India, a relatively smaller economy with a far bigger workforce, faces a crisis perhaps far deeper than any other nation in the world today. Its demographic trends (300 million new workers by 2025), its archaic education system (barely 9-10% of graduates are employable) and economic structure (agriculture contributes 18% to the GDP and employs 56%) all of them have converged to make the crisis painful and difficult.
Statistics:
Few statistics on unskilled population in India:
1. 53% of employed youth suffer some degree of skill deprivation while only 8% of youth are unemployed
2. 57% of India's youth suffer some degree of unemployability
3. The 82.5 million unemployable youth fall in various skill repair buckets
4. Demand / Supply mismatch; 90% of employment opportunities require vocational skills but 90% of our college / school output has bookish knowledge
5. High dropout rates (57% by Grade 8) are incentivized by the low returns of education
6. Poor quality of skills / education show up in low incomes rather than unemployment
7. 75% of school finishers make less than Rs 50,000 per year
8. 58% of graduates makes less than Rs 75,000 per year
Challenges of Unskilled:
The unskilled manual workers in rural/urban and urban centers earn very low levels of wages with no guarantee of employment on any permanent basis. This in turn increases their vulnerability enormously. It has its own negative impact on the livelihood options and their sustainability over a period of time. Not only does it affect that generation but more importantly the next generation to a significant extent. Much of our labor force is 'working poor' i.e. makes enough money to live but not enough to pull out of poverty. The bottom 20% of our people produces 4% of our income. Agriculture is unviable and keeping people on farms condemns them to lives of poverty and unfulfilled potential.
Our Impact:
Corporate India cannot find skilled employees and many people cannot find jobs. VelaiSMS bridges this gap by absorbing 'Skill training institutes' into the system for repairing the unskilled people. VelaiSMS identifies unskilled people and make skill institutes reach them and transform their skill level. We also track the lifecycle of these people, find suitable jobs for their skill levels and provide job information periodically to keep them employed at all times.
