CS Holdings (CSH) and Consilience Technologies have entered a joint venture to offer Indian company Tata Infotech`s corporate and career training material in SA.
Consilience is two-thirds owned by the J&J Group (headed by former government minister Jay Naidoo and Nedlac CE Jayendra Naidoo). Tata Infotech, a company in the 140-year old Tata Group, owns the balance.
The Tata Group is one of the largest corporate organisations in India.
"We had options, but CS Holdings was the natural choice because of its capacity, market image and dedication to training and education," says Consilience CEO Hasmukh Gajjar.
Universities have traditionally been behind the market by two to three years.
Annette van der Laan, CEO, CS Holdings
CSH has in the past focused almost entirely in corporate training, but CEO Annette van der Laan sees a gap in the career training market which she believes the venture can fill.
"IT training needs to be offered by a company that can move quickly as technology changes, in other words, that can change syllabi all the time," she adds.
"Training companies need to be able to focus on business needs, but universities have traditionally been behind the market by two to three years, because they can`t change their technology and syllabi quickly enough."
The venture will also endeavour to find work for its graduates, primarily in "learnership" programmes, and Van der Laan says various institutions have expressed interest in this.
The business is targeting a turnover of R50 million over the next three years.
Van der Laan notes that Africa is in desperate need of IT skills, and she believes government should be involved to help SA become a training centre for Africa.
Tata will probably roll-out its training model in the rest of the continent, and while CSH hopes to be involved in that, it aims to ensure that the SA training business is a success first.
Training will begin in July, but the real intake is expected in January or February next year.
It will be offered in Gauteng, Cape Town and Durban initially, but will be expanded according to demand.
This venture will make CS Education Solutions a major player in the student career-seeker market. says
Robynne Erwin, director, CS Education Solutions
"This venture will make CS Education Solutions a major player in the student career-seeker market," says Robynne Erwin, a director in CSH`s CS Education Solutions division.
She says a new service division will be created to meet the demands created by the curriculum, which is continually updated by leading IT professionals.
Erwin says that e-commerce and software development will be the main focus of the training.
"We constantly hear about the IT skills shortage in SA and yet we have hundreds of qualified MCSEs who cannot get jobs. This tells us that the current IT training is not addressing industry needs.
"It is the depth of content of the Tata Infotech courses and the fact that they work across multiple platforms that makes them unique. They are not limited to specific vendor profiles and thus are exactly what we need to fill the skills gap."
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