YES BANK, India’s fourth largest private sector bank, in light of the rapidly evolving digital and technology paradigm in India’s financial sector, is undertaking game-changing bank-wide initiatives to train and upskill its employees, as well as nurture the pipeline of future business leaders from business schools and engineering institutes across India.
The bank recently held a felicitation ceremony for meritorious students from across 22 select, leading business schools and engineering colleges in India, as a part of its annual scholarship program, YES FUTURE READY, aimed at grooming business leaders and developing deep-tech talent and skills for workplaces of the future.
The initiative currently in its 4th edition seeks to identify exemplary scholars and nurture Design-Thinking, Innovation, Creativity-led Entrepreneurship mindsets in addition to enabling deserving students with a scholarship amount of INR 2,00,000.
Speaking on future skilling initiatives, Rana Kapoor, MD and CEO of YES BANK, said, “While demand is strong and there is growing collaboration in the sector, developing deep-tech talent and future skills for the jobs of the future should be a priority. We have a strong S.T.E.M (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics), as well as technology talent pool; however, concerted focus on future skilling is low. While, there have been some encouraging attempts towards this, there is need for more collaborative effort by academia and industry, with Government support to invest in skilling our talent for the future.
At YES BANK, it has been our constant endeavor to engage with the youth and channelize their entrepreneurial spirit in the right direction. YES FUTURE READY scholarship program, now in its fourth year is a step in this direction. It endeavors to make scholars ‘future skilled’ by making available resources and mentorship focused on new-age digital and technology focused aspects, beyond their college curriculum.”
The making of future business leaders
YES FUTURE READY Scholarship Program also aims to augment YES BANK’s flagship talent acquisition program, YES Professional Entrepreneurship Program (Y-PEP). Winners of the previous edition of YES BANK’s scholarship program, who were present at the felicitation ceremony to welcome the incoming batch of scholars, share their experience to highlight how the initiative served as a seamless stepping stone into YES BANK.
I am currently working as Business Planning Manager to the Chief Risk and Compliance Officer. The YES ASPIRE mentorship helped me in exploring different strategic areas of the Bank and understanding the structures. I also completed several assignments across equity research, loan appraisal, and analytics in addition to one-on-one sessions with my mentor which helped in getting deeper understanding required for my role.
Mohit Kanjwani
YES ASPIRE Scholar 2016 | Y-PEP 2017
Manager – Risk Management
My current role, as part of the Supply Chain Finance (SCF) product team, requires frequent interaction with top management of the three TReDS platforms to discuss mutual strategies and progress. The inputs shared by my mentor through the YES ASPIRE program have helped me by giving me a holistic view of YES BANK and the banking industry. This has also provided me the much needed confidence to represent the Bank in front of external entities.
Vaishali Sabherwal
YES ASPIRE Scholar 2016 | Y-PEP 2017
Manager – Transaction Banking Group
YES ASPIRE helped in charting down my career aspirations through the mentorship provided by senior leaders of YES BANK. This meticulously designed interaction sessions prior to joining as a Y-PEP has provided valuable takeaways and helped me play an integral role in a product launch – my first assignment on joining.
Nupur Bhatia
YES ASPIRE Scholar 2016 | Y-PEP 2017
Manager – Marketing & Corporate Communication
YES FUTURE READY Scholars 2018
The winners were shortlisted post stringent evaluation process which included selection basis not only academic, co-curricular achievements along with personality skills, but also cognitive ability and situational judgment followed by a rigorous interview with a senior leader of YES BANK.
Ipsita Satpathy, a physicist doing her post-graduation from Indian Institute of Management (IIM) Ahmedabad, and one of the scholars selected for the programme said, “This is more than the theoretical experience that we get and gives us an understanding on how the landscape of banking and finance is changing. Some of us do not have a prior exposure with banks but there is a paradigm shift in the roles.”
Another scholar Pranav Kolachana, a chemical engineer now studying at IIM Calcutta, said, “This programme allows us to engage and interact with the senior management of the bank, which would not happen in my summer internships or at other work experiences at this age. And obviously the monetary aspect also helps.”
The journey ahead
The selected YES FUTURE READY scholars will be engaged and mentored by YES BANK’s senior leadership over the next 7 months. The students will also have the opportunity to future-skill themselves through access to online courses on Coursera. Based on interest areas, students will also have the opportunity to work on live project that may pave the path to pre-placement interview offers by the bank.
Ideasourcing platform for student innovators
YES BANK also engages with the student community through Transformation Series – a global platform for crowd-sourcing of ideas, which brings together the brightest minds from universities around the world. Launched in 2010, the initiative champions YES BANK’s quest to promote entrepreneurship and innovation in the youth. So far, more than 75,000 students have participated in this challenge, making it India’s largest case study challenge.
YES BANK Transformation Series 2017 has recently been ranked #2 Most Prestigious B-School Competition by Dare2Compete (as part of Dare2Compete Awards 2017-18), India’s leading platform and community for B-school news, competitions and hackathons.
Brand Solutions is a marketing initiative for sponsored posts. No VCCircle journalist was involved in the creation of this content.
