Beauty & benefits behind manpower training

Having pioneered as India’s one of the first beauty and wellness brand that had set up a dedicated training academy, VLCC Institute of Beauty & Nutrition has grown to become Asia’s largest chain of vocational education academies in Beauty & Nutrition with its 59 campuses imparting training to nearly 10,000 students annually. Here is Sandeep Ahuja, Managing Director and Group CEO, VLCC Health Care Ltd sharing the industry insight and the challenges.

Since skilled manpower is the major challenge in the beauty and health industry, how do you cope up with it? 

Beauty and wellness sector has been growing at 18-20% year-on-year for the last few years and has a current market size of nearly Indian Rupees 70,000 crore, we are cognizant of the fact that the VLCC Institutes can only do so much to address the manpower challenge.  In 2011 itself, a study conducted by FICCI-PwC had projected that the Indian wellness services industry will face a likely shortage of ~600,000 skilled personnel by 2016. The same FICCI-PwC report had forecast that the number of people employed in the wellness space could potentially almost treble from over one million in 2011 to three million by 2015. Earlier, a separate Skill Gap study conducted by IMaCS - the consulting arm of domestic credit rating agency ICRA - on behalf of the National Skill Development Corporation (NSDC) had projected a likely shortage of 545,000 beauticians alone by 2022. VLCC has been closely working with several central government ministries and departments, particularly the Union Ministry of Skill Development & Entrepreneurship and the Union Ministry of Labour & Employment, and various state governments, besides education boards such as the CBSE to increase the pool of skilled people in the beauty and wellness domain.

Do you have a training academy of your own?

VLCC was among the first companies to realise that lack of skilled manpower could come in the way of the growth of the beauty and wellness domain, and, thus, as far back as 2001, set up a dedicated training academy for this arena under the banner VLCC Institute of Beauty & Nutrition. Today, the VLCC Institute of Beauty & Nutrition has grown to become Asia’s largest chain of vocational education academies in Beauty & Nutrition with its 59 campuses imparting training to nearly 10,000 students annually. VLCC also runs several skill development programs in partnership with various ministries and departments of the Central and State governments.

What is the selection criterion to recruit the staff at your every salon? 

We have a comprehensive selection process in place for hiring staff at all levels of operations, including that at the salons.

As there are many beauty brands operational via franchising model in India, what sets you apart than other franchisors? 

The VLCC Institutes of Beauty & Nutrition provide cutting edge employable skills training in the domain of beauty and nutrition through 59 campuses spread across India and Nepal. What has always set the VLCC Institutes apart is their sheer geographic reach and pan-India presence which is unmatched by any of its competitors, the quality of its faculty and mode of training as well as its excellent placement record.