With the turbulent past behind, Tech Mahindra is now looking at a novel way to build skilled workforce for the information technology and communication industry.
The Mahindra group company is going to start an engineering college soon with a view to promoting future needs of the technology industry.
Tech Mahindra’s Executive Vice-Chairman Vineet Nayyar said the company has tied up with the 200-year-old French university École Centrale Paris to set up the institute. 'Mahindra Ecole Centrale' is the maiden venture of Mahindra Educational Institutions, a subsidiary of Tech Mahindra.This, however, is not to be restricted to technological studies only. There would be several other streams such as energy, infrastructure and humanities.
‘Mahindra École Centrale’ will be based on a modern and international academic programme that “blends basic scientific and technical education with contemporary industry practices”, Nayyar said.
“Our integrated curriculum will develop students with the unique ability to adapt to global engineering challenges and new technologies that will shape our future and also to master the complexity of multinational organisations,” he said.
The Mahindras have registered a separate arm under Tech Mahindra to take care of its diversification into higher education. The company has tied up with Jawaharlal Nehru Technological University (JNTU) for building curriculum that conforms to the norms the AICTE (All-India Council for Technical Education).
The JNTU would award the final degrees to the students. The campus would come up at the Bahadurpally site of the company where it has huge stretch of land.
Initially, the university would have some 300 seats. At a later phase, it would go up to 415 seats. “The students will get inter-disciplinary degrees in subjects such as energy, infrastructure, technology and communication,” a senior executive of the company said.
Though almost all the major IT companies have their own training institutes and campuses, this is perhaps for the first time (excluding HCL’s Shiv Nadar’s initiative) that a top tier IT company setting up an engineering college.
After seeing the results, the company could even set up more such colleges in other cities as well. The company has long reduced its campus hiring. It has started ‘just-in-time’ hiring policy by spreading the word when it actually requires people.