Our experience of building one of India’s biggest skill education centers

Recently, we opened the new and sprawling campus of the Deshpande Educational Trust (DET) in Hubballi. The campus spread in an area of 2.4 lakh sqft. can accommodate 2,500 students at any given point in time. The reason we had to build such a big facility is the increasing number of youth joining different residential training programs offered under DET.

Many of my friends and acquaintances are asking me how we could scale our skill education program in such a big way and successfully, with the best placement record for the thousands of fellows graduating out of DET every year. So, I decided to share our experience and the insights from our decade-long journey.

Let me start with a question. Despite having millions of students graduating from colleges and universities every year, why are the likes of Infosys and TCS and other big corporates run in-house programs to train fresh recruits to make them job ready? It’s apparently because our college and university education systems are unable to catch up with necessary skills and the right mind-set required at the workplace, resulting in a huge ‘skill gap’, forcing the bigger companies to run parallel training programs. Not all companies can afford to take up such an exercise, and they really struggle to onboard quality human resource.

Just to put it in numbers, the percentage of the skilled workforce in India is less than 5 percent! It’s abysmally low when compared to 80 percent in Japan, 76 percent in Germany, and 42 percent in the US. Something is seriously wrong.

Having a high percentage of skilled workforce is key to the socio-economic progress of a country. Realizing this need, successive governments in India launched initiatives to impart skill-based education. However, going by the dismal record, it appears that the skill development initiatives either didn’t receive singular focus or they failed at the execution level. We started Deshpande Educational Trust (DET) to equip the youth coming from rural areas, tier-2 and tier-3 cities by equipping them with an entrepreneurial mind set, work ethics, a can-do attitude and industry-ready skills.

It was our interaction with our industry that helped us realize the challenges of finding skilled, articulate, and confident graduates for first timer entry-level jobs, especially in tier-2 cities like Hubballi. We are among the early starters of skill development in India by starting the first program in 2008, and subsequently under the banner of DET in 2010, much before the launch of the popular ‘Skill India’ program by the government. 

A journey of great learning

Leading the efforts at our skill development programs over the last ten years has been a journey of great learning. I believe that any organization that wants to strengthen the skill education ecosystem in the country can draw insights from our experience and the ‘high touch’ model that helped us scale the program effectively.

We took the first step after many interactions with the youth from north Karnataka, NGOs and local industry and learning both about the demand and the supply side of the job market. On the demand side, the industry and non-profit organizations were struggling to find the right candidates for entry level jobs. They were not expecting college graduates to come with any expertise, but were looking for candidates who could fit into the role from day one, with minimum additional training.

On the supply side, we observed that most youths from rural or semi-urban areas, who had either completed their college education or quit their studies halfway, were clueless about their future as they did not have necessary attitude to work in organized sector, not to speak of skills for a job.

In 2008, I spent four months travelling through several districts in Karnataka such as Bellary, Gulbarga, Raichur, Chitradurga, Mysore, Davangere, besides some rural and semi-urban areas in Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan and Delhi, interacting with more than a thousand youths. They all appeared to me like the products of the broken university and college education system. All they needed was a quick and rigorous learning which could equip them with multiple skills. They also needed multi-sector skills as the job market is very dynamic and limited in smaller cities, hands-on industry experience and a problem solving entrepreneurial mindset. These insights became the bedrock of our program delivery and curriculum development. We designed the programs with a high-touch model, incorporating all these aspects.

What began as a small step in 2008 with 28 youths has now grown into one of the largest skill education centers in the country. Currently, DET has 12 skill development programs catering to various industry needs and the aspirations of the youth. More than 5000 students have graduated from DET with 85+ percent placement record. About 1500 students are currently studying on the campus.

So what factors helped DET achieve big success and deliver impact?

Rigorous short-term residential program

We started with 9-month residential programs but soon discovered that they needed to be shorter and more rigorous. Now, most of our programs are of 4—6 months duration and the fellows spend more than 10 hours a day in learning.

Our brick-and-mortar approach of providing accommodation and food required us to build the logistical support and infrastructure. The idea is to provide a minimum of 100 days of rigorous learning environment to the fellows. We believe it is important for them to stay in one place and get constant exposure to diverse learning opportunities.

