Founder of Shoppers stop retail, BS Nagesh enters vocational education
B S Nagesh has set up Trrain
BS Nagesh, the pioneer of modern retail in India with Shoppers Stop has now started TRRAIN Foundation to train retail staff. TRRAIN (Trust for Retailers and Retail Associates of India) has tied up with Aptech, for content and operates as public charitable trust – TRRAIN.
In view of the fact that government has only recently allowed FDI in multi brand retail, this is a good news for the prospective employees.
The classes are currently being conducted out of a box literally, a specially designed air-conditioned shipping container fitted on a truck parked outside the Inorbit Mall in the Mumbai suburb of Malad. Three pilot modules, of an hours duration everyday for 18 consecutive days, have been completed with around 75 executives trained.
“We have developed this model after doing extensive research on 150 modern as well as traditional retail formats,” said Nagesh. His attempt is to provide affordable training to the workforce at smaller retailers who are not in a position to splurge on longer courses.
“You can attend the class for one hour and go back to work; this allows retail executives from the vicinity to come on board,” said Nagesh. The hour-long training starts with an English-speaking module and ends with a five-minute laughter yoga session.
“If Mumbai alone can occupy 25-30 containers (centres), 25,000 employees can be trained in a year. If we are able to get 60% occupancy in three years, we will break-even,” said Nagesh.
Trrain is also exploring other models to permeate different layers in the retail industry.
After doing a survey of 100 different roles that a disabled person employed in the retail industry can do, the firm has tied up with Hyderabad based Centre for PwD Livelihoods to train people from rural India for 37 roles.
The first batch of 27 people got trained for 90 days, leading to them securing employment in retail companies such as Reliance Digital and Hypercity, drawing a salary of Rs 6,500.