Vocational Academy India Private Limited, a joint initiative of the Collabrant Group and STRiVE plans to roll out 600+learning centres in every disctict headquarter of the country over the next couple of years in order to help bridge the skill gap of rural and semi-urban students.
More than 72 per cent of India's population are under the age of 35 and it is estimated that around 300 million people between the age of 18-35 seek employment of some forum.
The situation has aggravated with the economic downturn.
More than 46 million and above are registered with government employment exchanges. Of this hardly 1.5-2 million students get registered for any kind of vocational education and training. To start with, the Bangalore-based company plans to roll out 20 such vocational academies across India by the end of this year at an investment of Rs 7.5 crore Speaking at a press conference A P Srivatsan, managing director, Vocational Academy India Private Limited said, “The total project cost is Rs 100 crore to be spent over a period of seven years. This fiscal, we plan to open twenty such vocational academy in the outskirts of NCR, greater Mumbai, Kolkata, Chennai, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Pune. Eight have been launched already, another 12 are in different stages of construction.We have committed an investment of Rs 7.5 crore this year.” The group announced the launch of its two centres in West Bengal, one each in Narendrapur and Kolkata.
Three more are expected to come up by October this year, in Howrah, Shillong and Gangtok. Each of these vocational academies will have a full capacity of producing 3,000 students per annum, thus reaching out to 1.8 million rural and semi-urban youth.
The group has launched nine new vocational courses in different disciplines and plans to introduce 15-20 more new academic disciplines in the next couple of years. The course is designed in collaboration with industry partners and have a duration of three months with the fees ranging between Rs 4000- Rs 8000. VOCAD will shortly launch a job exchange in August, which will coordinate with all government job exchanges.