Skills Academy Pvt Ltd, a skill development firm founded by Genpact’s former chief Pramod Bhasin and DLF director Pia Singh, has acquired A4e India Pvt Ltd, an Indian arm of UK-based A4e Ltd, for an undisclosed amount.
This acquisition will allow Skills Academy to expand into new areas across different states in the country and also leverage the experience of existing A4e employees to help increase the scale of the business.
Set up in India in 2009, New Delhi-based A4e provides skill development, training and placements across various industries in India. It aims to skilling over 500 million people by 2022 through its prime contracting model, and make them employable.
“There is a terrific synergy between the activities carried out by Skills Academy and A4e India and the vision of both the companies. This provides us with immediate scale, adds experienced teams in states where we want to operate and provides us with a good pipeline of contracts," said Pia, daughter of DLF promoter KP Singh.
“We are delighted to welcome the employees of A4e India who have tremendous experience and a terrific track record of providing skill development, training and placement in rural and tribal areas. They have strong understanding of local requirements and good execution focus to drive impact by skilling people and placing them in jobs, thus making a change in people’s lives," said Bhasin.
David Crichton Miller, group director of A4e, UK, said the parent is no longer best suited to take advantage of the growth opportunities in front of its Indian subsidiary and so the firm decided to sell the unit to Skills Academy.
Skills Academy, started in FY12, aims to provide employment opportunities to youth across the country. It has designed what it calls its ‘science of learning’ combined with an industry proven toolkit which helps match student aspirations with necessary skills required by the industry, build domain experts, enhance industry-academia partnerships.
In the last eight months, it has trained and placed over 500 learners across geographies catering to the employment needs of industries across banking, BPO, hospitality, quick service restaurants and retail sectors.
(Edited by Joby Puthuparampil Johnson)
