“We cannot always build the future for our youth, but we can build our youth for the future,” said Franklin Roosevelt. The same is reiterated in the endeavours of various vocational training institutes in India that have taken up the task of educating the youth not just to win degrees but earn skills to be employment ready.

Whereas, education aims at making us learn things, vocational education particularly, aims at making us learn the art of earning a livelihood. It teaches us the skills to procure a job. One can go for any vocational course, considering his interest as well as aptitude to get the most out of a particular vocational course. According to an investment research, the vocational training market (airlines, retail, financial services) in India is estimated to be $ 136.50 crore and is expected to grow at CAGR of 22.1 per cent year-on-year. A requirement of 11 lakh executives is expected in retail, telecom, finance, call centers, BPO and service companies in the next two years. Moreover, the current recessionary scenario has made the employer more selective in choosing the employee with the right skills set. Manoj Chawla, Senior Vice President, NIS Sparta Ltd declares, “It is for this segment that NIS Academy creates short and long term programmes that make them ‘market ready’ for customer facing roles. The programmes of NIS Academy are designed to build business skills which comprise sales, customer retention, personal effectiveness and leadership skills, which are much required in business domains such as retail, finance or telecom”.

According to Mathai Chackochen, CEO, Inter Networkz, “In general, during the slow down many professionals get time to upgrade their skills and they have the time in their hands to study new technologies. For entrepreneurs, it is a good time to invest and get ready for the times for technologies to land, which will sustain the growth in training for next few years. This also gives entrepreneurs time to add on business of other brands and sustain their business in these conditions.”

Vocational education catching on  

There are indicators galore heralding opening of more and more vocational and training institutes in the country, like Union Human Resource and Development Minister, Kapil Sibal talking of floating more polytechnics, Indian vocational training institutes like NIIT and Aptech gaining ample foothold or recent incidents of Indian students witnessing racial attacks forcing people to reconsider Indian study options.

In the countries like Germany, seats in universities remain vacant as the people there believe that the university education does not brace up students professionally. Over 80 per cent students there take up part time jobs along with their vocational courses, thereby acquiring practical and theoretical training concurrently. The similar trend is catching on in India, as people today, are more inclined towards job oriented courses rather than acquiring mere university degrees. Therefore, the franchise of a vocational training institute holds to gain profitably, especially in the present times - of economic slowdown.

“Any developing country requires people with multi domain experience, and we are catering to that need at the moment, by inducting students and professionals  in courses that have global acceptance; this will help them to face challenges in the time of crisis.” adds, Chackochen.

Better English, better jobs

Whereas, the demand of sound communication skill proves a boon for some, it turns fatal for the ones who lack it. Good communication skills being a necessary pre-requisite in almost every job has led to the mushrooming of so many spoken English centres. The institutes like VETA, TKWs English, Hero Mindmine etc. aim at bridging the gap by providing skill development training through experiential learning techniques. Realising the fact that the growing technology service sector requires not only top of the line technology savvy professionals, but  also people with management skills, Karrox, an IT training institute has partnered with a company known as LMI India for rendering soft skills and leadership training to its students. Aptech will also be shortly entering the English language training space called, ‘English Express’. IACM has also included 48 hrs of English language training module for improving skills in English language.

IT a necessary skill

Indian IT training market is expected to be 2700 crore and is growing at 64 per cent CAGR. According to IDC, the opportunities in IT certification will be abundant in Asia and the Pacific region, especially in India, China, Korea, Singapore, and Australia. Institutes such as Aptech, NIIT, Jetking, IACM, Karrox, Inter Networkz (to name a few) offer various courses to fulfil IT demands across various industries besides individuals.

Providing computer literacy to school students, training college students for IT careers and refining industry professionals looking to move higher at the corporate ladder by providing them IT skills constitute various tasks the IT institutes perform. NIIT, set up to help the nascent IT industry overcome its human resource challenges in 1981,  has today grown to be amongst world’s leading talent development companies offering learning and knowledge solutions to over five million students across 40 countries through franchise route through wholly owned subsidiaries in Asia-Pacific, Europe, Japan and the USA.

Education in retailing

India is a land of shoppers and shopkeepers.  The age-old unorganised shopping has since traversed to organised shopping, and retailing has now undergone a total transformation. The institutes like TKWs Retail School offer courses providing strong foundation to the students before launching them in retail or hospitality sector. This helps an aspirant in not only securing an entry level job but also paving way for a strong career ahead. TKWs Retail School through its placement division has succeeded in achieving international retail placements of its students. The institute has affiliations with leading retailers like ADAG group, Reliance Group, Tata Group, Future Group to organize ‘on-job-training’ for its students. The students after their course completion are placed with similar companies through TKWs. Quite hopeful of the success of TKWS retail School, Amit Goyal, Director, Franchise & Training, TKWs asserts, “We see over 10 million new retail jobs being created in next couple of years. With the government removing the FDI restrictions, these numbers can increase manifolds.

All students of Anthem Academy have access to a specially designed personality development soft skills module, which helps them integrate well into corporate culture. Healthy interactions with leading players provide participative learning opportunities to students. Rajiv Ahuja, Director Founder, Anthem Academy illustrates, “All our students underwent a 30-day on-the-job training with Pantaloon, where they were able to see practical implementation of the concepts they learnt in the class room.”

The animated character

Studies by NASSCOM show that India has the potential to grow its animation industry to around USD 1 billion by 2010, but will remain restricted to USD 869 million on account of a looming demand-supply gap in the area of employable human resources. A similar situation exists in the gaming segment as well, which has the potential to achieve revenues of USD 732 million by 2010, but is expected to touch only around USD 424 million by that period, owing to the paucity of skilled manpower. This shows that the animation and gaming industry has the potential to generate a lot of employment opportunities.  On the other hand, companies like, ZICA, Toonz Animation, Maya Academy of Advanced Cinematics (MAAC), Frameboxx and Xplora Design School have contributed immensely to the Indian animation industry and intends to take this legacy forward and expand throughout the country.

Starting as an in house training division of Toonz Animation India Pvt. Ltd in the year 2002, Toonz Academy is one of the premier institutes in South Asia, offering state-of-the-art training facility in 3D and 2D animation.  P Jayakumar, CEO, Toonz Academy informs, “The rise of Indian animation and gaming industry has been more than phenomenal. The segment is witnessing burgeoning growth with global outsourcing contracts pouring in. This is supplemented by the growth of a strong domestic animation market.”  

Education for vocation

While excitement and zest for training may be the reason for setting up a training institute, they very well realise the difference between education and training. “The more I got exposed to training, the more interested I became in it. I was always clear in my mind about the distinction between education and training, and the opportunity to provide job skills aimed at specific industry verticals seemed like a very exciting space to get in, and hence Anthem Academy was born,” informs Ahuja.

These institutes do have tie ups with various companies for the placement of their own products which is why most of them provide 100 per cent job guarantee. “We have tie ups with United Colours of Benetton, Orient Craft, Study by Janak, Dhruv Globals, to name a few for training, internships and placements,” says Sunjey Aggarwal, CEO, D. Newage School of Design. Aptech has a full fledged placement cell which has forged close association with industry for both internships and placements. Ninad Karpe, CEO & MD, Aptech states, “We have several activities like career fests which provide a meeting ground to the recruiting organizations as well as our students.” Besides having tie-ups with Microsoft, Oracle, Prometric