OREANDA-NEWS. September 02, 2015. Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship (MSDE) in partnership with the World Bank will organize a Google+ Hangout to enable greater engagement of the Indian corporate sector in India’s skill development initiatives.

The Google+ Hangout will have different stakeholders including government, World Bank and CEOs of large Indian Corporations deliberate ways in which Corporate Social Responsibility Funds of Indian companies can be channeled towards skill development initiatives of the government.

This online event will be held on 2nd September, 2015 from 4.30 pm to 6.00 pm. Minister of State (Independent Charge) for Skill Development and Entrepreneurship Shri Rajiv Pratap Rudy will deliver the keynote address and interact with the CEOs of Indian companies. Chairpersons of Public Sector Undertakings such as State Bank of India, Oil and Natural Gas Corporation Ltd (ONGC), and Bharat Heavy Electricals Ltd (BHEL) will also participate. 

Announcing the initiative Shri Rajiv Pratap Rudy said, India is expected to have half of its population under 28 years by 2030. While the `ageing economy’ phenomenon will globally create a shortage of skilled manpower of 57 million by 2020, India will have a surplus of 46 million working people. He said, helping this young population with the right skills will provide India a huge demographic dividend.

The Hangout will also launch an IT-based Skills to Jobs Aggregator Platform. The Skills to Jobs platform – created as part of World Bank technical assistance to MSDE – is a technology enabled multi-stakeholder platform that will effectively channel funds (both government and corporate) towards skills projects and also help Indian companies and skilled trainees to connect, which could lead to better job prospects for the trainees. The entire platform will be driven through a combination of Marketplace and cloud, mobile and big data technologies. All data points will be tagged to Google Maps, thereby, providing exact locations ensuring highest levels of data authenticity. Dashboards will be created to provide a one-stop solution for understanding and evaluating the progress, effectiveness and impact of skills projects across the country.

World Bank Country Director in India Onno Ruhl has said that the Google+ Hangout will help us brainstorm on how public and private capital can be effectively channeled towards skill development in order to prepare a better skilled workforce for the job market,”