Deshpande Skilling

Deshpande Educational Trust (Deshpande Skilling), founded by Jaishree and Gururaj ‘Desh’ Deshpande, with a mission to empower rural youth through employability-focused training. Rooted in the Foundation’s philosophy of innovation, entrepreneurship, and community-driven impact, Deshpande Skilling addresses the education-to-employment gap by equipping students with industry-relevant skills, life skills, and leadership abilities. India is gunning to be a $5 trillion economy by 2025-26 and is slated to have the world’s largest workforce by 2027. It is, therefore, imperative, that youth from tier (non-metro) towns and villages have equitable access and are equipped to grab a fair share of this opportunity. Our Skilling initiative impacts elementary and middle school students, as well as graduates from these areas. It has designed skill development programs to support students and unemployed youth to acquire job-oriented skills and join the formal employment sector. Through innovative pilots, leveraging emerging technology in classrooms and an integrated learning management system, the impact of these programs has been made economically viable and scalable, to gradually effect rural transformation.