AMCHAM organized a select group roundtable with Ms. Uma Mahadevan, Additional Chief Secretary, Panchayat Raj and Skill Development, Entrepreneurship, and Livelihood, Government of Karnataka on May 24^th at her office in Bengaluru. The theme of the roundtable was ‘Aligning Public-Private Partnerships in Training, Skill Development, and Livelihood’ with the objective to enhance public-private partnerships in skilling and employment sectors within Karnataka through the sharing of experiences, identifying bottlenecks, discussing impacts, and proposing suggestions. Ms. Ranjana Khanna, Director General CEO, AMCHAM, expressed her gratitude to Ms. Uma Mahadevan for her initiative and collaboration with AMCHAM on the very pertinent area of skilling. The opening remarks by Ms. Uma Mahadevan provided a comprehensive overview of Karnataka’s history, particularly highlighting its contributions to academia and the significant growth in engineering and medical fields since the 1980s. She elaborated on the coordinated approach in vocational training and skill development initiated in 2016, integrating various programs under one department for better synergy. Her remarks included Karnataka’s achievements in skill development, including the success in the India Skill Summit where the state ranks second now, emphasis on women’s achievements in skill competitions, budget allocation for creating a skill Olympics, spanning from village and taluk levels to the global stage and establishment of a Skill Academy in Bellary in partnership with the World Skilling Institute. Ms. Mahadevan enlisted the training infrastructure available in the state — 270 Government Industrial Training Institutes (ITIs) and nearly 1,000 private sector, with over 70,000 individuals trained, with a focus on women’s skills training and new technologies, significant industry partnerships, ITIs’ upgradation supported by the World Bank. She also highlighted the significance of industry and government collaboration: formation of nine industry working groups focusing on future skilling, organization of large-scale placement events to enhance career growth, training 1,500 faculty members under the ‘Train the Trainers’ program and implementation of e-governance reports and skill committee portals to match company requirements with available skilled workers.

The interaction focussed on the inclusion of skilling activities into CSR initiatives, collaboration with government, global training initiatives, faculty development, focus on diversity and mentorship, deep tech and collaboration with colleges, industry-certified Hi-Tech courses and credentialization, partnerships for bridging industry-academia gap, creative arts, sustainability, focus on future skills and having a single point of contact between industry and government for implementing skill initiatives. The meeting concluded with a vote of thanks by Ms. Ranjana Khanna.