Start-ups  in the skills space are not just helping blue-collar professionals enter the  industry, but also helping companies reduce training costs. Start-ups, such as  SkillSonics, and LabourNet, are reducing costs for manufacturing companies in  the large and medium industries by helping them pick trained blue-collar  workers, who can hit the ground running. Also, with the National skill Development  Corporation emphasising on skill training, this market is set to boom. There is  a high skill shortage across the manufacturing sector today and retention of  employees is a further challenge. “The ITI curriculum in the country is not  turning out industry ready workers and manufacturing companies are unable to  employ them on the shop floor quickly,” said Gayatri Vasudevan, CEO of  LabourNet Services. LabourNet has trained close to 16,000 workers for shop  floor work in the manufacturing segment and around 30,000 workers in  construction. “We are also doing a lot of up-skilling of workers who already  have experience, but can improve their skills especially with any new  technology,” said Vasudevan, who pointed out that companies usually incur a  30-40% increase in expenditure through cost of training, wastage and manpower.  “We are able to cut down this cost significantly.” LabourNet was started in 2007,  and has become a for-profit social enterprise since 2011. It received total  funding of Rs.35 crore, including an investment of Rs.25 crore from NSDC with a  line of credit in the next few years besides a grant from Dell Foundation and  equity investment from Acumen Ventures. LabourNet aims to touch revenue of  Rs.70 crore by this financial year end. Similarly, SkillSonics offers high quality  training to blue-collar workers in partnership with Swiss Mechanical and  Electrical Manufacturing Industries and the Swiss Federal Institute for Vocational  Education and Training. “During the pilot stage we
  primarily  placed our trained workers with Swiss companies. Now that we have opened fully  as a startup, we are open to placing them in other companies as well,” said GP  Chandra Kumar, chairman and CEO of SkillSonics. The company has trained around  2,000 workers so far, and has placed them in companies such as Rieter India,  Bobst India and Burckhardt Compression in Pune. “We have received an  equitybased funding of Rs.22 crore from NSDC, which will be given over the next  four years, and we plan to target revenue of around Rs.8 crore this year.” (Source:  The Economic Times, Mumbai) Digitron Extends its Range of Hand-held Digital Thermometers  Digitron – an Elektron Technology brand – has announced new additions to its  range of hand-held digital thermometers – the rugged, water resistant 1000  Series with a choice of thermocouples – thermistors for lower food safe  temperatures, T type, and K type for the more extreme heat generated by  industrial applications.

For more  wide-ranging applications, Digitron has developed the water resistant FM38 and  FM45 thermometers, suitable for use in any environment. FM45 offers push button  selection of various display options, including Celsius or Fahrenheit, minimum  and maximum temperature readings, and probe selection.
  For more  information, visit http://www.digitron.com/thermometers/digitalthermometers.html?limit=all