India’s education system has undergone significant capacity expansion over the last decade. Most of it has been in the higher education and K12 space. The action on vocational training, which is a critical industry demand, is a recent development.
India’s vocational training structure is informal and apprenticeship driven. This is proving woefully inadequate in terms of quantity as well as quality.
India needs to train 70 million people in vocational skills over the next five years. Besides, there is need to retrain another 360 million workers.
The government is targeting to train 500 million people by 2022 and is encouraging participation of entrepreneurs and private organisations in the space.
The demand spans across various sectors — construction, mining, agriculture, power, automotive, retail, hospitality, logistics, healthcare and so on. Each sector requires manpower with varied skills representing an entire spectrum of training opportunity. A conservative estimate puts this opportunity at Rs 350,000 crore over the next 10 years.