For Productive Engineers

Pavan Ponnaganti, Skyfi Labs, on how they are helping students become good engineers
For Productive Engineers

What was the idea behind starting Skyfi Labs?

It all started with a vision of transforming textbook geniuses into productive engineers. India produces numerous engineering graduates every year but most of them graduate only with textbook knowledge. Many a time, they lack the right opportunities to develop practical skills needed to become a more productive engineer. Skyfi, started in 2010, develops and delivers training programmes to solve this problem. As part of our training programmes, students apply theoretical concepts and build successful projects, thereby improving their skills and employability.

Can you tell us a bit about your training team

Our greatest focus from the beginning has been on quality. We needed to reach out to students from various branches like Mechanical, Electrical, Electronics, Computer Science and Civil Engineering. Thus, we built a strong technical team comprising nine IITians from various disciplines who played an active role in developing content for our training programmes.

Each training programme will have an outcome associated with it. The outcome would be in the form of a working prototype built by students. The prototypes vary based on the training programme and students. They include things like robots, aeromodels, websites, mobile apps and software simulations.

You’ve got interesting courses such as robotics and aero modelling. Was there any particular reason for choosing only certain courses?

Application of engineering is always interesting. Unlike the traditional classroom approach, our training programmes involve students who apply engineering concepts and build projects like robots, aeroplanes, web/ mobile applications and software simulations.

So, our courses naturally look more interesting compared to traditional learning approaches. We develop courses based on the inputs we get from faculty, students and industry partners. Word of mouth publicity about the quality of our programmes has helped us grow quickly.

Tell us a little about your training programmes and how many colleges you have reached out to.

Currently, we have around 50 training programmes for students of Electronics, Electrical, Mechanical, Aerospace, Civil and Computer Science disciplines. Each of our training programmes requires students to apply theoretical concepts and build projects or perform simulations. Some of these programmes also come with certifications from leading industry players. We have worked with more than 400 colleges across India so far. We have also worked with colleges in Dubai.

How has the response been so far? What are the challenges that you have faced en route to creating industry-ready engineers?

The response from both students and engineering institutes has been great. One of the biggest challenges was to build high quality courses at affordable prices and deliver them to students across the country. Our strong technical team and feedback from the students and institutes regularly helped us achieve the right fit. Our courses are priced between `700-`2,500 per student. We are very happy to see that students from Tier-II and Tier-III cities have been able to join our courses with as much enthusiasm as students from metro cities. Details at www.skyfilabs.com.

janraj4ever@gmail.com

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