AT A TIME when foreign companies in India face a major manpower crunch, the

RELATED ARTICLES France, Germany want to keep debt-stricken Greece in euro zone India seeks Germany's help in green tech, electric vehicles Germany warns Greece: No more money without reforms ZF Lenksysteme opens steering facility near Pune

Indo-German Chamber of Commerce (IGCC) has come up with an innovative idea. It plans to start a German Technical Training Centre in the city to provide readymade staff to all German companies in India.

“There is a shortage of highly-skilled workers and there are no readymade ‘plug and play’ engineers and other staff for various service sectors for the existing German companies in India,” said Zubin Kabraji, regional director, Indo-German Chamber of Commerce (IGCC), Pune.

He said the state-of-the-art Centre would be launched in a year and a half and conduct two-year training programme in various sectors.

Kabraji said besides the major Pune-based Mercedes-Benz and Volkswagen, there were 995 German companies located all over India. Out of these lot, there are more than 100 purely German companies in and around Pune and 150 Indo-German joint ventures and 60 Indian firms with business deals in Germany in the city. These companies need a regular supply of skilled manpower of high calibre and quality-conscious German companies have planned to increase indigenous content of their production in India.

“As per the international standard, the defects in parts per million (PPM) should be less than 10, whereas as per the Indian standard some achieve in the range of 90 to 100 and therefore, the proposed technical training centre would address the German need,” he said.

He said German investors were looking to hire “plug and play” engineers, chemical engineers, and other ready-to-use service staff in all areas.

Kabraji said the training centre, sponsored by German industries and IGCC, would churn out 300 highly skilled staff initially and in a couple of years scale it up to 500. It would also train the existing staff of Germany firms.

The staff would be trained in various engineering skills, operate German techno-savvy machines and churned out candidates to handle specialised areas like casting, forging, milling, injection molding and learn the latest technology being introduced in German industries.

Currently, the 20-year-old Indo-German Training Centre trains 200 skilled staff out of which 60 are trained in Mumbai, 40 each in Chennai and Delhi and 25 in Bangalore.