Walchand Dale Carnegie Finishing school in K'taka

Bangalore, Oct 22: Making its first major investment move, Walchand PeopleFirst, in association with Dale Carnegie today launched the country's first comprehensive Finishing school to help students develop softskills and become employable.

The School Chairperson and Managing Director Pallavi Jha told newspersons here that the Finishing School would start functioning from November end and in the first year around 8500 students would be trained at the facility set up in the city.

She said Walchand PeopleFirst would invest Rs.140 crore in two phases with the first phase involving Rs.70 crore to be completed in three years. The Karnataka Government had offered 31 acres of land in Ramnagaram for the Finishing School.

This Campus would ultimately emerge as an international finishing school as a number of multinationals were pitching India as the Hub for their foray into the Asia-Pacific region. At the end of the first phase, 50,000 students would be trained annually, she added.

Targeted at graduates the finishing school would offer a unique Certificate Programme in Executive Excellence, a customised course to address the challenge of talent employment in India. The curriculum has been designed by the Dale Carnegie Global Centre for Instruction Design in the US, based on extensive research on Indian employability requirements and supported by detailed inputs from industry thought leaders, Ms Jha said.

The course included 16 week class room instruction followed by eight week of industry internship, Raj Bowen, Chief Executive Officer of Dale Carnegie Training said. The school would offer 100 per cent placement assurance, Mr Jha added. Walchand PeopleFirst was a exclusive franchise of Dale Carnegie Training in India and during the last four years it had been providing corporate training. It had made major deviation and started the Finishing School in view of the huge demand for such institutions.

Ms Jha said that there was similar demand from other States and Maharashtra could be the next destination. Similar requests have also come from Kerala and Northeastern States, she added.

The Course would provide coaching and mentoring, assessments in the areas of cognitive, behaviourial and English Skills and preparation for interviews and placements.

The IT sector alone expected a manpower shortage of half a million by the year 2010, she added and the effort is to bridge the gap.

UNI