Manoj Chawla
Executive Senior Vice President,
Employability Solutions Group,
NIS Sparta
NIS Sparta has been working in the sector of employability solutions for years now and offers a wide range of training solutions for different categories in business and employment sectors.
Manoj Chawla converses with digital Learning about growing opportunities in industry specific learning solutions.
Many people discover the need to re-skill themselves after having worked for a few years. We understand and cater to both individual needs and corporate needs, in the employment market.
Can you highlight the role of NIS Sparta in field of vocational education?
We started on 17th September, 1991 as a small division and by 2000 we were fully involved in training people, in both private and public sector. For the last 3-4 years our focus has been more on the career education sector. In the year 2009, we launched new programmes based on prior research with the industry. We noted that the students seek the industry-based jobs, need certain pre-skills before they join a particular industry. We launched new programmes keeping in mind what the industry needs.
Still more important is the need of persons who can deal with the customers effectively, that is people who can sell to customers, serve them in best possible manner, who have the right attitude, and who have the ability and desire to grow as leaders. This we knit into a programme of ‘Business Skills’. This particular programme is a hybrid version of instructor led methodology versus pure e-Learning method. Various modes of teaching and e-learning are embedded into the programme. We are working in the sector of employability solutions and we are looking into continuum of education for students who pass out of class 12, pass out of college and also those in the age group of 25-45 years, who are in their mid career. NIS Sparta has different training solutions for different categories.
Can you throw some light on ‘learning in an interactive virtual environment’ programme, that was launched by NIS in collaboration with the Xavier Institute of Management?
That was the first institute we partnered with. We launched three batches of Post Graduate Certificate in Business Management, that is, PGCBM. The admission requirement for the same is three years of work experience. When we look at the profile of people, the average work experience of the people who are applying for the programme is about ten years of work experience. This implies that people who are approaching us for admissions are more qualified in terms of experience than require for the course. This is also an indicator that majority of the people who are looking forward to upgradation of technical skills are in their mid 30s.
What are the main objectives of the programmes you run? Who is your specified target audience for the programme?
The objective when we started the above mentioned programme two years ago was to create a continuum of education. There was a need to address the needs of the working educated who may have missed in-depth class education, in a hurry to get a job. There are thousands of people who complete their education quickly and start working. They do not undertake further education at that point of time, because they do not feel the need. But, many people discover the need to re-skill themselves, after few years of working in an area. We understand and cater to both individual needs and corporate needs, respectively.
We do not classify people on the basis of a particular background they come from. Nor it is purely on economic background but the fact remains that people who are economically well off can afford what we are offering which is at the same time not very costly. The business season for admission in education really starts in the month of April or May, when results get declared lasting till August or so when they get admissions.
Has NIS Sparta entered in any other collaborations or Public Private Partnerships with organisations other than one mentioned above?
We have recently, announced our tie-up with one more institute that is with IMT Gaziabad. We will be launching a few programmes with them; whether it is Xavier Institute of Management or IMT Gaziabad, they will be operating on the same platform, that I,s video conferencing which has its own advantage over many other methods of education especially those which are e-Enabled.
Can you elaborate on the Karma Jyoti Scholarship and the USP of your programmes such as Dronacharya?
Few years ago we started re-focusing on the education business. As a result, we found that there are many people who want to join a programme at NIS, are deserving but were unable to do so because of the cost. Because of these issues, we launched karma Jyoti scholarship 2009. Its a merit scholarship. People who are interested will go through an interview, and based upon the performance in the interview and the written test they will be given a fee waiver. The corpus that we have created towards this scholarship is INR 3 crores and the process has already been activated.
Project Dronacharya, was a large scale project that we had executed in the past. We were given the task of coaching people on the field as against traditional training that happens in a classroom. Our consultant trained a person for two years and went out on field with him. This project lasted for almost three years.
Can you elaborate something on the community college initiative in this field?
We are amongst many people who have tied-up with IGNOU for this purpose. We have multiple colleges that we are looking at to set up across the country. This is unlike the other institutions who have tied-up with IGNOU. The curriculum that will be taught would be fairly standardised. However, being a community college the content also needs to be localised. It will be built around standardised and localised solution. Secondly, our focus will be on a lot of NIS components than the soft skills training. We have been heavily into softer skills ever since we started and our community college will be definitely teaching some hard skills because the community college will be at the local or state employment level. From the perspective of making the person more effective rather than only employable, our curriculum will be based on both effectiveness and employability.
