With 28 partners in the skill development space and Rs 668 crores committed, the National Skill Development Corporation (NSDC) completes one year of existence. Dilip Chenoy, CEO and MD, NSDC, tells Kalpana Pathak the sector will see a lot of action and investment from domestic and international players. Excerpts:
What target has NSDC set itself for the next fiscal?
NSDC is a public private partnership mandated to skill 150 million people by 2022. So far we have 28 proposals approved; 25 training organisations and three sector skills council. They will, over a 10 year period, train about 45 million people and the total financial commitment is 668 crores. This year our target is to look at 32 more proposals which will train between 15-20 million people over 10 years. We also propose to set up more sector skill councils.
Have your partners been successful in meeting their committments?
Whatever we are doing is impacting the lives of people on the ground. Each one of our proposal comes with a business plan and when we fund them it is based on a milestone that they are supposed to achieve every year. Based on that we release next tranche of funding. Two proposals that we gave last year, have achieved their milestone, and we are giving them the second tranche of funding now. They had to train 17,500 people by March 31 and they have exceeded numbers to around 20,000. They have also placed the students.
Do you have a mechanism where you can check these claims?
We have a monitoring exercise were we conduct a monthly conference call. We have an auditor who visits the players every quarter to audit both technical and financial details and see if the players are with in the parameters laid down in the project report. We also conduct half-yearly partners meeting where all partners meet and exchange best practices, identify areas that need to be worked on etc. We are now looking at levaraging the infrastructure of engineering institutes to meet skill development gap.
How can engineering institutions be used here?
There is a need for engineering colleges to actively engage in the skills space. Many colleges are asking companies what kind of people they want and getting curriculum approved by companies. This, demand-led engagement with the industry has to be done on a broader scale and a lot of our partners are doing it.
You mean the sector is attracting investments?
Skill development and advanced management courses are not regulated. There is a lot of private sector money coming in this space. There are a lot of private equity funds which are interested in this space. We have had discussions with around 20 PE funds so far. This is an exciting space and in the next few months you will hear some interesting news.