Raman IIIT emerges leader in IT training

Starting in a small car shed in 1991 with just two students, Raman International Institute of Information Technologies (RIIIT) has today emerged as a leader in IT training in Mysore, having trained over a lakh children, young men and women, both from urban and rural areas in IT skills.

Falling back on its 15 years of experience in IT education, RIIIT has developed four curricula, including Kannada-based, for the benefit of rural students. From Mysore, it has spread its training wings to 25 centres, including far off cities like Bijapur and Belgaum and less known mofussil IT towns like Mandya, Maddur, Ramanagaram and Chamarajanagar.

Office executive, which is an entry level course with basic skills ideal for accountants, coordinators, receptionists, and data entry operators, BPO executive, hardware and networking curricula for those who have talent in electronics and communications and aspire to become system administrators and network engineers, and project management and relevant technology curricula for programmers, team leaders and system analysts are its four curricula for different segments of IT teaching.

Adopting the approach, 'from complexity to simplicity' it has developed a lot of content and curricula, easy to understand, learn and practice.

"We have put it in such a way even a rural kid can understand the basics of IT. We teach Mircrosoft, Java and all the latest inputs in the simplest way," says Raman IIIT CEO & managing director R Venkatesh.

Speaking to Business Standard, he said: "Rural students are different from the urban. They lack accessibility, exposure and communication backup. They look to these, while communicating in Kannada. Hence, we have adopted the simplest methods in our new curricula. The BPO executive, for example, has English as a softskill, taking off from Kannada."

"Talent wise, the rural children are very good and creative. In fact, we are proud that the Kannada 'Nudi' software has come from one of our students, coming from the rural town of Narasimharajapura. That is the kind of input we have provided in our curricula," he says.

"Besides quality, what has made our training programmes more sought after is 'affordability'. This has made us grow over the years", he adds.

Bearing in mind that the poor and rural children should be able to have access to IT, the unemployable should be made employable and make them industry worthy, RIIIT has emerged as the official trainer for the Government of Karnataka.

"Picking up raw material and finish it up to employable stage is not an easy task as it involves human element. But taking care of all these in our curricula, we have even emerged as a leader in this important IT segment "" human skill training".

Fifteen years ago, the scenario was that systematic IT education was not available at the middle and low levels. The school segment was missing and no systematic curricula was employed. There was no structure approach.

In 1998-99, there were some 50-60 companies offering IT skills. But, during the dotcom bust, most of these training schools wound up.

Surviving the hard days, in a city like Mysore, where IT was less known then, Raman International Institute of Information Technologies has today advanced further into software development and other related areas.