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— Bijoy Ghosh

Tie-up for training: (From left) Dr S.S. Badrinath, Chairman Emeritus, Sankara Nethralaya; Dr Lingam Gopal, Chairman, Medical Research Foundation; and Mr Bhaskar Bhat, Managing Director, Titan Industries, at the signing of the MoU in Chennai on Friday.

Our Bureau

Chennai, Jan. 4 Titan Eye+, Titan Industries’ prescription eyewear store brand, on Friday entered into a technical tie-up with Sankara Nethralaya, under which the latter would train the store personnel of Titan Eye. The move is essentially to tackle the problem of acute shortage of trained manpower in the eye-care industry.

As per the pact, Sankara Nethralaya will train optical store personnel for Titan Eye+. Titan, which recently forayed into the prescription eyewear business, currently has eight stores in Chennai, Hyderabad, Bangalore and Nagpur.

It plans to expand its network with at least 250 more shops across the country in the next two to three years.

According to Mr Bhaskar Bhat, Managing Director, Titan Industries, the chain of optical stores would offer eye testing, style consultancy in addition to a range of frames and glasses.

The arrangement will give Titan Eye+ a high quality source of skilled manpower, “which is required for our rapid expansion”.

Titan Industries is setting up a full-fledged training centre at Hosur. Technical experts from Titan Eye+ and Sankara Nethralaya will together design the exclusive training programme to suit the specific requirements of the store chain.

Explaining on how the arrangement would work, Mr Bhat said Titan would recruit people and then train them in scientific ophthalmic dispensing, style consultation and optometric.

The training module would cover all optometry topics right from basics of the eye to the most advanced topics such as ocular diseases.

Commenting on the arrangement, Dr S.S. Badrinath, Chairman Emeritus, Sankara Nethralaya, said India has one of the lowest ratio of skilled medical personnel to the total population. Involvement of corporates is very critical to improve the situation, he pointed out.

Titan Industries, a joint venture between the Tata group and the Tamil Nadu Industrial Development Corporation, is into watches and jewellery business.

It reported a turnover of Rs 2,136 crore for 2006-07 and hopes to close the current fiscal with Rs 3,000-crore turnover.

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