Skill India enhances entrepreneurship support for candidates

National Skill Development Corporation (NSDC), under the aegis of the Ministry of Skill Development & Entrepreneurship, Government of India, has collaborated with deAsra Foundation (non-profit organisation), for capacitating training providers with sustained entrepreneurship development of the trainees.

The collaboration would support the establishment of 'Entrepreneurship Support Program', which is intended to equip placement cells of training providers with self-employment/ entrepreneurial assistance for the skilled candidates.

The association would facilitate training of counsellors/trainers (Udyog Mitras) of the envisioned Entrepreneurial Cell, who will handhold skill trainees to nurture their entrepreneurial action plan.

This would include various aspects of developing a business model, seeking financial guidance, availing services of banks/ agencies for loans and other statutory requirements. The counselling provided by these Udyog Mitras is proposed to help aspirants in exploring new avenues and facilitating financial support for enhancing employability.

Commenting on the partnership, MD & CEO, NSDC, Manish Kumar, said, "NSDC's collaboration with deAsra will help in building capacity of our affiliated training partners to provide entrepreneurial support to their trainees. Business mentoring from experienced counsellors will enable aspiring youth to start their own businesses. The initiative will not only support small and micro entrepreneurship that can generate large scale employment opportunities, it will also help drive sustainable growth in employment."

Skill India's current training programs comprise a 40-hours module on Employability & Entrepreneurship Skills focusing on Life Skills, Digital Literacy and Financial Literacy.

NSDC is one of its kind public-private-partnership with an objective to facilitate skill training in partnership with private training providers. Till date, NSDC has approved 350+ training providers and 39 Sector Skill Councils, with a geographical spread of 7,000+ training centres in 600+ districts across the country. NSDC has trained more than 1.4 crore people across sectors.