Dantewada takes a stride towards Digital India, opens a BPO to empower thousands of youth
Equipped with world class infrastructure and amenities, Yuva, the first BPO of Dantewada, will provide services to leading telecom giants, reputed banks, and IT companies.
Dantewada, the southernmost city of Chhattisgarh, has added another feather to its cap by opening Yuva, a state-of-the-art BPO that promises to give a major boost to employment in the region.
Sharing his thoughts on this recently launched initiative, Saurabh Kumar, District Collector, Dantewada, said,
From skill development to innovation and entrepreneurship, the youth of Dantewada are excelling in all fields. ‘Yuva’ is yet another endeavour towards providing a corporate platform and making the youth of the district, confident, self-reliant and responsible.
Skilling youth is the key to development
Explaining how Yuva can address problems of unemployment, Saurabh says: “Youth in this region do not get jobs commensurate with their experience and skills, and are also unwilling to migrate, which creates a catch 22 situation. With YUVA coming to Dantewada, there are jobs not only for the educated, but also for those in support and ancillary services such as canteens, local transportation, housekeeping, security services, etc.”
Managed by Sixth Generation Technologies, a web-developer, e-commerce and SEO service provider, this newly opened BPO has already started operations by providing technical and soft-skills training to over 450 youth, out of which 236 are women.
There are some heartening cases, wherein married women are coming with their two to three-year-old children for technical and soft-skill training and are raring to go live, shares Saurabh.
Located in the Education City of Jawanga, Yuva will soon start offering its services to prominent MNCs such as Airtel, NIT Infotech and banks such as ICICI, HDFC, Induslnd, and Bank of America.
Of incentivised training and added benefits
For better job preparedness, we provide soft skills training and computer literacy programmes to ensure that these jobs offer continuous growth to our youth. With experience, they can earn up to six-digit salaries as well, says Saurabh.
To keep the jobs flexible and lucrative, the educational background for the employees is maintained at 10/12th pass. Additionally, monthly remuneration of Rs 8,000–Rs 14,000 for the employees; affordable accommodation; and concessional travel fares are some of the incentives being offered by Dantewada District Administration, channeled through the District Project Livelihood College Society, Dantewada.
Yuva is also targeting to scale up the number of people involved with the BPO to more than 1,000 by the end of March. “To achieve the ambitious target of 1,000, we had space limitation which we solved through precast technology. In order to get our number, we are reaching out to local institutes, CACs and neighbouring districts too,” says Saurabh.
Having benefitted people in the far-flung areas of neighbouring districts such as Bijapur, Kanker, Kondagaon, Yuva’s operations will also concentrate banking on the untapped potential in districts such as Bastar and Sukma.
An amalgamation of various schemes
Working on an effective public-private partnership (PPP) model, Yuva, which was set up at a total capital expenditure of Rs 1.3 crore, aims to benefit the most underserved sections of Chhattisgarh. For this, private companies were encouraged and loans from District Mineral Foundation were provided credit on the fixed capital cost at zero percent interest which is repayable in 24 months.
We are offering a shell (built up space) which is available in the district, facilitating the recruitment process and aligning various other existing schemes such as Digital India and Skill India to meet demands such as bandwidth connectivity, skills development and ease of doing business for investors, explains Saurabh.
The ambitious enterprise of Yuva might be the latest among many other noteworthy initiatives undertaken to break every glass ceiling that impedes the progress of Dantewada. However, it remains to be seen how it contributes towards bringing about a sweeping positive change for this naxal-affected district and its youth.