Business of Making the Indian Youth Future Ready

The education system in India does not equip students enough to deal in the real world. The bookish knowledge stay limited to books and practical knowledge is what the companies look in for.

Graduates from beyond the top 30-50 colleges of India just do not have the basic skills that one would expect from looking at their degrees or diplomas.

According to a recent study, only 34 per cent of India's 5 million graduates are employable in any industry.

The challenge is to provide vocational training to almost 500 million people by 2022.

This is why there is a huge scope for the skill development business in India.  Moreover government too is supporting this business by allocating resources to the private companies, who are participating in Skill India Mission.

The total amount of Foreign Direct Investments (FDI) inflow into the education sector in India stood at US$ 1.42 billion from April 2000 to March 2017, according to data released by Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion (DIPP).

Prime Minister has announced Shramev Jayate and set up a Ministry of Skill Development. There are also private-public organisations like National Skill Development Corporation, besides private training institutes.

Siddarth Bharwani, Director of Jetking, said, "Experiential learning courses, i.e. a mix of classroom and practical training, can help increase retention of students. Presently, only a few institutions offer such courses in India."

"There’s a mismatch of education and skills that young people acquire and what corporate actually require them to possess. Most of our curriculum is obsolete and lacks scope."

The Government of India has allocated around Rs 17,000 crore (US$ 2.55 billion) towards skilling, employment generation, and providing livelihood to millions of youth, in order to boost the Skill India Mission.

The Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship has launched the Pradhan Mantri Yuva Yojana, which will provide entrepreneurship education and training to over 700,000 students in 5 years through 3,050 institutes.

PMKVY is the flagship program under the Skill India Initiative. The Union Government plans to set up skill development centres across India with an investment of Rs 12,000 crore (US$ 1.8 billion) to create job opportunities for 10 million individuals by 2020 under PMKVY, as per Bandaru Dattatreya, Minister of Labour and Employment.

National Policy for Skill Development and Entrepreneurship 2015 is India’s first integrated program to develop skill and promote entrepreneurship simultaneously. The Union Government plans to provide Rs 7,000 crore (US$ 1.05 billion) to states to spend on skill development, and thereby accelerate the ambitious task of skilling 500 million Indians by 2022, and encourage creation of an ecosystem of entrepreneurs.

The National Skill Development Mission has created an elaborate skilling eco-system and imparted training to 7.6 million youth since its launch in 2015 and the government now plans to set up 1,500 Multi Skill Training Institutes across the country.

Sanjeev Duggal, CEO & Director, Centum Learning Limited, said that organizations entering the vocational education & skill building domain need to have a socio-economic motive and not just RoI motive to do business in this sector.

He added, "I would call this a patience capital model. It is a 10-year game if you invest in an education company. You can’t expect returns before 7 years. It is not a three-four year story.”

India adds 12 million people to its workforce annually, but very few have any formal skill training. Today, only four per cent of the Indian workforce is skilled, in contrast to the 42 per cent in US, 76 per cent in Germany, 80 per cent in Japan and 96 per cent in South Korea.