Peerless Skill Academy Kolkata to offer healthcare and hospitality courses

Indian business conglomerate Peerless group has come up with an academy in Kolkata aimed at offering educational courses in the healthcare and hospitality sectors. Named Peerless Skill Academy (PSA), the centre, inaugurated on 28 September, will offer about 10 healthcare and hospitality courses.

The courses are likely to benefit students of Kolkata and nearby areas by giving them opportunities to get training at the group’s hotel and hospital during the course. PSA has also got accreditation from the National Skill Development Corporation (NSDC) under Skill India Mission and affiliation from several sector skill councils.

PSA is promoted by the B.K. Roy Foundation (BKRF), a public charitable trust from the promoters of the Peerless group, to provide skill development training and empowerment of women, youth and underprivileged in collaboration with Ramakrishna Math and Ramakrishna Mission (RKM). PSA in collaboration with RKM will be a not-for-profit institution. It will offer concessional fees for students and will be supported by corporate social responsibility (CSR) contributions for economically weaker students.

Most of the programmes will be self-employment and entrepreneurship oriented. Once the students are certified by NSDC, they can either be placed by the academy or they can venture out on their own, Towards end of the courses, PSA will endeavour to empower them suitably by linking them to the supply chain, organizing bank loans, creating self-help group, tie-ups with bulk procurers or intermediaries or recruiters, etc. It will also have a wide corporate connect to link some of their HR need outsourced from PSA.

PSA started operations with 15 centres, mostly in Bengal, of which eight are RKM centres with 45 courses. The RKM centres are Asansol, Purulia, Belur, Sarisha, Sargachi, Kamarpukur, Tamluk, Contai and Bankura. The other centres are Habra, Chinsura, Ghatal, Behala, Kolkata S1 and Kolkata S2. PSA-RKM has plans to train more than 90,000 students in seven years and go pan-India in two to three years’ time.