Bravo Career India Skills, Future Group ties up to generate 1,000 skilled workforce for retail fashion in Northeast

Guwahati, 6th December, 2016 :

Dale Simpson - Founder & MD Bravo Career and Peter Krikstolaitis - CEO Bravo Career at the press meet

o Announces partnership with Future Group for Project Implementation in Northeast
o Skill-Mission of sustainable & gainful livelihood by BCI Skills for youth of Northeast
o To set-up network of livelihood centres across Northeast India

BCI Skills – a global education, training and skill development arm of Bravo Careers Australia – on Tuesday (December 6, 2016) announced a major initiative to develop a skilled workforce of 1,000 trained professionals from Northeast India to work in the retail fashion industry; offering appointment letters, followed by skill training over 8 weeks and then finally placing them with retail fashion brands like Central and Brand Factory (Future Group) across India.

BCI Skills is the strategic execution partner of Future Group for Hire-Train-Deploy and Manage skilling resource model for Northeast market. Initially, the target market for BCI Skills will be the seven sister states across Northeast, but soon they will expand operations in Chhattisgarh, Kerala, Lucknow, Hyderabad, Pune, Nagpur and other locations. “Our aim is to train and develop close to 10,000 skilled professionals across trades like organized retail, hospitality, telecom, BFSI, IT & ITES,” informed BCI Skills at a press conference on Tuesday.

“This is in sync with government’s overall target to train 500 million people by 2022 to meet the global skills shortage and it’s ‘Make in India’ program. Future Group is keen to support this initiative and actively involved in such noble initiatives with global education and training partners like BCI Skills making their strong entry in Indian subcontinent for skilling & livelihood projects,” a statement said. The key stakeholders – BCI Skills and the Future Group – will bring a wealth of experience, knowledge, training and expertise that will make it a great success across Northeast and the rest of India, the statement added.

Speaking on the occasion, Dale Simpson, Group MD, BCI Skills said, “We are delighted to have the Future Group join our growing list of corporate partners in India. We are confident that this alliance with Future Group will go a long way towards BCI succeeding in its endeavour to create a skills ecosystem in the country and make a difference in the lives of millions of people, not only in Northeast but across the country.”

Chief People Officer, Future Group, said “We are happy to be partnering BCI skills mission of making India globally competitive in various skill sector. This is a revolutionary project and we are confident that the ‘first-time-jobseekers’ and skilled workforce will provide sustainable and gainful livelihood and act as a catalyst to propel growth in Northeast economy.”

The Bravo differences in skills training include the ongoing career management for all participants even after employment, guaranteed job placements for participants and the inclusion of international coursework and delivery to that standard to ensure participants can successfully launch their careers.

Bravo Careers, through its skill development arm BCI Skills, will establish a network of multi-skill training centres –thus creating one of the largest networks of such development centres in the country. BCI Skills will use blended training methodology from classroom to instructional training, simulated learning and digital learning methods.

The project will touch upon 1,000 families directly, leading them to a sustainable and gainful livelihood and another approximately 3,000-5,000 families indirectly to be impacted by the project. The target beneficiaries come for the training are identified primarily from smaller towns and semi-urban pockets of Northeast India, based on placement assurances which come through industry tie-ups.

Uniqueness of the program is offering jobs and conditional offer letter prior to training program making it more effective than the usual skilling program where placement may or may not happen. Here employment is not the end result, post getting selected and conditional offer letter, one need to undergo a specialised skill training program and get certified before being placed to the final job location.

Future Group is among India’s leading business houses and operates some of India’s most popular retail chains like Big Bazaar, Central, Brand Factory, E-zone and Home Town. BCI Skills was established as a division of Bravo to address opportunities in education, training and skill development space in Southeast Asian markets like India, Bangladesh, Singapore and Myanmar by Bravo Careers, Australia. Through BCI Skills, Bravo Careers is keen on leveraging its vast understanding of the learning and development space it has pioneered over 15 years worldwide working with reputed brands including Siemens, Pacific Brands, Bosch and government organisations.

About BCI Skills:

BCI Skills is an international training organisation, and a division of the Bravo Group which operates skill and career development in Australia, India, Singapore and Malaysia. It is managed by experienced international and career education experts with a strong history of success in providing excellent outcomes from training.

BCI focuses on high quality training, and high quality employment outcomes for its graduates. It achieves this through delivering coursework that is prepared and developed from KIIT and complemented from its own international standard course materials. It ensures its trainers are well qualified and have undertaken its internal training program. BCI Skills also partners directly with corporates prior to the training so as to ensure the placements at the conclusion of training.

About Future Group:

Future Group is among India’s leading business houses with multiple businesses spanning across the consumption space. The group operates some of India’s leading retail chains like , Big Bazaar, Food Bazaar, Central, Home Town and eZone and also has allied businesses in consumer finance, life and non-life insurance, logistics infrastructure and supply chain and brand and IPR development. The group operates around 16 million square feet of retail space in over 85 cities and towns and 60 rural locations across India.

The group’s retail formats connect over 220 million customers to over 30,000 small, medium and large enterprises that supply products and services to its retail chains. Future Group believes in developing strong insights on Indian consumers and building businesses based on Indian ideas, as espoused in the group’s core value of ‘Indianness.’ The group’s corporate credo is, ‘Rewrite rules, Retain values.’