A Bangalore-based social enterprise has developed a unique VET model which has the potential to transform hundreds of millions of rural youth into employable living-wage earners

A modestly appointed four-bedroom house converted into an office in Jayanagar, a green and pleasant suburb of Bangalore, is the head office of Head Held High Services Pvt. Ltd (H3S, estb.2012). A company with 80 employees, it has rolled out a unique ‘rubanomics’ model for bridging the rural-urban jobs divide by skilling unemployed and under-employed rural youth for white collar jobs (IT enabled services, BPOs, hospitality and retail trades) in urban and small-town India. If the model works, it has the potential to transform hundreds of millions of uneducated and under-educated rural youth into employable living-wage earners who could deliver India’s much proclaimed demographic dividend.

Since this ingeniously conceptualised enterprise began training rural youth for employability in 2007 under the aegis of a trust named Foundation for Life, teaching them English, computer programs, life skills (interview capabilities, public speaking etc), H3S has established 15 training centres in Karnataka and one in neighbouring (former) Andhra Pradesh. Together these centres have trained over 1,000 illiterates and school graduates of whom 90 percent are already employed in 15 corporates, firms and business enterprises in Karnataka at an average monthly wage of Rs. 7,500.

Tried and tested in its first learning centre in Koppal (pop.72,000), a tier-3 town in North Karnataka, the company’s RubanShakti vocational education and training system “extracts relevancy” from the traditional school syllabus; provides “transformational IT training” and uses “conversational pedagogies” of peer-to-peer learning in non-hierarchical environments to quickly develop the employability skills and confidence of unschooled and backward rural youth.

“According to several research studies it is possible to make a completely English-illiterate youth 80 percent proficient in the language by familiarising him with 500 words. Under our sprint-style RubanShakti learning programmes, we teach our students 2,500 words using word recognition, phonetic reading, vowel combination pedagogies, and electronic games and gadgets. We are now confident we can make a completely English illiterate youth 95 percent English proficient within six months, as opposed to 12-16 years taken by the conventional school system. During our six-month intensive training programmes (Rs.9,000) we also make them computer literate and confident by teaching them transactional life skills. Our target is to train 2 million youth in ten years,” says Rajesh Bhat, an engineering graduate of Mysore University and former product manager of OnMobile Apps, Bangalore who co-founded H3S. Moved by the hapless plight of unemployed rural youth while visiting his native village Sirsi, in arid North Karnataka, Bhat (together with Sunil Savara) registered Foundation for Life in 2007 to train them to work in a BPO (business process outsourcing) unit they proposed to establish in Koppal.

To raise funding for the proposed BPO, Bhat and Savara approached the Bangalore-based entrepreneurs network The Indus Entrepreneurs where they were referred to Madan Padaki who was at the time riding high on the success of MeritTrac Services Pvt. Ltd, a company he had co-promoted in 2000 and which had emerged as the country’s premier testing and assessments company for corporates, government and education institutions. A mechanical engineering graduate of the National Institution of Engineering, Mysore with an MBA from the S.P. Jain Institute of Management & Research, Mumbai with working experience in Wipro Fluid Power, Infosys and Mphasis-BFL, in 2000 Padaki teamed up with two other professionals (Murlidhar and Mohan Kannegal) to promote MeriTrac which by 2008 had been acquired by Manipal Global Education and had become a highly successful personnel testing and assessments company.

“with almost a decade’s experience of assessing talent and understanding employability, I immediately became aware of the potential of Foundation for Life’s rural youth training and development project and joined forces with Rajesh and Sunil to start the Head Held High Foundation. In 2010 we inducted 120 rural youth aged 18-25 with zero-class V vernacular education into our pilot project in Koppal enabled by a grant from the Sir Dorabjee Tata Trust. In October, after eight months of intensive, residential training, 113 who stayed the course attained our learning objectives. In 2011-12 we subsequently trained another 250 youth in Gadag and Hindupur, partly supported by grants from the Deshpande and K. Raheja foundations, and partly from my own investment. But to enable scaling and sustainability, we felt the need to structure ourselves as a social enterprise which would attract like-minded shareholders and generate surpluses for re-investment. So in October 2012, we created Head Held High Services Pvt. Ltd,” recalls Padaki.

Since then with the company’s 15 learning/training centres in Karnataka have contributed 650 English literate, computer and life-skills trained youth for urban IT, BPO, healthcare and retail businesses, Bhat and Padaki have expanded H3S’ operations to implement its Rubanomics concept defined as a sturdy bridge linking India’s rural and urban economies. Therefore its second high-potential initiative encourages the emergence of rural entrepreneurs by boosting the business turnover of rural retailers by connecting them with urban corporates eager to penetrate the vast markets of India’s hinterland.

H3S’ AntarPrerana (“inner motivation”) programme is described as “a Ruban entrepreneurs networking platform which builds capacity in rural entrepreneurs and enables them to build last mile capability across sectors”. Supported by the Karnataka government’s department of industries & commerce, AntarPrerana has been launched in Gadag, Shimoga, Bidar, Belgaum and Ramanagaram — attracting over 300 members.

In effect, this intelligent initiative offers corporates and entrepreneurs across sectors like agriculture, health, financial inclusion, education and utilities like energy, water and telecom, cost-effective access into rural markets by transforming small-time rural retailers and youth into entrepreneurs. Moreover to flesh out the idea and develop Rubanomics into an application science and field of study and research, last September H3S established a Centre of Rubanomics at the S.P. Jain Institute of Management & Research, Mumbai and a Rubanomics Initiative at the SDM Institute of  Management, Mysore.

Confident that H3S has developed the formula and expertise to bridge the huge gap which has separated  post-independence India’s rural and urban economies for over six decades, Padaki is “superly optimistic” that the Indian economy is finally on the verge of its long-delayed takeoff.

“By integrating India’s industrial economy with the country’s vast rural hinterland, four factor endowments of the subcontinent will be developed rapidly. These are: a massive pool of young labour, the inherent entrepreneurial spirit of the people, a high aspirations society and democratisation of technology. Skilling and training the huge labour pool of rural India will stimulate a productivity revolution in the agriculture, industry and services sectors of the economy which will dramatically transform India into a surpluses producing, major exporter  nation,” predicts Padaki.

Wind in your sails!