ASDC bags silver SKOCH award for skilling young India

The Automotive Skill Development Council (ASDC) has won the ‘SKOCH Award’at the 74^th SKOCH Summit held recently by the SKOCH Foundation. The award was given for the project ‘World Bank iStar Program - School to Employment’.

The World Bank iSTAR program was executed as a research study in the states of Rajasthan and Maharashtra to connect school dropouts to livelihood opportunities by skilling them on future skills, especially target women candidates and persons with disabilities.

The SKOCH Award, since its inception in 2003, has been recognising innovative practices and successful models of different organizations in economic and social Infrastructure Development segments in India. Underlining the fact that skill can play a pivotal role in leading India to become a $10 trillion economy by 2030, SKOCH has taken the lead in recognizing those initiatives that have overcome the challenges and made impacts, by instituting ‘SKOCH Skill Development Award 2018’.

Commenting on ASDC winning the award, Nikunj Sanghi, Chairman of ASDC, said: “I am very happy with the SKOCH award. It is an award of excellence –  it’s like an Oscar for skilling. When we participated in this competition, we didn’t think that we will qualify for the semi-final and finally getting to the final and winning the award is like a dream come true for me. The project that we participated was the ISTAR program which we are doing for the World Bank to make people from school-ready for employment, focussed basically on women and people with disabilities and people who have left studies beyond studies and are looking for jobs.  We have done this project in three locations including Alwar and I think once the World Bank is done with the accessing of the success of all these three projects, I am sure that this will be rolled out across the country as projects to generate employment at that level”.

Due to its growing popularity among stakeholders and impact within a short time, the World Bank iSTAR Program with ASDC has caught the attention of candidates who would acquire skills in futuristic job roles, ranging from a Centre of Excellence and are placed in the automotive industry.

Arindam Lahiri, CEO ASDC said, “It is a very good recognition of the work being done by ASDC. We are being awarded based on the work we have done for World Bank ISTAR Program that was majorly done for two locations – Maharashtra and Rajasthan – for engaging training in future skills primarily for women candidates who have dropped out of the schools. So, the program was to train the candidates in future skills and then connect them to potential employers for them to start earning their livelihoods. We are very happy that our work is getting acknowledged and recognised at such a platform. We hope to continue our work of connecting youths to livelihoods as we move forward”.

Skill development has undergone a paradigm shift in approach in recent years and keeping up with the pace of present skilling needs; ASDC has come up with a number of innovative schemes where different organizations can associate in furthering the skilling agenda in the Automotive Sector. 

ASDC is the first sector Skill Council of India, promoted by the Automobile industry, through apex industry bodies SIAM, ACMA and FADA along with the government of India and and National Skill Development Corporation (NSDC). ASDC envisions making India self-sufficient in availability of skilled personnel for sustaining growth and increasing competitiveness of the automobile industry. ASDC has over 240 training partners, 800 certified assessors, 14 expert groups with 295 industry experts and over 2,000 training centres.

READ MORE Nikunj Sanghi: ‘ASDC’s ethos is not only skills – it is about developing good-quality manpower.’