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Wednesday, July 15, 2015
BWI: Dr. Romesh Wadhwani Announces Commitment to Wadhwani Foundations of Upto USD 1 Billion
Source : Wadhwani Foundation
Wednesday, July 15, 2015 6:22PM IST (12:52PM GMT)
Dr. Romesh Wadhwani Announces Commitment to Wadhwani Foundations of Upto USD 1 Billion
Announcement on the occasion of 'World Youth Skills Day'
New Delhi, Delhi, India
Says Entrepreneurship and skilling are the two magic keys to India’s economic and job growth
Finds the long-standing mission of the Wadhwani Foundations to be fully aligned with the focus of the government on promoting skills development and entrepreneurship
Cites two MoUs with Ministry of Skill Development & Entrepreneurship (MSDE) and Department for Empowerment of Persons with Disabilities (DEPwD) as collaborative efforts with Indian Government for higher impact
Re-enforcing his vision of accelerating economic development in India and emerging economies, Dr. Romesh Wadhwani, Founder and Chairman, Wadhwani Foundations today announced a commitment of USD 1 billion to Wadhwani Foundations. Silicon Valley based Dr. Wadhwani made this announcement via a video address at the SKILL INDIA launch campaign organized by Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship (MSDE) with Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi as the Chief Guest. This event was held at Vigyan Bhavan today to mark the first ever World Youth Skills Day [15th July 2015].
During the event, Prime Minister formally launched ‘National Skill Development Mission’, unveiling the new ‘NationalPolicy for Skill Development and Entrepreneurship 2015’ and rolling out MSDE’s flagship scheme, “Pradhan Mantri Kaushal Vikash Yojana - PMKVY” nationally– the pilot phase of which began earlier.
Dr. Wadhwani’s increased commitment to the Foundations comes at the time when the focus of the Government on promoting skills development and entrepreneurship, and the long-standing mission of the Wadhwani Foundations to accelerate economic development through entrepreneurship and skills development seem to be fully aligned. Wadhwani Foundations’ two major ongoing initiatives - National Entrepreneurship Network (NEN) and Skills Development Network (SDN), have already had a significant impact on job creation and job fulfilment in India and now the Foundations is looking forward to partner with Government of India and state governments to further scale-up of its initiatives to help India create and fill 25 million jobs, in the organized sector, by 2020.
During his video address at the event, Dr. Romesh Wadhwani, Founder and Chairman, Wadhwani foundations said, “Entrepreneurship and skilling are the two magic keys to India’s economic and job growth. Recently, the honourable prime minister said that India has a large number of hands to work and even larger number of dreams to realise. So correct. I am grateful to the honourable Prime Minister Narendra Modi, to Minister Rudy, to other honourable ministers in the audience, to Secretary Sunil Arora and other dignitaries for their support on entrepreneurship and skills development in India.”
“India needs to create 25 million high quality jobs over the next few years. So I thought that the best mission for the Foundations will be to accelerate job creation through large-scale initiatives. For example, our National Entrepreneurship Network (NEN) and Skills Development Network (SDN) initiatives have already created 2000 new companies, tens of thousands of skill possessions, 500 colleges that now teach entrepreneurship and a 100,000 student entrepreneurs.” Dr. Wadhwani further added.
In Oct. 2014, when Dr. Wadhwani [along with a group of top Indian- American CEOs, venture capitalists and higher education leaders] met Prime Minister Modi in New York, he was extremely impressed by the Prime Minister’s resolve to people’s movement and found his commitment to job creation and skills development extremely encouraging to Wadhwani Foundations’ efforts of accelerating economic development by transforming education to create millions of jobs.
The core model of Wadhwani Foundations is to enter into private-public partnerships with Indian government and with state governments on entrepreneurship and skills education, developing new sources of capital, creating a mentor network etc. As a result, the Foundations has signed MoUs with the Ministry of Skill Development & Entrepreneurship (MSDE) for program management of specific projects relating to Skills Development and Entrepreneurship, and Department for Empowerment of Persons with Disabilities (DEPwD) [Ministry of Social Justice & Empowerment] to facilitate training and employment of 25,00,000 PwDs by 2022.
Given India’s demographic dividend, it acquires special significance. With 54% of our population below 25 years of age, India is sitting on a massive workforce – an unprecedented resource for wealth creation that has the potential to outpace much of the world and turn India into a global HR engine, if equipped with the right skills.
You can view the video address of Dr. Romesh Wadhwani here.
About Dr. Romesh Wadhwani
Romesh is a successful Silicon Valley entrepreneur and philanthropist with passion for wealth creation. After building three large scale successful companies in three decades, the last of which was sold for over $9 billion, Romesh founded the Wadhwani Foundations in 2000 to which he has committed to donate most of his wealth. Romesh envisions high impact social change in emerging economies through sustained economic acceleration. He is a member of the Gates Buffet Giving Pledge.
Romesh is also the Founding Chairman and CEO of Symphony Technology Group, a 12 year old PE firm comprising of 23 companies, with a combined revenue of USD 3.5 billion and 18,000 employees. In August 2012, Romesh was appointed by U.S President Barack Obama as General Trustee, Board of Trustees of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, Washington DC, a key administration post. Romesh is also a Board Member of Center for Strategic and International Studies, Washington DC. He is a proud recipient of the prestigious 'Non-Resident Philanthropist' award at the Forbes India Philanthropy Awards 2013 and also features in Forbes 400 list.
Romesh obtained a B. Tech degree from IIT Bombay and an MS and Ph.D in Electrical Engineering from Carnegie, Mellon University.
About Wadhwani Foundations
Founded in 2000 by Dr. Romesh Wadhwani, the Foundations’ primary mission is economic acceleration in emerging economies. With large-scale education led initiatives driving skill development and job creation, the Foundations have launched five high impact education, training and research focused Initiatives in India that will lead to creation and fulfillment of 25 million jobs by 2020.
To leverage entrepreneurship as a catalyst for job creation, Wadhwani Foundations established theNational Entrepreneurship Network (NEN) in 2003. NEN inspires, educates and supports emerging entrepreneurs. Since inception, NEN has resulted in 2,000 new start-ups with 12,000+ direct and 50,000+ indirect jobs, and is now tracking 1,500+ new companies each year. For skilling, vocational education and training led job fulfillment, Wadhwani Foundations have set up the Skills Development Network (SDN) which supports multiple high school, college and employer initiatives for entry level mid-skill jobs through a digital/video curricula and pedagogy.
Opportunity Network for Disabled (OND)is aimed at mainstreaming the educated disabled into sustainable high quality corporate jobs through a business value proposition. Research and Innovation Network (RIN)aims to upgrade India’s research eco-system by catalyzing ‘Centers of Innovations’ in partnership with existing research Institutes. PolicyResearch Centre provides data driven research inputs for informed policy actions towards creating an education led human-capital driven growth economy. Wadhwani Chair on US-India policy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), Washington, D.C, aims to accelerate India-U.S economic activities primarily through channels of skilling and education.
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