Social Venture Partners to create job opportunity for 1 million Indians by 2020

It has launched a mission, 'Million Jobs Mission', which aims at creating an ecosystem to train and empower people

Social Venture Partners (SVP) India has rolled out an initiative to train and skill one million Indians by 2020 so as to create a sustainable livelihood for them.

This comes at a time when entry level jobs are being threatened by automation, artificial intelligence and robotics.

Established in 2012 by Ravi Venkatesan, former Chairman, Microsoft India and Chairman, Bank of Baroda, who currently chairs the SVP India Board, the organization is the India arm of SVP, a global community of more than 3,500 investors-donors across eight countries including U.S, Australia, Canada, China, India, Japan, Korea and United Kingdom.

The mission, Million Jobs Mission, launched on Wednesday, aims at creating an ecosystem to train and empower 1 million people for sustainable livelihoods in the country by 2020 by identifying and supporting 10-15 social organizations that are working to create jobs and improve incomes. SVP India has invited social organizations with plans to create 100,000 plus jobs in the next 5 years, to apply to be a part of this mission. The selected organisations will get capacity building support, mentoring from SVP and consortium Partners as well as access to funding.

"There is an alarming divergence between the opportunities and skills needed for jobs across sectors, and the actual availability of trained, empowered talent in the country," said Venkatesan. "Our global, national and local partners aims to redress this situation through the Million Jobs Mission" he said.

SVP India has expanded its ecosystem of partners who are funding, mentoring and scaling multiple NGOs and social enterprises in Bengaluru, Pune and Mumbai over the last couple of years, and soon it will be present in cities like Hyderabad and Delhi, said Ganesh Natarajan, member of the global Board of Social Venture Partners International, Chairman of 5F World and Chairman of Nasscom Foundation.

SVP, at present, is working with social organisations like Industree Foundation, Vrutti, The/Nudge Foundation and the Milestone Project of Natarajan Education Society to create large-scale livelihoods and these initiatives will be included in the Million Jobs Mission.

"We already have terrific consortium partners like McKinsey Social Initiative's Generation Program, SPJIMR Mumbai, Samhita Social Ventureson board and expect to enrol over a many more such partners in the next few months," said Madan Padaki, Co-founder & Trustee of Head Held High Foundation and Co-Convener of the Million Jobs Mission.

Tim Schottman, the CEO of SVP International, headquartered at Seattle, said, "SVP India's pervasive theme of livelihoods, the Million Jobs Mission, can become a game changer triggering transformational change. We will be watching the India initiative closely for scalable, sustainable impac