Dr. Srinivas Chunduru (former senior Advisor at OLA) founded VANS Skilling and Advisory has partnered with Athena Advisory, a specialised banking and financial services consulting firm, to make a foray into the banking and NBFC education space through its YUGMA division.
YUGMA is VANS Skilling and Advisory’s industry-academia collaboration platform. It offers specialised training to college graduates to support their career progression. In last 13 months, YUGMA has touched lives of 15K+ students from 150+ colleges having 30+ startups, midsized and large organisations collaborating in the process.
Athena Advisors is a boutique consultancy firm promoted by Satish Mehta, a veteran of HDFC Ltd and the founding Managing Director of CIBIL, India’s first Credit Information Bureau, having more than 30 years’ experience in the banking and financial space.
Through its partnership with Athena Advisory, YUGMA will offer specialised courses that will help students understand the nuances of banking and NBFC sectors from industry veterans and be ready to pursue a fruitful career in these sectors. These specialised courses will be a practical add-on to the curriculum, which will give the students an edge in the market that is calling for ‘skilled’ and ‘ready to contribute’ talent.
“With the joint mission to empower young learners, make them learn directly from industry practitioners who ‘have been there and done that’ and bring them the opportunity that helps them to be job ready, we are glad to be partnering with VANS/ YUGMA that is helping young talent explore opportunities in the market with the backing of domain knowledge,” said Satish Mehta, Founder and Director of Athena Advisors.
Former MD and CEO of Shriram Housing Finance, Sujan Sinha, who also mentors this program observed that in the banking and NBFC space, there has been a gap in terms of skills which freshers have and what the industry wants. “The program designed by YUGMA is a well-researched, practical and industry relevant program that will help in relevant placements. This will go a long way in helping students, campuses and companies in the BFSI segment to create a robust talent ecosystem,” he noted.
Commenting on the collaboration, Meenu Bhatia, Co-founder and Director, VANS Skilling and Advisory said, “Our foray into NBFC education is steered by our vision to be a bridge between skills needed in this sector to grow and the current availability of talent who aspires to make a career in this sector. There is a huge skill gap in this segment which is growing multifold due to various schemes provided by the government to boost financial services in general and housing in particular. The partnership aims to bridge this gap by educating students and organisations on challenges, rules, laws, regulations and technicalities of this sector. The entire pedagogy is designed by veterans who have grown and are professionally living in this space for many decades.”
