The free skill-building programme will help with employment opportunities for those left facing an uncertain future due to the pandemic.

When Visionet Systems' project 'Unnati for India' was unveiled last year, COVID-19 had wreaked havoc on all aspects of life and especially hit the job market hard, especially for youths from lower-income backgrounds. Many young people between the ages of 18 and 24 are left facing an uncertain future. With limited access to training, a gaping digital divide disrupted education and limited employment opportunities.

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 programme for 500 young professionals. By April 2021, over 600 young people had received free training, with 90% of them being absorbed into the corporate stream.

Mr Alok Bansal says, "We are now creating a curriculum for IT practises 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. After completing this program, they have the choice of moving within Visionet or being employable anywhere in the IT industry.

The programme is completely free, making it available to students from smaller towns or economically disadvantaged areas. This year, Visionet Systems has been able to induct close to 200 such students into different businesses. The majority of them are into BPM services and 30 students have been inducted into the IT domain. Close to 45% of these 200 students are women.

Most of the hiring has 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 programme to skill the youth in capital markets and insurance in technology as well as in BFSI."

The skilling programme 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.