Vocational Training using Mobile Units

Observation:

The vocational training is predominantly the responsibility of the Government. However, the growth in training facilities is far behind the actual requirement and this has resulted in huge shortage of trained, certified artisans. This is primarily because of a mismatch between the vocational training needs and training facilities. The training facilities are mainly located in cities and big towns whereas the requirement is at the ‘Kasba’ or ‘Moufissil’ town levels or even at village level.

Suggestion:

Individually, the requirement of training artisans at these places is small and the training requirement gets saturated in a short period. Creation of fixed training facilities will be costly and will not be fully utilized. To meet this special requirement it is important that a flexible approach in delivery of training is adopted using “Mobile Training Units”.

This will facilitate imparting of vocational training to a very large number of artisans who are not able to join mainstream education through Industrial Training Institutes. There is a huge untapped market which is available for training and certification of artisans. There is also space for large number of players in this market because of the special demographic condition in India and South East Asia.

The outcome can be measured by the unemployment rate of the area where the project has been launched after a few months of providing the vocational training to artisans along with the increase in the average earnings of these men after training.

The “Mobile Vocational Training Unit” model is proposed to be implemented in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar in India, which has a large youth population, and severe shortage of training / higher education facilities. This can subsequently be replicated in other states of India/Countries after necessary fine-tuning.

Business Model:

• Engage retired railway and defense personnel who are master craftsman as Instructors and provide them with “Mobile Training Units” on partnership basis.
• The training software and hardware to be centrally procured and disbursed.
• The training curriculum to be kept uniform with large component of multimedia modules.
• Get Government registration for Certification.
• Local personnel to be given preference for such assignments as they are familiar with the geography of the region.

The above model will keep the cost of operation minimum.

Infrastructure: Mobile training vans (e.g. Eicher LCVs converted to accommodate two related trades.)

Partnerships: With local Primary/Secondary schools, Panchayats.

Customers: Youth in the age group of 16-30 years.

Revenue model: Fees from the students (artisans), government aid, certification fees and sponsorship from Corporate.

Cost of Capital: (Assumptions)

• Capital cost of one “Mobile training unit” will be approximately Rs. 6 lakhs.
• Depreciated over 5 years : Rs. 6 lakhs/5 = Rs. 1.2 Lakhs per annum
• Interest burden @ 10% p.a. = Rs. 0.6 Lakhs per annum
• Total cost : Rs. 1.8 Lakhs per annum

Cost of Operation: (Assumptions)

• Cost of instructor: Rs. 10,000 per month
• Cost of helper : Rs. 4000 per month
• Running cost of unit: Rs 10,000 per month
• Total : Rs 24,000 per month
• Overhead: 50% of the above = 0.5 * Rs. 24,000 = Rs. 12,000
• Total cost of Operation per MU p.a.= (Rs. 24000+Rs 12000) * 12 = Rs 36000*12 = Rs 4,32,000

Revenue generated: (Assumption)

• Training per unit per day in hours = 8 hours
• No of days per month = 25 days
• Batch Size = 15
• Total no. of trainee hours per unit = 25*8*15 = 3000 trainee hours per unit per month
• Fees per trainee hour = Rs. 20
• Total fees per unit per month = 3000 * 20 = Rs. 60000
• Total Revenue per annum = 12 * 60000 = Rs. 7,20,000

SURPLUS = Revenue – (Cost of Capital + Cost of Operation)

= Rs. 7,20,000 – (1,80,000 + 4,32,000) = 7,20,000 – 6,12,000 = 1,08,000 per MU/p.a

Risks:

• Change in government policy
• Delays in payment by government agencies

The project will be viable with 10 Mobile Units with an investment of approximately Rs. 60 Lakhs.

Multi-Compatment Shopping Bags

An idea that my sister came up with while shopping for vegetables in a weekly market :

Observation:

The only reason why I use plastic:

When I buy vegetables like okra, beans, green chilies etc., plastic bags come in very handy ensuring an ease of putting things away without first having to go through the painstaking task of separating each type. I recall the time when I newly returned from Germany, and after seeing their care with reusing plastic, I made my mother go to the market with just a cloth bag. We came back with a week’s worth of green veggies and to my mortification the greens were so well mixed together that it looked as if they were meant to be that way. My sister couldn't help chuckling at my musings and commented that it is the law of physics, entropy of the universe…dodging the potato that I threw at her. It took me larger part of an hour to separate and stock our refrigerator.

I wanted to apply methods that have worked somewhere else, without realizing that each problem has to be tackled individually. What worked for me in Germany did not work in India. My brain working in overdrive, I wanted to prove it to my mother that there had to be a better way of doing this. She had laughingly handed me the bag after getting home to organize the mess that I had inadvertently created.

Suggestion:

Necessity is the mother of all invention. I hit upon the idea that we could at least reuse the plastic bags. No sooner than I had said it , the idea seemed like a halfway attempt. It was then suddenly seeing my mom sitting at the sewing machine that I hit upon a better solution. We see plastic everywhere and reusing them also is not going to reverse a trend. What needs to be done is designing specific shopping bags with various compartments ( made out of cloth !! eureka!!) that can handle all the veggies but still make sure that nothing gets mixed up. The vendors can be given these free or at nominal costs to promote the use of such "Multi compartment Bags". Over a period of time, plastic needs to be completely banned. I wish it happens soon because I crave a country without plastic bags littered over its landscape.