
3. 5/27/2014 India's young demography: To drive growth, 500 million Indians need to be skilled and made employable - The Econom…
http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/industry/jobs/indias-young-demography-to-drive-growth-500-million-indians-need-to-be-ski… 3/5
Case Study 1: WISE
Short for Women in Software Engineering, WISE was launched by IT skilling firm TalentSprint in December 2012
Women in Software Engineering or WISE was launched by IT skilling firm TalentSprint in December 2012.
When the graduates of Shri Vishnu Engineering College for Women in coastal Andhra Pradesh were unable to get placement, Hyderabad
based industrialist and chairman of Sri Vishnu Educational Society, Vishnu Raju, turned to TalentSprint. "These students were good but
being from rural areas, could not get placed as they lacked basic communication skills," said Raju. His society runs two women only
engineering colleges in Andhra Pradesh that were founded to fulfill his late grandfather BV Raju's longcherished dream of giving women
access to technical education. Over six months, TalentSprint coached about 40 unplaced women engineers on communication skills and
provided them supplementary tips on bridging fundamental gaps. As a result, about 30 were placed in MNCs such as Accenture and IBM.
At the new BVRIT Hyderabad College of Engineering For Women, Raju wanted this gap covered from the start, leading to the launch of
WISE.
"The goal of WISE is to enable enlightened women's colleges to provide a launch pad for their top women students, and to help Fortune
500 software companies speed up diversity and inclusion initiatives. Typically, the percentage of women engineers in highend software
companies is less than 10%," said Santanu Paul, cofounder and CEO of TalentSprint. WISE will cover 240 students in semester two, 180
in semesters three and four and 120 in semesters five and six. TalentSprint will cover five colleges in the near future, and aims to graduate
500600 students through WISE every year.
WISE focuses on the additional needs of a professional software developer through coverage of industry tools, techniques and practices in
five insemester modules, and practical, industrycentric project work in three summer modules. Mentoring is planned for thirdyear
students, and for the final modules, to be conducted later this year, TalentSprint will rope in senior industry insiders from firms such as
Microsoft for mentoring women. For the pilot programme at BVRIT, which has around 240 students, TalentSprint conducted the first module
last year, which included content on applications in the mobile industry and languages such as Python and Perl.
"Some of these languages are sought by the industry but not included in the Jawaharlal Nehru Technological University curriculum to
which we are affiliated," said Raju.
Paul said the planned outcome of WISE is to provide a strong reason for highend organisations to go to these colleges. TalentSprint will
take WISE to Shri Vishnu Engineering College for Women this month, which has about 7,000 students. "In the first two full semesters we
have been associated with BVRIT Hyderabad, the students have exceeded expectations," said Paul. Raju feels empowering women
graduates through specialised skills can also help them get jobs in product companies and R&D firms.
4. 5/27/2014 India's young demography: To drive growth, 500 million Indians need to be skilled and made employable - The Econom…
http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/industry/jobs/indias-young-demography-to-drive-growth-500-million-indians-need-to-be-ski… 4/5
Case Study 2: ARTHAVIDHYA
Founder and MD of Bangalorebased ePalmleaf ITeS G Nagarajan launched Arthavidhya in August 2012, when he and his cofounders
sensed a huge gap between what the colleges offer and what industry expects from accountants. Through domain skill assessments in
finance and accounting, counselling sessions, training and placement assistance, Arthavidhya aims to remove skill gaps in corporate
requirements for shared services, finance and accounting functions.
ePalmleaf offers services in transaction processing, data management, compliance management and financial analysis, and Nagarajan is
a chartered accountant, freelance trainer in corporate finance and business management and former CFO of Redington.
Promoted by a group of chartered accountants and engineers with over 100 years of combined work experience in the corporate sector,
Arthavidhya has assessed 4,500 commerce students so far and has signed agreements and run courses with six institutes like CMS
College and Ramakrishna Mission College in Coimbatore and MOP Vaishnav College in Chennai. "We have launched two online courses
on business accounting processes and another on soft skills and have five short courses on account receivables and account payables,
statutory compliance and payroll," says Nagarajan. Arthavidhya's core course focuses on business accounting processes.
"We have identified 56 different processes which are relevant for a basic/entry level accountant. We give the students a virtual office
environment and make them work on over 400 transactions which would give approximately six months of work experience," he says.
Students are then assessed with intermediate quizzes/revision exercises, a final quiz/VIVA and an employment readiness assessment.
The courses are coupled with an online chat facility, discussion forums and webinars. Nagarajan feels the main challenge is around
sourcing the students for training. "Skilling them has never been a challenge as our model works like an online game and this instils more
interest in the students. We handle slow learners by giving them additional attention," he says. Arthavidhya's aim is to ensure the students
score a minimum of 60% in their assessment post training.
