Tata Group hospitality firm Indian Hotels Company Ltd (IHCL) is planning to increase the number of skill training centres to 50 across India by next year, apart from accelerating online training in partnership with group firm TCS to meet its target of skilling 1 lakh people by 2030, a senior company official said.

The company, which has identified skilling as one of the areas of focus under its environmental, social, and corporate governance initiative Paathya, is focussing on rural areas for the skill training programme and is confident that more than 25 per cent of the 1 lakh people who will be skilled by 2030 will be women.

It is trying to play its part in bridging the demand-supply gap of skilled workforce in the hospitality industry, which has witnessed robust growth in the last couple of years after the pandemic.

"The industry has come back in a very strong way... In the last few quarters in terms of growth, (if it) is anything to go by, we are looking at a very robust path in front of us... The dearth of talent in the market also comes on the back of the fact that most of the hospitality companies are on a very aggressive growth path," IHCL Executive Vice President, Human Resources, Gaurav Pokhariyal, told PTI.

He was responding to a query on the current situation of availability of skilled manpower in the hospitality industry.

While there is a lot of manpower available in rural areas, there is a need to impart proper training to make them industry-ready and employable, he said.

"That is what we have been trying to address through our skilling initiative at IHCL," Pokhariyal added.

As part of the Paathya initiative, he said IHCL had chosen to address the issue of employable manpower, "and at the same time discharge our responsibility of training people from the marginalised society".

"We had identified a target of 1 lakh youth that we will be able to skill till 2030. We have been able to skill 12,500 people to date from 2020," he said, adding that the first few years were slow on account of Covid-19, but it has now accelerated with about 6,000 people already skilled this year.

The whole endeavour is to help people from marginalised society and deep rural areas, he said, adding some of the challenges in these areas are to try and educate people about the hospitality sector and making them understand that they have to move out of their native places for employment after the training.

"So there has to be some form of migration that needs to happen," he said, adding there is also a fight against the perception that people have about the hospitality sector that it is a very hard industry to work with long working hours and manual services.

In terms of diversity, Pokhariyal said, "We have a target of 25 per cent of women and I am sure that we will exceed 25 per cent by 2030."

Commenting on the expansion of skill training centres, he said, "By next year, we will move from existing 32 skilling centres to close to 50 skill centres across different parts of the country."

At present, these skilling centres in both small and large formats are present in 15 states across 25 cities. The largest one is in Guwahati that trains about 300 people a year.

IHCL has added new skill centres in the old format of school classrooms session almost every quarter, Pokhariyal said.

"However, this year we realised that in order to be able to reach our target of 1 lakh, it is important that we actually have a more diversified partnership in order to be able to live to our expectations by 2030. We have tied up with TCS to do online training and we should be able to train 6,000 people going forward from next year onwards apart from adding on to our skill centres," he said.

IHCL is working with partners such as Tata STRIVE; HHH -- Head Held High Foundation; REACHA -- Research and Extension Association for Conservation Horticulture and Agro-forestry; and VFS for its skilling initiative.

Asked about the absorption rate of the skilled people so far, he said, "Close to about 20 per cent have been absorbed by IHCL and overall 75 per cent have been placed."

The minimum educational qualification required for staff-level position is 12th pass and for executive level it is graduate, he said. On the competition for skilled workforce, Pokhariyal said, "The thin line that divided the (different) sectors in the past seems to be blurring a bit. Today people have more options to move across sectors."

"The manufacturing sector to a large extent today has realised the importance of the service aspect of business and started expanding on that aspect of business far too aggressively and that is where we tend to lose some of the talent that are available in the (hospitality) sector," he added.

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