TARAhaat Training Institute

Overview of TARAhaat
The training vision of Development Alternatives (DA) is the nationwide capacity building of organisations and individuals, enabling them to apply enhanced knowledge and skills in large-scale generation of sustainable livelihoods. Through TARAhaat, the DA group envisions an India where everyone has access to knowledge, goods and services to satisfy his or her basic needs, now as also in the future.

TARAhaat Information and Marketing Services Ltd (TARAhaat) is a social enterprise, one of the first of its kind. It is a network of village-level business and community centres called TARAkendras that are franchises owned and operated by local entrepreneurs. The Territory Office provides each TARAkendra with complete product, technical and marketing support to ensure that they are profitable. Each TARAkendra acts as a point of sale for all kinds of social and corporate products and services.

The key to achieving large-scale impact on a sustained basis is TARAhaat’s ability to generate both financial and social returns on its investments.

The business model of TARAhaat has been designed and fine-tuned through an extended pilot phase starting in 2001. The rollout of its operations in two regions of India began in 2004. Currently, the TARAhaat network comprises 182 operational TARAkendras.
TARAhaat is looking to aggressively expand to rural areas in the next five years. It will spread its presence across 6 states and plans to reach ~4000 centres by the end of 5 years after collecting the return on its investment. TARAhaat will generate income for the rural entrepreneurs and also significantly increase the employability of people in these areas. What will complement TARAhaat in achieving this twin objective? It is the TARAhaat Livelihood Academy

Overview of the TARAhaat Training Institute

The TARAhaat Training Institute will initially look at the building skills of entrepreneurs and trainers in order to make them successful franchisees of TARAhaat. Once the franchisees and trainers are nearly 6-8 months into operations of the TARAkendra, we shall encourage them to join up for refresher training to further increase the breadth of their learning. Entrepreneurs will be trained in sales and marketing, entrepreneurship and people management. It is very important that the entrepreneurial spirit of expanding business is brought into the DNA of the people. This alone can create a mass-level effect in rural India. Trainers will be encouraged to increase the depth of their learning in their chosen field. For example, if a trainer has taken a Basic IT in the first training, he or she will be encouraged to go for advanced IT courses such as C++, Java or even look at image processing and networking courses.

Apart from this, the training institute will also act as a learning ground for new TARAhaat employees who will be given induction and refresher trainings. These trainings will prepare these employees for future work at TARAhaat and go on to give them a platform for future carriers in entrepreneurship and other sales and operation jobs. TARAhaat will look to create an extensive network and brand presence as these employees who are getting trained shall filter through the rural economy, bringing more TARAhaat franchisees to the company.

During times when the institute is not catering to TARAhaat, the training institute can be utilised by TARAhaat Livelihood Academy to conduct its own trainings, ensuring a continuous flow of income for the training institute and a mode of expansion for TARAhaat Training Institute .

The training institute will also house a 10-seater call centre, where firsthand experience in a call centre shall be handed out to the people. It can, over a period of time, also act as a full-time outsourced call centre for companies in the area, but the initial idea will be to encourage candidates who will take these IT courses and take up careers in data mining and call centers.

Impact of the TARAhaat Training Institute

The ripple effect of these trainings will be felt in the society over an extended period. The trainers and the franchisees will further spread the knowledge to their students at their centres. As has been witnessed already, in the long run, many of these students will go on to become trainers or franchise owners themselves.

As TARAhaat increases its scale and diversifies into new products, the impact of learning and education created at the root level will be enormous. Subsequent trainings will progressively increase the employability of people, leading to significant amount of new business ventures, teachers, people working in image studios, network hardware professionals, etc.

Future Outlook
The future of the training institute will extend to distance learning and e-learning and video conferencing lectures. The increase in connectivity in rural areas will prove to be a key criteria in spreading knowledge across regions.

The training institute can transition to a TARAhaat university in the long run. Getting certifications from different universities and courses will be a notable achievement. More training institutes evolving into TARAhaat universities, over time, may be expected in the future as TARAhaat expands to other areas of the country.

The evolution of the learning institute will be directly correlated with the speed and success of the expansion of TARAhaat. With significant growth in scale and the brand name of TARAhaat, it can be totally transitioned from a training institute into a knowledge hub for rural communities.
 

Amit Mina
amina@devalt.org
 

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