AISECT Ltd. has ambitious IT plans in Maharashtra
Bhopal: AISECT Ltd, one of India’s leading IT education, training & services network, recently announced its ambitious expansion plans of expansion. The organization is launching 500 IT centres across Maharashtra over the next one year. This expansion plan is a part of the company’s growth strategy for the next year wherein about 1600 AISECT Centers would be launched across Rajasthan, Punjab, Gujarat and Maharashtra by mid-2011.
AISECT, which already has 160 centers across the state in areas like Mumbai, Thane, Nashik, Pune, Amravati and Nagpur, will focus on providing ICT skills as well as entrepreneurial opportunities to people in semi-urban and rural areas. According to Mr. Santosh Choubey, Chairman & Managing Director, AISECT Ltd, “Our primary objective for launching these Centers is to tap the huge student base residing at the District and Block levels. The fact is that even today, millions of students in rural India are denied access to high quality, employment-oriented and skill development based education. Merely 2% of the Indian youth between the age group of 15–29 years have received formal vocational training. Through our network of ICT-based AISECT Centers, we want to help bridge this gap.”
The AISECT Centres would offer a variety of University-certified Under-Graduate, Post-Graduate, Certificate and Diploma courses in the areas of IT & ITeS, hardware and networking, banking, finance, insurance and rural management. “Last year, we entered into a strategic partnership with IGNOU through which AISECT courses are now certified by IGNOU. Moreover, select AISECT Centers, meeting the infrastructure norms and faculty criteria, can become AISECT-IGNOU Study Centers and offer IGNOU Certified Degree Programs to students. Thus, students in all parts of Maharashtra can now look forward to receiving skill-based and employment oriented education with an added advantage of getting certification from an internationally recognized university.” said Mr. Choubey.
Apart from functioning as education hubs, the AISECT Centers will also deliver services including data processing and data entry, exam form downloading and results viewing, selling of insurance policies and collection of premiums, ticket booking for railways and selling of recharge vouchers for telecom and DTH among others. The 25-year old company, which has a strong network of over 8000 centers spread across 4069 cities, follows a franchisee model for expanding its network of centers. Thus, the proposed expansion in Maharashtra will also be an entrepreneur-driven initiative involving an investment of Rs. 3-10 lakhs per centre.
According to Mr. Santosh Choubey, “We have, till date, trained over 1 million students across the country through a host of skill enhancement programs and generated over 10,000 entrepreneurs through AISECT’s widespread network. What fuels our network is that we do formal training for the unorganized sector of IT and ITeS, something which National Skill Development Corporation (NSDC) also points out as a neglected area. There are scores of computer literates which are required in District Govt. offices, petrol pumps, bank branches in semi-urban areas, various showrooms and other retail establishments, a demand that AISECT has been addressing for many years in various parts of the country and now plans to undertake in Maharashtra.”
AISECT, headquartered in Bhopal, is an ISO 9001:2008 certified organization which plans to increase its franchisee network to about 12,000 centers and 3,00,000 students annually by 2012. Listed in the World Bank-IIM (A) joint study as one of the most successful initiatives on ICT for rural development, AISECT has received an array of prestigious awards including NASSCOM IT Innovation Award, The Indian Innovation Award, The National e-Governance Award, NASSCOM Emerge 50 Leader and TiE-Lumis Partners Entrepreneurial Excellence Award. It has also been a progressive and prominent name in the field of e-governance and has often helped implement government projects and disseminate G2C services. Last year, AISECT bagged the Central Government sponsored Common Services Center (CSC) Project, emerging as one of the biggest service providers responsible for setting up almost 4500 centers across Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh.
