ICICI Academy for Skills has trained nearly 2,600 underprivileged youth in Mumbai

Mumbai: ICICI Academy for Skills (ICICI Academy) is an institute set up by the ICICI Foundation for Inclusive Growth, to provide free of cost vocational training to the youth from economically weaker sections to help them earn a sustainable livelihood.

Speaking about this initiative, Ms.Chanda Kochhar, Chairperson of the governing Council, ICICI Foundation for Inclusive Growth and Managing Director & CEO, ICICI Bank said, “We recognise skill development as an important area of focus as part of our efforts in the nation's socio-economic development. In order to bridge the critical gap between manpower availability and employability, it is important to provide sustainable livelihood opportunities for everyone to grow and prosper.

With this focus, the idea of setting up skill academies for vocational skill building emerged, and ICICI Academy for Skills was launched in 2013. We took a holistic approach in our efforts and apart from providing free of cost job-oriented training, we are ensuring that these underprivileged youths are able to find employment upon completing training. Employment is arranged through our network of industry partners. At the skill academies we provide training in 11 skills - 07 technical and 04 office skills. We have significantly scaled-up our training capabilities over the years and currently there are 24 skill academies across the country.

Today, through ICICI Academy for Skills, Rural Initiative and our Rural Self Employment Training Institutes (RSETIs), we have trained over 1,56,000 youth. In this fiscal alone, ICICI Foundation aims to train 1.2 lakh youth. I am proud to say that by March 2018, we aim to achieve a milestone of training over 2.5 lakh youth.”