Pandiarajan’s Ma Foi back in business

The success of 18-years in the HR business has spurred entrepreneur-turned politician ‘on a sabbatical’ K Pandiarajan to once more drive the venture, that he re-ignited in 2015. 

This time, the founder of Ma Foi has decided to give it his all to nurture skill-sets of job aspirants in rural Tamil Nadu, where he has rolled out eight of the 242 training centres, that he plans to establish throughout the country by 2023.

Announcing this on Tuesday, the former TN minister said the branded Ma Foi Career Centres (MCC) entity seeks to leverage the flagship ‘Skill India’ programmes initiated by the Centre, namely the Deen Dayal Upadhyaya Grameen Kaushalya Yojana (DDUGKY) and Pradhan Mantri Kaushal Vikas Yojana (PMKVY). 

“As part of the national urban livelihood programmes, 1.2 crore people come into the job market every year. The target is to train at least 1 crore annually,” he said, noting that the deadline to skill 40 crore people in the country would expire in 14 months. Nearly 50 per cent of the Rs 17,000 crore allocation goes into DDUGKY and PMKVY, and 2/3rd of the amount is typically spent by the states.

Even if MCC is able to provide employment to 12 lakh people every year, the possibility of actualising the Skill India vision seems realistic, he sought to point out.

But the main challenges involved in implementation faced by the stakeholders included successful placement of the candidates. 

“As many as 2,000 focused skills have been identified by the Centre. But if they don’t place the trainees, then no money is given. In fact, 10-15 percent of the people trained don’t want a job,” Pandiarajan said, adding this is where his enterprise, backed by three decades of experience, comes in handy.

MCC, which became operational in places such as Chennai, Chengalpattu, Virudhhunagar, Madurai, Tiruchy, Coimbatore, Salem, will be manned by three people, thereby addressing the challenges of mobilisation, placement and recruitment effectively. 

For starters, the skill cohorts, as they are called, have managed to place 146 people till now in the accounting domain. 

“We wish to emerge as a pre-eminent skill player like CIEL (co-founded with Latha Rajan in 2015 after selling residual shares and giving up brand use rights of Ma Foi to Randstad), which is among the top ten leading staffing and recruitment firms in India,” he said, noting that eight more centres would go live in the state by January, with each one striving to cater to two districts of TN. 

Today, Randstad is a Fortune 300 company and the clause to not use Ma Foi brand for a three-year period is over. Ma Foi has three businesses – strategic consulting (HR consulting, statutory compliance and growth consulting), analytics and education (government related skill development, corporate social responsibility and MCC which has been co-created by CIEL).

An investment of Rs 10 crore has been envisaged for the upcoming centres. “Our big partners are the 58 stakeholders in CIEL, with whom we will work closely. This is an asset light model,” he said, adding the tie-up with BRH or BeRightHere (a potential unicorn) would enable the effort to balance brick and mortar talent needs to be integrated via a digitalised platform (the official roll-out of which is scheduled in January 2022).

Co-founder Latha Rajan said experience has repeatedly shown that the focus has to be on sustainable and gainful employment. 

For instance, a person nailing a job in Chennai for Rs 10,000, would not stay for a longer time-frame due to the high cost of living. So, the endeavor would be to match jobs and skills, she added. Pandiarajan also said past experience as an entrepreneur showed that Ma Foi was able to place one person every two minutes. 

The company would to see shared services skills business creation as an opportunity to expand its business scope, as it gears up for its IPO in the Q4 of 2022 or 2023. He is confident of raking in Rs 1,000 crore revenue next year with a “decent profitability.”