NSDC and Masai join hands to prepare students for tech jobs

National Skill Development Corporation (NSDC) and Masai School announced a strategic partnership on March 29 to make India’s youth ready for tech jobs through an outcome-driven skilling model.

The partnership agreement was signed by chief operating officer and officiating CEO of NSDC Ved Mani Tiwari and Prateek Shukla, co-founder and CEO of Masai School.

‘’It is NSDC’s endeavour to skill youth who do not have any prior education or work experience in future skills. To ramp up our efforts of making future skilling more outcome focused, our partnership with Masai School will create an impactful framework for tech-focused skilling in India. NSDC and Masai will impart skill training to students in IT fields – software development, data analytics and product design. This collaboration has the potential to democratise aspirational employment opportunities for India’s youth,” said Tiwari.

The two organisations intend to host one of India’s biggest digital tech learning conferences, to be attended by aspiring techies, focused on democratising success in tech careers. Masai will also roll out scholarships worth Rs 10 crore, the first phase of which will benefit 250 aspirants. In the long run, both organisations are looking to create a framework of sustainable skill development that will transform the higher education landscape for the youth.

Focusing on the Skill India Mission, the collaboration will benefit the lives of over 1.5 lakh students and their families in tier-II and tier-III cities over a period of seven years. This will enable aspirants to go beyond their economic and educational background by creating a level-playing field for private-sector tech jobs through skill-based learning certified by NSDC.

The two organisations will also work towards creating alternatives to the banking loan system for skill-based education, which generally acts as a setback for low-income families.

Prateek Shukla, co-founder and CEO, Masai said, “We believe that India has an equal distribution of talent but not opportunities. We are honoured to have partnered with NSDC as this association takes us one step closer towards accomplishing our mission of increasing employability quotient. This partnership will be a game changer as it aims to bring new ways of delivering skill-based education in India. This partnership will also lend credibility to the talent coming out of Masai, opening new doors of opportunities for our students that still accord higher value to degrees than skills.”

With an outcome-driven approach that incentivises learning with jobs post completion of the course, Masai claims its Income Share Agreement has proven to be a successful model. Under this model, 96% of its students are being placed with an average salary of Rs 8 lakh per annum in top Indian start-ups including Ola, Meesho, Ajio and Swiggy and with multinational IT service companies such as Capgemini and GlobalLogic among others.

Masai does not charge any upfront fees. Students only pay for their learning when they get a job that pays them Rs 5 lakh or more annually, else they pay no tuition fee. With no prior technical knowledge needed to join the course, 65% of the over 5000 students currently studying at Masai are from a non-computer science educational background.