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Unisex hair and beauty salon chain Naturals has entered into a collaboration with Godrej Good & Green, the corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiative of the Godrej Group, to set up a training academy for beauty and salon training near here.
Naturals, with around 400 salons offering job to around 6,500 people, is expecting that it would require around 50,000-55,000 employees for the company alone to reach its target growth in next three to four years. The company is targeting to have 3,000 salons and 50,000-55,000 employees by 2018, said C K Kumaravel, CEO and co-founder, Naturals.
“One of the biggest challenges the industry is facing is lack of quality manpower. The perspective of the society towards this industry is stopping many students to come forward and pick up this job as a career,” he said. The academy would be training 50,000 individuals over the next four years.
Under the collaboration, the company would set up an academy in Marg Swarnabhoomi, a multi services SEZ (Special Economic Zone) in the East Coast Road. Construction work would start now and the facility would be ready before Diwali, he said.
The facility would start with training 250 students in a batch and the course would be of three months. While the cost of training one student might come to around Rs 40,000, the company would be charging 10 per cent of it from the student, while the rest would be taken care of by the academy.
The academy could be named as Godrej Naturals Hair and Beauty Academy, he said. Plans are also to set up satellite academies over the next 12-24 months in Siliguri and Imphal in the northeast and also in other parts of the country.
Kayomarz D Dotiwalla, associate vice president, Good & Green, Godrej Consumer Products Ltd, said, "Together with Naturals we hope to reach our goal to train and equip youth with skills that will enhance their income earning potential in the salon industry." The CSR initiative has a target to train 1 million youth by 2020.
Godrej Good & Green would take care of certification while Naturals would absorb at least 80 per cent of the students as its employees. Godrej SALONi, Godrej's beautician and hair care training programme, will be the knowledge partner of Natural Academy, in association with DB-Tech, which would take care of the implementation of the training.
The association between Naturals and Godrej Industries began around 18 months back, with the Salon chain playing a role in placing graduates of SALONi. Under the CSR initiative, Godrej has trained around 17,541 women across the country so far.
