ICICI Academy for Skills inaugurates its first centre in Mumbai

Chief Minister of Maharashtra Devendra Fadnavis inaugurated the centre.

 

The centre will offer courses in five disciplines, namely electrical & home appliance repair, refrigeration & AC repair, two & three wheeler service technician, selling skills and office administration. 

 

The ICICI Academy has tied up with various industry leaders who as ‘Knowledge Partners’ help in co-creating the course curricula and content, setting up practical training laboratories and training of trainers. 

 

It has also tied up with industry partners to provide employment opportunities to the trained youth. The curricula of these courses consist of industry relevant vocational training and also life skills such as communication and financial literacy. 

 

The duration of the training is 12 weeks. One has to pass at least standard VIII and be between 18 and 30 years of age to become eligible for these courses. 

 

Chanda Kochhar, MD & CEO, ICICI Bank said: “We recognized skill development as an important area of focus as part of our efforts in the nation’s socio-economic development. Bridging the critical gap between manpower availability and employability is important to provide sustainable livelihood opportunities for all to grow and prosper.

 

"With this focus, emerged the idea of setting up skill training centres across the country, and the launch of ICICI Academy for Skills in October 2013. We took a holistic approach in our efforts and are ensuring not just job-oriented training which is provided free of cost to the underprivileged youth, but also helping the trained youth to find employment through our linkage with industry. We have significantly scaled-up our training capabilities over the years, and through the centres are providing practical training in 13 technical and office skills to the youth. Today, through ICICI Academy and our Rural Self Employment Training Institutes (RSETIs), we have the capacity to train 45,000 youth annually. I am proud to say that by March 2017, we aim to achieve a milestone of training one lakh youth,” she said.

 

Kochhar also launched a referral programme, GiftALivelihood, for sourcing deserving candidates for ICICI Academy. Under this programme, people can refer deserving candidates to ICICI Academy through www.giftalivelihood.com and help them get a training so that they can earn a sustainable livelihood and lead a life of dignity. Post referral, ICICI Academy will enroll all eligible and suitable candidates for its courses, which are provided free. At the end of the training, ICICI Academy will also facilitate employment.

 

By March this year, 36,000 students would have passed out of ICICI Academy which came into being in 2013 with 100% of the trained youth securing jobs with various organisations including reputed corporates like Bluechip Corporate Investment Centre Limited, Infinity Retail (Croma), Eureka Forbes, Minda Furukawa Electric Pvt Ltd, Café Coffee Day, Janalakshmi Financial services Pvt Ltd, leading private banks and insurance companies.

 

The Rural Self Employment Training Institutes (RSETIs) would have trained over 25,000 rural underprivileged youth by March this year in the districts of Jodhpur and Udaipur in Rajasthan. These centres impart training in skills required for the local economy (currently 21 trades) and also facilitate self-employment and employment for the trained youth.

 

In FY17, ICICI Academy and RSETIs will train nearly 45,000 youth, taking the total number of trained youth to over 1 lakh.

 

With the launch of the Mumbai centre, ICICI Academy has 22 centres across the country including a few exclusively for the women trainees. Six of these centres are residential. The Mumbai centre is the fourth training centre in Maharashtra—the other three are at Narsobawadi, Pune and Nagpur. In addition to training, ICICI Academy provides uniforms, meals and all relevant course material to the trainees. Women comprise about a third of the trainees.