Aircel is tapping college students to get insights on their mobile usage and how they look at mobile technology.

As a first step, the Chennai-based telecom operator is starting a College Ambassador Programme to train students on issues such as sales and marketing.

In the two-month programme selected students will undergo a one month on-the-job training at Aircel on sales and marketing skills. In the second month, students will be on their own doing various projects, said I.V.J. Pradeep, Regional Business Head, Aircel, which has a subscriber base of nearly 65 million.

The company has rolled out a similar programme in Bangalore, Hyderabad and Visakhapatnam. In Chennai, it will select students from SRM College and in Coimbatore from Nehru College, he said.

On successful completion of the two-month training, toppers will be eligible to go to the Aircel’s academy in Gurgoan for a certificate course offered by the Harvard Business School, Pradeep said.

Through the programme, Aircel wants to teach students on both social and economics. It also gives an opportunity to students to know about Aircel, he said. Aircel has youth-oriented offers such as Pocket Internet, Blick and voice alert on Facebook, he said.

Aircel is also organising a series of lectures aimed at inspiring the young minds towards idealism and community partition. The lecture series, which was held at SRM University today, was organised in partnership with news magazine Tehelka. Classical singer Shubha Mudgal and activist and film maker K. Stalin were the guest speakers, he said.

raja.simhan@thehindu.co.in

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