You may soon see the house of Tatas churn out certified technicians, electricians and mechanics. Or, for that matter, specialists who are trained to work in retail centres and dealership outlets.
The top management of CMC, a unit of Tata Consultancy Services, is working on an ambitious plan to plunge into the vocational training space with a special focus on tier 2 and tier 3 cities, sources close to the development told Business Line .
If the plan gets the CMC board's approval, the company may soon establish a fresh nationwide network of centres that will be equipped to provide a whole range of vocational training in manufacturing, utilities infrastructure development, transportation and telecommunication, they said.
What's on offer
Mr R. Ramanan, Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of CMC, said: ‘To begin with, we are looking into entering job enabling vocational training for technology support, customer sales support for retail market as well as dealerships, soft management skills for field level supervisors, and further penetrating other vocational areas during the course of the year.
He further said that the company's long-term plan is to “create job-enabling vocational training programmes for the manufacturing, utilities / energy, infrastructure development, transportation and telecommunication / media sectors.”
By plunging into the vocational training space, CMC wants to create a trained workforce that will be readily deployable given that India is eyeing infrastructure investment of $1 trillion over the five years starting in April 2012. Analysts point out that currently very few institutions offer specialised training in the areas of electrical fittings, carpentry, masonry and so on.
Curriculum
In order to develop the curriculum for this initiative, CMC is seeking tie-ups with vocational training institutions such as the Industrial Training Institutes (ITIs) and the National Skill Development Corporation.
The company is preparing the groundwork to venture into the vocational training space early next fiscal. “We have already started pilot vocational training in retail and tech support in some parts of the country, but we expect too scale this up during the coming financial year,” said Mr Ramanan.
In fact, CMC has been active in the space of IT-related education and training for a long time through its initiative called CMC Academy. Education and training accounted for around six per cent of CMC's second quarter revenues of Rs 266.5 crore.