When Visionet Systems’ project ‘Unnati for India’ was unveiled last year, COVID- 19 had wreaked havoc in all aspects of life and especially hit the job market hard, especially for youths from lower-income backgrounds. With limited access to training, a gaping digital divide, disrupted education and limited employment opportunities, many young people between the age of 18 and 24 were left facing an uncertain future.
In such a scenario, Visionet Systems India’s MD and Global Head of BFSI Business, Mr. Alok Bansal introduced a free initiative called ‘Unnati for India’, that was meant to plug the skilling gaps in college curricular to make the young future ready in a world where Digital Transformation, Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Cryptocurrencies, NLP’s (Natural Language Processing) and more are defining multiple industries.
Last year, Visionet announced its plan to train around one lakh graduates over the next five years to make them employable in the information technology and BPM sectors and started a 45-day program for 500 young professionals. By April 2021, over 600 young people had been trained for free and 90 percent of them were absorbed in the corporate stream.
Mr. Alok Bansal says, “We are now creating a curriculum for IT practices that is being integrated with several colleges in Karnataka and in and around Mumbai. Visionet is adding practical demos and training modules to make sure that the students get proficient in Data Analytics, Data Engineering, Data Science, Cloud Operations, Cloud Development, App Development and the like. Post successfully completing this program, they have a choice to move within Visionet or be employable anywhere in the IT industry.
The program is absolutely free and hence accessible to students coming from smaller towns or economically weaker sections. This year, Visionet Systems has been able to induct close to 200 such students in different businesses. The majority of them are into BPM services and 30 students have been inducted in the IT domain. Close to 45% of these 200 students are women.
Most of the hirings have taken place across Mumbai and Bangalore. Says Mr. Alok, “In 2022, we also aim to hire people just to monitor ‘Unnati for India’. We will try to increase our outreach, scale this project at a PAN India level and tie up with at least 30-40 colleges across the country. We will ensure that around 20,000 to 25,000 students benefit from it. We will also be expanding this program to skill the youth in capital markets and insurance in technology as well as BFSI.”
The skilling program is open to undergraduates and graduates from any stream and the 45 to 60-day training will be a combination of classroom and online modules.
