Hindustan Coca-Cola Beverages, in partnership with actor Salman Khan’s Being Human Foundation, plans to scale up its initiative of setting up career development centres for rural youth. The centres will provide training aimed to enhance employability, the company said.

Khan, along with T. Krishnakumar, CEO, Hindustan Coca-Cola Beverages (HCCBPL) and P. Rajendran, Chief Operating Officer and Co-founder, NIIT, unveiled the new logo of these centres on Friday.

The initiative, in association with NIIT Foundation and NGO Gram Niyojan Kendra, established its pilot centre near the HCCBPL bottling plant at Dasna in 2011. In the coming months, the initiative will expand to Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Maharashtra and Odisha, the company added.

Krishnakumar said five such centres were expected to be operational by the end of this year. “We want to offer orientation, training programmes as well as personality development programmes to rural youth who are educated but unemployed. In our pilot project at Dasna, we were able to place about 200 youth across industries,” he added.

Meenakshi.v@thehindu.co.in

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