Manipal JV to invest Rs 200 cr

Manipal Education and UK-based City & Guilds will make an investment of Rs 200 crore in IndiaSkills in the next three years. The investment will be made towards human capital and knowledge resources. IndiaSkills is a 51 : 49 joint venture between Manipal Education and City & Guilds, and offers vocational training programmes.

“Our investment will be in people and subject matter. Our franchisee partners will invest in infrastructure. So far Manipal and City & Guilds have invested around Rs 50 crore in the venture,” said Anand Sudarshan, MD and CEO, Manipal Education.

Manipal Universal Learning (MUL), the corporate education arm of the Manipal Group, recently raised private equity investment of Rs 200 crore from PremjiInvest, the $1 billion fund promoted by Wipro group chairman Azim Premji. Sudarshan said the proceeds would be utilised for its expansion which includes IndiaSkills, its campuses, and technology upgrade in India and abroad.

Under the IndiaSkills initiative, Vocational Training Centres (VTCs) offering short term programmes of one to four months will be set up by franchisee partners. These programmes will be offered in sectors like retail, hospitality, spoken English, hair and beauty, banking, financial services and insurance (BFSI), and security. Typically, a centre has around 20-25 students per batch. Fee for the programmes ranges from Rs 7,000 to Rs 12,000 depending on the programme. Academic eligibility is 8th standard for the programmes.

So far, VTCs have been set up in Uttar Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh and Maharashtra.

The network has been extended to Karnataka. There are plans to set up eight centres in the state by the end of March 2011 and 35 in the next three to five years. Overall, Manipal is looking to touch a network of 500 vocational centres in the next five years. Tier II and III cities will be targeted for expansion.

“We are targeting 35,000 to 50,000 enrollments in the next couple of years and hope to breakeven in 18 months,” said Hari Menon, chief executive officer, IndiaSkills. He added that the City & Guilds curriculum would be updated for the Indian context in consultation with key people from industry. City & Guilds provides qualifications to over 1.6 million learners across 81 countries each year.