In-house trainers familiar with students’ background

The biggest difficulty we faced in the beginning was getting trainers who could understand our rigorous culture and help fellows learn beyond the usual teaching style. We got a few well-qualified faculty from reputed institutions. But not many of them could align with our hands-on culture and relate themselves with the incoming candidates. There was also a huge mismatch between the mindset of the fellows from the rural areas and the urban educated trainers.

The best way to inspire others to believe in your ideas is to walk the talk and show your and rigor at work. I played the role of a trainer for a couple of months, working for longer hours and taking care of a few modules.

We decided to develop trainers who could sync with our culture in-house. We identified a few bright individuals among the graduating batches and made them a part of our skill development programs, providing them additional support to gain the job experience. Over the years, we gathered a good pool of colleagues who understood our work culture, pedagogy, internal processes, delivery mechanism and the value system. Now, we have more than 200 colleagues who understand the different dynamics of skill development. With this, we are doubling the student strength almost every year.

Practice-oriented, hands-on learning

DET fellows spend most of their time either on the campus or with the industry, learning by practice rather than theory. Our association with several organizations provides real-world scenarios for our students to discover and learn in live mode. For instance, HESCOM has provided access to their power grids to give DET students from the electrician training program a hands-on exposure to learning. The fellows learn by doing and this is one of the biggest value additions that sets DET apart from the traditional education providers.

Focus on multi-skills and work ethics

From simple tips on how to reach office in time to communicating with customers to troubleshooting in times of crisis, DET fellows are equipped to manage everything. All fellows, irrespective of the programs, are trained in communicative English, IT skills, strong work ethics and entrepreneurial skills. One of the reasons for the high rate of placement of DET fellows is that they are multi-skilled, confident, articulate and manage crisis with confidence.

Empowering female youth

One key area that DET focused on since the beginning was to address the gender bias that is even more pronounced in India’s rural areas. By maintaining a male to female ratio of 55:45, DET continuously reinforces gender equality and justice, thus creating a more equitable society that encourages women in the workforce. We are proud to have several girls from conservative backgrounds becoming role models in their families, communities and organizations, and emerge as the torch-bearers of a new India

Unleashing Creativity

The youth who learn on DET campus undergo domain training interspersed with exercises that unleash their creativity. The creativity-inducing activities make every learning session lively and impactful, helping fellows develop their metaphoric thinking, solution-finding and risk-taking abilities. There is no visitor to our campus who does not compliment the vibrancy of the environs.

Programs that at in sync with changing industry needs

The needs of the industry change dynamically and so are the job opportunities. We keep a tab on the dynamic nature of the industry, engage with the employers to understand the changing requirements. We keep adding newer programs to prepare the fellows for the emerging opportunities. Youths come with their own aspirations about their careers, but may not have the necessary skills. DET brings a personalized approach to shape the careers of the individuals in keeping with the industry trends and their career dreams.

Collaborating with corporate partners

Over the years, the Foundation has built a strong partner network to support DET programs in terms of funding and placement. We continue to add more partners every year, thanks to the transformational change the DET is bringing about at the ground level, making it an interesting proposition for CSR partnerships.

The corporates looking to spend at least 2 percent of their net profits on CSR initiatives as mandated by the law see a reliable partner in us. Secondly, when ‘skill development’ became a buzzword at the national level, especially after the government launched Skill India program in 2014, we were there at the right time and many corporates came forward to support the DET programs.

Having the right processes, audit mechanism, transparency and the goodwill we have earned with our excellent track record make it easy for any corporates to partner with us. Our esteemed partners such as Yes Bank, HSBC Skills for Life, RBL Bank, V-Guard, and Hitachi Consulting are funding and helping us scale our efforts in a big way.

DET is a journey which was well begun and is well on course. It is now a proven model which can be adopted and implemented even outside the Sandbox. For instance, we are in Kadapa in Andhra Pradesh, Nizamabad and Nalgonda in Telangana.

To accommodate the increasing number of students, trainers and the partners, we have built a state-of-the-art facility for skill education in Hubballi. The campus is well-equipped with modern classrooms, labs, and workshops. It’s the biggest such facility in the country in terms of the number of students learning in one hub, the number of programs and the infrastructure.

Going forward, DET will grow even bigger with more number of programs catering to the skill needs of about 25-30 industrial sectors, churning out thousands of well-equipped and confident graduates every year. From the Foundation’s perspective, DET has been a successful story of scaling effectively and delivering real value to all stakeholders.