ALIYA ABREU
PANAJI
Amidst the despondency in the job market, there’s a flicker of hope for Goa’s young engineering graduates.
A couple of months ago, three young entrepreneurs, Raj Kunkolienkar, Sharmad Kuvelkar and Aniruddha Joshi put their heads together to bridge the mismatch between engineering grads who didn’t have the skills required for the job market, and employers who are always on the lookout for skilled engineers, but find it difficult to come across these.
Speaking to “The Goan” on Monday, Raj explained that there are tons of jobs for skilled engineers. And these jobs are not offered by big branded IT companies who employ en masse and pay a pittance, but startups who need specifically skilled engineers and are willing to pay accordingly.
“Together, the three of us founded ‘Nova Semita’ (which means ‘new path’ in Latin),” said Raj. And the company has already managed to place three students from Goan engineering colleges, who’ll be graduating shortly. This happened just last week.
To put their idea in motion, Raj and his partners carried out a pilot study from amongst students currently pursuing their degrees in engineering colleges affiliated to Goa
University. On one hand, Nova Semita thoroughly assesses the students’ skills, and on the other, finds job openings and researches what skills are needed for these jobs. The team at Nova Semita then develops these students’ skills for the jobs they have already marked out for the students.
So how does the company train students? “We have designed a course which is fully online. So students can do the course at their own pace, and their own space,” says Raj.
Raj himself is an MSc in Physics from BITS. Kuvelkar is a Goa Engineering College (GEC) grad, who has worked at a few startups as a web developer, and Joshi who has studied at the London School of Economics (LSE), has worked for Reuters as an executive VP. The other mentors whom students would look forward to be trained under are employees of Facebook, Amazon, Swiggy and the like.
The team at Nova Semita does not believe in charging students under them for the course though. To ensure complete satisfaction, and also to set the bar high for themselves as trainers, Nova
Semita will only take a cut once the student gets placed and has an offer of 5 lakhs per annum or above. If the student doesn’t get placed for a good package, then Nova Semita charges them nothing.
Raj explains that it is only fair that students who get good packages give them a cut of 12% for a time period, as without Nova Semita’s help, the student would probably have landed a mediocre job for 2 lakhs per annum or thereabouts.
The company isn’t looking for only engineers to train, but people who have the skills even with no degree can hop on board.
“The Goan” also caught up with a student from Don Bosco Engineering College who got trained by Nova Semita. Luis Gomes who’s in his final year of ETC engineering said that the team was really great and had fresh ideas, which students couldn’t always find amongst their peers.
By August, Nova Semita hopes to have approached the government for funding, as they feel their concept fits into the idea of “Skill India”.
They also hope to expand to states like Maharashtra and Karnataka. Already they have students knocking on their doors from all over India, but the team has been slow in taking on trainees and are keen to ensure their methods are foolproof.
To his knowledge, Raj also says this is the first company of its kind that gives online only training to students as other companies offer training classes where one has to be physically present.
