Maruti Suzuki widens hiring from ITIs

India’s largest car maker Maruti Suzuki is tapping into Industrial Training Institutes (ITIs) in a big way to meet the growing requirement of technicians for its swiftly expanding dealership network. It plans to hire about 2,000 ITI students in the current year from the hundred ITIs with which it has tied up, significantly more than 1,400 students it hired last year. Another 1,500 students will be absorbed from other ITIs.

Every year, Maruti adds about 200 sales and service points and on an average needs 6,000 additional technicians. Of these 3,500 freshers are absorbed from ITIs while the rest come from the industry. Maruti Suzuki’s existing 3,000 service stations currently employ about 65,000 technicians.

The company, which enjoys a 47 per cent share in the domestic passenger vehicle (cars, utility vehicles and vans) market, plans to sell two million vehicles by 2020, up 40 per cent from its volume last year. In its journey to two million units, it will also have to double the sales service network. To feed trained manpower into these service stations, the company will step up the recruitment from ITIs year after year.

ITIs are a hiring ground for technicians but companies also face the challenge of getting adequately trained manpower to suit the requirements. “Our cars have evolved and technologies have changed. But, teaching and syllabus at ITIs have not kept pace with time and students face a skill gap when they start working. So, we have tied up with one hundred ITIs to train students in latest practices of automobile repair and maintenance,” said a company spokesperson.

Every such ITI is transformed into model workshops by Maruti with an investment of Rs 20 lakh. These workshops offer practical training on Maruti car and assemblies with the help of a dedicated trainer for student development from Maruti Suzuki who trains students at regular intervals. Nearly 300 teachers at these institutes were also trained by the company in the past two years to equip them with the latest in the industry.

These hundred ITIs produce about 6,000 students who are trained in automobiles and Maruti is the largest employer in the segment. Dealerships of other car companies also participate in job fairs at these institutes to absorb technicians. The service stations of all car companies are estimated to employ 220,000 technicians. But, every year additional 25,000 technicians are required.

So far, Maruti has hired 1,500 students as technicians this year along with the dealerships and will hire another 2,000. Such technicians undergo a three-month training during which a stipend is paid. Upon completion of this training, they are paid a monthly salary of Rs 10,000 and incentives based on performance, the spokesperson said.