Budget Wish List..Nishant Saxena, CEO, Elements Akademia

Hi,

 

Please find below the Budget wish list of Mr. Nishant Saxena, CEO, Elements Akademia.

 

Also find attached a brief profile of Nishant along with his picture. also find attached a small brief on Elements Akademia, India's first chain of finishing schools (Training & Placement) that is conceptualized, funded and run by a group of 15 IIM Alumni/Faculty and is aimed at bridging the gap between academic theory and industry requirements.

 

Kindly let me know if you require anything else on the same.

 

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Regards,

Pawan Hora
Value 360 Communications
252 L, 2nd floor, Sant Nagar, East of Kailash, New Delhi 110049
+91-9891333258 / +91-11-46658812

 

 

Focus on public private partnership, especially in "employability" education

 

India's Service Sector is booming (60% of GDP, up from less than 40% in 1970; 17mn new jobs by 2010) but keeps complaining of an acute skilled manpower shortage. On the other hand, there is a large graduate pool (15mn+, 2.5mn new graduates every year) which struggles to find a decent job (Organized Sector employment in India is still a pathetic 13%!)

 

Isn't it a paradox then? The number of employees needed by the industry is very similar to the number of students churned out by the universities. Most of these jobs (in BPOs, Sales, Insurance, Retail etc.) simply require a basic graduation degree. But still 87% Indians are un- or under- employed? Water water everywhere, but not a drop to drink!

 

A part of the malady is perhaps in India's university education system which offers degrees but often fails to make graduates "employable". Curriculum is largely outdated, delivery is substandard, student absenteeism is rampant, most faculty lack corporate exposure, and multiple colleges are mushrooming with poor placement records.

No wonder then that a recent survey by Team Lease found that 57% of Indian youth suffers from some form of "unemployability". This threatens the very long term sustainability of India.

 

While the HRD ministry tries to sort out the issues in higher education in India, the budget must set a framework for more public-private partnership to develop "employability" skills that can directly help a person get a decent (Rs. 3000-Rs. 15,000 a month, proper payroll) job. Our own experiments with bottom of pyramid trainees in rural NCR, Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh suggest that through a 3-6 month customized training (supported by Government, NGO and MFI investments), a typical slum dweller (typically belonging to Below-Poverty-Line family or underprivileged sections like SC/ST/OBCs) can get Rs. 4-6,000 monthly job in a good company in sectors like Retail, Domestic Call centres or Sales. In fact, 70% of trainees not only got a job but also ended up increasing their monthly disposable family income by 4X! Budget needs to step up investment in this area (alongwith monitoring to ensure money does not get swindled off by fly-by-night "registered" NGOs!).

 

Nishant Saxena is Founder & CEO of National award winning Elements Akademia. He is also a guest faculty at IIM, Lucknow.

 

 

 

--
Regards,

Pawan Hora
Value 360 Communications
252 L, 2nd floor, Sant Nagar, East of Kailash, New Delhi 110049
+91-9891333258 / +91-11-46658812