Dassault Systemes to forge more partnerships to skill Indian students

Mumbai, Sep 18 : Aiming to skill students to enhance their employability, global 3D experience major Dassault Systemes is planning to forge partnerships with academic universities to create more visibility for better outreach.

The company intends to support the future generation through various training programmes that will boost the government's 'Skill India' initiative, a top company executive has said.

"We want to do more aggressive partnership with universities and make those connections more visible because they are key to the 'Skill India' initiative -- both at the centre and the state level," Samson Khaou, Managing Director, Dassault Systemes India, told IANS on the sidelines of its '3DEXPERIENCE FORUM 2017' event here last week.

"We want to enforce our partnership with the education sector, whether it's vocational training, engineering colleges and universities or Center of Excellence for under-graduates and post-graduates. We are supporting the future generation of the country," Khaou added.

Dassault Systemes has announced the commencement of the first and second batch of the Aerospace and Defense Centre of Excellence (CoE) in Bengaluru, which was set up at the Visvesvaraya Technological University (VTU) in association with the Karnataka government.

The first two batches will have 50 students undergoing one month-long foundation course. The company is also planning to launch an advanced course of four months on overall Aircraft Design and Development process, Structural Engineering and Equipment Engineering.

The company, in 2015, had partnered with Centurion University of Technology and Management, Odisha (CUTM) to offer a virtual design and digital manufacturing programme.

While Khaou maintained that the manufacturing domain remains the core business, the company, with its business-to-business-for-consumer ('B2B-for-C') approach, is also focusing on consumer experience.

"Through our 'B2B-for-C' approach, we want to enable the customers (businesses) we are serving to create or design experiences for their consumer and make those experiences omni-channel by making them available both online and via retail using the '3DEXPERIENCE' platform," Khaou noted.

As per its 'open innovation community' strategy, the company has also collaborated with several startups in the country, which have agility and creativity to leverage the technology, to help them adapt to the global market needs.

"This is very important because now the focus on Digital India is going to boost the Startup (India) initiative. The startup model is no longer the classical way -- 'start local, go global' as it is now 'go global at first'," said Khaou.

"They can leverage the bigger marketplace based on our platform to support the global approach," he added.

The company is also targeting to leverage the vast potential of the retail and apparel market in India.

It has collaborated with major apparel brands like Aditya Birla Fashion and Retail Ltd, Arvind Lifestyle Brands Limited, Mohan Clothing and Myntra.