Educomp, Pearson JV hopes to gain from UID project

IndiaCan, the 50:50 joint venture between Educomp Solutions, a solutions provider for schools and education institutes, and Pearson, world’s largest education services provider, sees itself as being a beneficiary of the UID project. Of the budget for the UID project of about Rs 1,900 crore, about Rs 100 crore has been set aside for the training of personnel for implementing the project including training those involved in collecting the necessary data on people. With its strength in soft skills training, IndiaCan thinks it would be able to get a chunk of the training budget of the project.

The company, which has a portfolio of training programmes for soft skills training, has a foothold in almost all major cities and towns in the country, and is slowly foraying into the southern states.

With Rs 90 crore in its kitty from the investment made by Pearson in acquiring a 50 per cent stake, it has now forayed into Karnataka and has set up its first vocational training centre in Bangalore. With its target to set up 250 centres by the end of the year, and about 600 centres across the country in about three years, it hopes to deploy the Rs 90 crore over this period. “By then IndiaCan would be self-sustaining, and won’t require any external infusion of funds,” said Sharad Talwar, CEO, IndiaCan Education.

IndiaCan centre will offer courses in spoken English, accounts, sales, retail and IT.

IndiaCan is in the process of tying up with majors for each of the verticals including retail, banking and finance, telecom and consumer goods, to provide jobs to students who will complete these courses. One such tie up is the one with Religare Enterprises for a certification programme in commodities.