Niranjan Waghmare realized that many young Indians lacked skills and job training, so he launched Vertois Training to address this gap. Vertois offers short certificate courses to prepare youth for entry-level jobs in growing industries like retail, restaurants, and more. Starting with retail, Waghmare has since expanded Vertois' course offerings and placement of over 120 trainees in 2012, with a goal of training 7,000 more by 2014. He aims to create jobs and unleash potential through an entrepreneurial approach focused on untapped markets.

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How Niranjan Waghmare is creating wealth by
doing good
Author :Fiona Rom
When Indian entrepreneur Niranjan Waghmare realised that vast numbers of young people
in his country were unemployable through a lack of skills and aptitude training, he launched
a startup to fill the gap.
“Over sixty percent of our population is under the age of twenty­five and we don’t have the educational infrastructure that
can make them eligible for a job,” Waghmare tells yourstory.in.
The government in India has taken note of this, says Waghmare, and has set up the National Skills Development
Corporation with the goal of creating employment for five hundred million young people by 2020. Personally, however,
he came to understand the full scale of the problem in 2010 and realised that there was also a huge need for increased
private sector participation in skills training. In 2011 he quit his corporate job and launched Vertois Training and
Consultancy.
“I knew that the gap I was looking to address was large,” he tells entrepreneurindia.in. “Even one percent of the
opportunity could be a huge revenue driver.”
Vertois offers four­ to six­week certificate courses for high­school students, undergraduates, and graduates to prepare
them for skills­based jobs. “Our focus area is youth at the bottom of the pyramid,” Waghmare says. “On one hand we
train youths from semi­urban and rural areas and put them in jobs, and on the other hand we create trained talent for
entry­level jobs in India’s growing service industry.”
The first sector he targeted was retail, due to the high rates of attrition in the industry and the clear lack of trained staff.
The Retail Association of India provided him with a training programme designed by human resource managers from a
range of organisations. “Our programmes are a mix of theory and practical training where we use external specialists,”
says Waghmare. “The idea is to apprise students with the responsibilities expected of them, and then equip them with
the skills required to cater to the job profile .”
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He has since extended the courses to include the quick­service restaurant sector, hospitality, and corporate training, and
has established two state­of­the­art Vertois centres from where courses are run throughout the sub­continent. “Getting
people to trust you is one of the biggest challenges,” he says. “But we use locals for marketing, and as time goes on our
track record also helps.”
A hundred and twenty people trained by Vertois were placed in jobs in retail in 2012, and Waghmare has set a target of
training seven thousand more by 2014. Intensely customer­focused, he is passionate about helping individuals unleash
their true potential.
“By focusing on untapped markets, by doing things differently, and by
applying best practices, I believe that we are in the business of creating
wealth by doing social good,” he says.
There could hardly be a more inspiring approach to entrepreneurship than that.
For more information, go to www.vertois.com
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