Hyderabad : IKEA Group’s philanthropic arm, IKEA Foundation, on Wednesday announced that it has inaugurated a retail training program for women in Telangana called Disha in partnership with the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) and India Development Foundation (IDF).
The programme aims to skill one million women in more than 10 industries by developing core competencies and helping them get employment.
Under the programme, initially 350 women from Hyderabad will be trained on retail-specific role skills that will help them get jobs across the retail sector. About 150 women from this program in Telangana will have the opportunity to get placed in the IKEA Hyderabad store. This is IKEA’s first pilot and if successful will cover other states such as Maharashtra, Karnataka, NCR, among others.
Inaugurating the programme, Telangana minister of panchayati raj and rural development, Jupally Krishna Rao, said, “We welcome IKEA’s efforts and the Telangana government is fully committed to increasing women’s workforce in the state. We hope that like IKEA, many other companies will come forward to join hands and skill more Indian women to join the workforce. I wish all the partners the very best.”
IKEA has said that it plans to hire 50% women across all levels in India but it is a challenging task as only 27% of women are currently part of the workforce.
IKEA India CEO, Juvencio Maeztu said, “We have a non-negotiable commitment to employ 50% women co-workers in our stores at all levels. We strongly believe that Disha is a great opportunity to connect with many more women in Telangana and make them a part of our India journey.”
IKEA will open the doors to its first India store in Hyderabad early next year. The store will employ 800 direct co-workers and another 1,500 indirectly for services.
Note: News shared for public awareness with reference from the information provided at online news portals.
