February 4, 2015: India Electronics and Semiconductor Association (IESA), the premier trade body representing the Indian Electronic System Design and Manufacturing (ESDM) industry has today announced a SPEED UP and SCALE UP of its talent development initiative through Centre of Excellence with Electronics Sector Skills Council of India (ESSCI) and a Memorandum of Understanding with VTU (Visvesvaraya Technological University) and RV-VLSI Design Center to build the talent pipeline in the ESDM space by strengthening industry-academia relations.
MoU with ESSCI
As per the MoU with ESSCI, Electronics Sector Skills Council of India (ESSCI) and Indian Semiconductor and Electronics Association (IESA) will be collaboratively working to support a Centre of Excellence (COE), within an identified institution. The COE will have latest facilities for training students in Semiconductor design, Embedded design and Internet of Things (IOT) as per National Occupational Standards (NOSs). The primary focus will be nurturing the trainer for facilitating sufficient capacity of trained manpower in multiple locations.
MoU with VTU
The MoU with Visvesvaraya Technological University (VTU) will harness and sharpen talent required for India to become ESDM manufacturing nation on the large scale. IESA, along with VTU, will enhance its education value chain by providing industry oriented programs and courses so that VTU and IESA together help the ESDM sector to have access to industry-ready talents from VTU and its 200+ constituent colleges and institutes.
MOU with RV- VLSI
IESA also signed another MoU with RV-VLSI Design Center, Bangalore to bridge the gap between academia and industry and the roll out courses, customized for ESDM industry, to meet the talent requirement of ESDM industry,. In its initial stage, the courses will be introduced as a pilot in select academic institutions, which can be rolled out to a larger audience in a later stage.
IESA already had one MOU with ‘SEER Academy’ with similar objectives of ESDM talent development.
The IESA core interest group called TALENT CIG consisting of 10 industry managers and led by Vivek Pawar of Sankalp Semiconductors would passionately work on the implementations from IESA.
“IESA is pledged to make India an ESDM powerhouse and we believe availability of talent base in the country is of strategic importance. As we are showering high hopes on India becoming a destination for design-led manufacturing, we also need to nurture and develop world class talents for future needs . There is an immediate necessity to improvise course materials and develop trainers with industry exposures to address the talent requirements in few years from now and make students industry ready,”said Ashok Chandak, chairman, IESA, to highlight the importance of the MoUs.
On this occasion, N K Mohapatra, CEO, ESSCI said, “We have been continuously working towards establishing an effective and efficient ecosystem for nurturing skills required to propel electronics Industry in India. However, we have realized that it is equally important to coach the trainer and this will bring an exponential impact on driving the required skill-set for the ESDM industry. We believe, our association with IESA to implement COE to create trainers in semiconductor design, embedded design and Internet of Things (IOT), will facilitate sufficient capacity of trained manpower to address the talent crunch in the ESDM sector .”
“Finally, India is growing as a nation, meant for design-led manufacturing. However, the success will hugely depend on the way India is going to sustain the opportunities for the ESDM companies and support them to achieve future growth, by providing them a competitive edge. This can only be possible if India can drive talent and human resources, as per the international standard. We take pride in associating with IESA and contribute to the ESDM industry’s talent need. We believe, India can start driving the ESDM ecosystem within this decade and create its premium position in the world map,”said Dr H Maheshappa, vice-chancellor, Visvesvaraya Technological University.
“India is emerging to be the default destination for design-led ESDM manufacturing, which can catalyse the economic growth of the country. However, the dearth in talent, with industry knowledge and exposure, can create a gap in this attempt. In an effort to bridge this gap, we will be shortly rolling out customised courses for the ESDM space, in select academic institutes as a pilot under the guidance of IESA. The courses will follow the experiential learning pedagogy and supplement academic learning. This will provide an opportunity for engineers to acquire skills as per industry needs, we are confident that this industry-academia collaboration will make immense contributions in the process of building India as a design-led electronics manufacturing nation,” said Srinivas Venkatesh Prasad, CEO, RV-VLSI Design Centre, while signing the MoU.
