ICICI Academy for Skills has trained over 3,100 underprivileged youth in Guwahati

Guwahati: ICICI Academy for Skills (ICICI Academy) is 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. The academy at Guwahati aims to provide industry relevant practical training to the underprivileged youth with a capacity to train 24 batches with 1000 students undergoing training, annually.

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 recognized skill development as an important area of focus as part of our efforts in the nation's socio-economic development. Bridging the critical gap between manpower availability and employability is important to provide sustainable livelihood opportunities for everyone to grow and prosper.

With this focus, emerged the idea of setting up skill academies for vocational skill building, 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. Through the skill academies we are providing training in 11 skills - 7 technical and 4 in 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 1.9 lakh youth with more than 55% women. I am proud to say that by March 2018, we aim to achieve a milestone of training over 2.5 lakh youth."