Walk on splinters to be employable
In the past few months, Dennis John, a third year student of Federal Institute of Science and Technology (FISAT), Angamaly, in Ernakulam, Kerala, has learnt to swallow fire from lit cottonballs, walked on fire with flames coming up to his knees, marched on glass splinters and, hold your breath, played with a couple of live scorpions crawling up his palm. If you thought John’s been living life on the edge, that is not the case. He is getting trained for life at work.
John and 49 others are training under Hafiz Khan, 35, founder of Chennai-based E Zone. Apparently, dangerous activities like these are lessons in breaking pre-conceived notions about life; students learn that some problems that may seem dangerous can be solved with intelligent application., What’s learning for these students is a sizeable business opportunity for Khan in the form of employability training.
Beyond imparting lessons in life skills, John’s institute has also roped in ‘Turning Point’ run by Thomas K. George, 37. Based out of Palakkad, Kerala, the outfit prepares final-year students for interviews at the time of recruitment.
George and Khan belong to a breed of entrepreneurs who are cashing in on the opportunity of ‘Employability Training’. Cracking that job interview is the most important goal—but most edu-trainers who have tapped this market initially are now scaling up by introducing newer modules. Engineering colleges, in particular, are willing takers after a tough placement season, realising slowdown-hit corporates don’t have the patience or moolah to invest in employability training.
These programmes generally have two components. One, soft skills training ending in better communication, interpersonal skills and personality development and two, aptitude training to gauge the logical ability of the candidate to reason out and do problem-solving.
Says Ma Foi Consultant’s Chief Executive E. Balaji: “Any trainer can make a difference in bridging the employability gap if he assesses the deficiency levels of the student and the exact requirement of the corporate—and brings in a proper fit.” And how big is the employability issue? “We estimate from Ma Foi’s own experience that only 50 per cent of students passing out are directly employable,” he says.
The Big Opportunity
That’s reason enough for colleges to rope in these entrepreneurs. Besides, the South—particularly Tamil Nadu and Karnataka—is the recruitment ground for IT companies, the former on account of the largest concentration of engineering colleges in the country spread across the state, and the latter by virtue of being the largest software exporter. Little wonder then, these regions are also fertile grounds for edutrainers.
Sensing the opportunity, new players are quickly jumping onto the employability bandwagon. A former public relations executive, Anjali Rege, 53, has been running a partnership firm ‘Right Step Finishing School’ for the last eight months in Chennai. Rege says her market is “polytechnics (institutions offering a diploma on engineering) and arts and science colleges”.
Her assortment of services includes language training, resume writing, special training to potential office assistants, customer relationship management, telesales marketing inclusive of voice modulation and managing irate customers.
The avenues in the newfound field were also enough to prompt Chennaibased Uma Krishnamoorthy, 46, to leave her job in the HR department of Ramco Systems. She has started a training company ‘Springboard Career Development Services’. Apart from language, personality, placement-related training, she plans to impart skills on appreciating business processes and other value-added courses. At the moment, her newly-launched company is busy marketing the offerings and signing on colleges.
With tailormade modules being the flavour of the season, trainers likes Yogalakshmi M., 50, of Yogam Edutrainers have created women-specific modules.Yogalakshmi gives her students lessons in grooming, choice of appropriate footwear, and sari draping, among others. This session happens after an intensive session on communication that has modules on overcoming inhibitions and acquiring a refined accent.
Money Matters
What’s making these players clamour for a slice of the employability pie is the fact that the skill enhancement market has evolved considerably in the last decade— mainly because of employabilty not keeping pace with India’s growth. Most industries were growing in excess of 10 per cent and some manpower-intensive sectors such as IT/ITES were witnessing annual growth of over 25 per cent.
Fortunately, India had a large base of graduate and engineering colleges that were producing more than two million graduates and about half-a-million engineers every year. However, these students were far from being industry-ready. This gap led to two phenomena: The first was the emergence of in-house training setups where companies like Infosys created a training campus that could train 10,000 students. The second was the setting up of professional finishing schools in metros. However, these could take another nine months to compete and were logistically difficult for non-metro residents to attend. Hence, the rise of entrepreneurs who go to colleges and provide the finishing touch.
Chennai-based N. Raj Mohan, a behavioural scientist running skill development outfit ‘Bodhi’ since 1998, is a veteran of sorts in the edutrainer market. In early years he focussed on corporates and now the market has turned bigger for him with colleges and schools beginning to show interest. Mohan expects a growth of at least 15 per cent in the current year from employability training in colleges for his business and expects the entire industry to grow.
Most of the edutrainers-entrepreneurs charge varying fees but the variation is not stark. Some entrepreneurs charge Rs 700 for a 60-hour module on average; others charge Rs 2,000 for a 100-hour module.
According to industry estimates, such ventures are only scratching the surface; the employability market potential is big. Vouches Amit Bansal, CEO, Purple Leap—part of Educomp and now Pearson—who understood the scope for employability trainers since starting Purple Leap in 2007 in Bangalore with three other professionals. Last year, the outfit trained 2,000 students; this year, it’s targeting at least 5,000 and will touch base with at least a 100 colleges.
Bansal is also looking at training for the financial services sector, and retail. but is waiting for the slowdown to end. “So big is the market that Purple Leap will witness a 500 per cent growth in revenues in the next 4-5 years,” says Bansal. To prepare for this, the company has invested in VSAT (Very Small Aperture Terminal) technology at its cost (Rs 5 lakh per centre) in colleges to set up career centres and train across colleges as far as Punjab.
“Many mid cap IT companies don’t want to undergo the expense of this training and are more than willing to take our students,” says Bansal. A win-win for students, colleges and surely edutrainers!
