Maruti Academy offers training to school dropouts

School dropouts facing difficulty in finding suitable jobs can now join Maruti Suzuki Training Academy and become skilled technicians in automobiles.

Maruti Suzuki has set up a training facility – Maruti Suzuki Training Academy (MSTA) at its Gurgaon plant. According to Mukesh Gupta, Vice-President, the aim is to develop skilled manpower for the company, its suppliers and dealers.

“Skilled manpower requirement is really huge and we have undertaken various training initiatives,” he told Business Line .

“Candidates, including school dropouts, are recruited for training. The Academy is registered as a Vocational Training Provider (VTP) under the skill development initiative of the Centre. We are in the process of collaborating with various State governments by running the ITIs (Industrial Training Institutes) and imparting training to the faculty and students,” Gupta said.

At present, the Academy is overseeing 27 government ITIs, imparting training to around 11,000 students. The exercise began in 2008-09, but it was ramped up only in the last 3-4 years, investing close to ₹8-10 lakh in each of the institutes.

“Our plan is to take the number o f ITIs to 50 in the next 12 months. We are looking at larger institutes; the faculty at these institutes are state government appointees,” Gupta added.

Referring to another training initiative, he said, “MSTA recently inked MoU with Uttarakhand Open University for conducting a 2-year technical training certification programme for those who have completed class XII in automotive manufacturing, automotive service and body repair. Over 600 students have been registered for the course.

“We invest around ₹1.2 lakh per student. The requirement for such skilled manpower is huge. Studies show that India will need around 15 million trained hands by 2022,” Gupta said. “We are looking to register 400 more students for the 2-year programme and take the registration to 1000 by the close of this fiscal.”

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