This program was part of an initiative started in March 2019, when the two organizations signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU).

CSS Corp, a new-age IT services and technology support company, in partnership with ICT Academy, has trained over 1,000 youth in the past one year on employability skills. This program was part of an initiative started in March 2019, when the two organizations signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU). ICT Academy, a non-profit organization governed by industry leaders and government policymakers, is a CSR implementation partner for various leading companies and has trained and impacted over 5,000 youth across the nation on employability skills over a period of three years.

As a part of this initiative, CSS Corp held an extensive training program to skill the youth of rural, urban and low-income family groups in Tamil Nadu on the latest technology and soft skills that helped them to be employable in leading IT companies across the nation. As a result, out of the total trained candidates, close to 700 students have received offer letters from reputed IT/ITeS companies in the country.

CSS Corp has signed another MOU with ICT Academy towards training a fresh batch of 1,200 students in the states of Tamil Nadu & Karnataka this year. Training will be based on soft skills, tech support skills and emerging technologies (Angular, JavaScript Development Suite, RPA, Selenium 3.0 and SQL database). 

Speaking about the initiative, Manish Tandon, Chief Executive Officer, CSS Corp said, “India has a large workforce with skills that need to be honed and upgraded with changing times. With the pandemic looming over us, the globe is witnessing a paradigm shift in the way businesses work. It goes without saying that the need of the hour is for the youth to be trained and skilled across a plethora of disruptive technologies to bend the curve. CSS Corp’s initiative introduces students to skills beyond their regular curriculum and ensures their holistic development across a wide paradigm, enabling them to seek opportunities and truly make their mark in fields of their choice. Each student that has been trained by this program will have the opportunity to showcase their abilities, learn, grow and stay relevant amidst the changes taking place.” 

M Sivakumar, Chief Executive Officer, ICT Academy said "Skill development is critical for economic growth and social development. The country presently faces a dual challenge of severe paucity of highly trained, quality labour, as well as non-employability of large sections of the educated workforce that possess little or no job skills. The skill development issue in India is thus pertinent both at the demand and supply level. To meet the supply side challenge, ICT Academy focuses on the skill development of youth as one of its core objectives. CSR is a proper channel to reach the underserved people of the society. The positive economic impact achieved by this initiative is huge and has improved the earning capabilities of not just 5,000 students but 5,000 families with most of them being first-generation employees.”

Talking on the initiative, Dhivya Priya, a final year engineering student said, “I learned a lot about hardware, networking, and wireless technology and their practical applications. All activities planned have an objective like finding a solution to the real-world problems and handling different situations. This has helped me to obtain an offer from a company with a handsome remuneration.”

The training programs were conducted in 20 colleges across Tamil Nadu that provided 100 hours of intensive activity-based training in soft and technical support skills for over 1000 final year graduating students from engineering, arts and science colleges located in the rural and sub-urban areas of the state. The students were mentored by CSS Corp employees with mock interviews and group discussions.  Moreover, a special focus was on encouraging women participation, in line with CSS Corp’s objective to empower women in the technology sector, which helped secure close to 600 female participants (of the 1000 plus) in the program. The trainees belonged to different low-income groups wherein over 600 students came from families with an income below 1 lakh, while over 200 came from families with an income between 1 - 2 lakhs and close to 200 students were from families with an income between 2 to 2.5 lakhs. The training program thus bolstered the socio-economic conditions of these students by equipping them with quality training and education in IT.