Manipal Education and City & Guilds form JV to launch IndiaSkills

Education services provider Manipal Education has joined hands with vocational training firm City & Guilds to form a joint venture (JV) called Manipal City & Guilds Skills Training that will provide its offerings under the name ‘IndiaSkills’. Manipal Education holds 51 per cent in the JV and the rest 49 per cent is held by City & Guilds.

‘IndiaSkills’ will enable students obtain skills-based qualifications. With an investment of over Rs 200 crore in the next two years, the JV will provide graduates with job placements at companies which require ‘work-ready’ staff, enhancing their career prospects, while creating opportunity for enterprises to increase their productivity through a trained workforce. The initial corpus is of Rs 25 crore.

“City & Guilds which has a portfolio of over 650 qualifications over 28 industry sectors, will provide the core curriculum for the content of the courses. We will start with retail, hospitality, banking and English language training followed by banking and insurance, auto, construction, among others,” said Anand Sudarshan, MD & CEO, Manipal Education.

Over the next five years, IndiaSkills aims to deliver training, assessment and certification across 500 vocational training centres covering close to 50 per cent of India’s districts by targetting 1 million learners. These services will be rolled out from City and Guilds’ existing centres and franchises in all the state capitals of the country initially.