With a notion to enrich the peoples’ lives with belongingness as well as optimism by upskilling them and making them ready for the competitive world irrespective of the social strata they belong to, Shipra Bhutani has come a long way as a prolific educationist. Starting from the people belonging to the bottom of the social pyramid such as jail inmates, manual scavengers, and beggars to top-notch corporates, bankers, and high-profile executives, Shipra has assisted a spectrum of people to reach their true potential through her upskilling programs. With the help of her brainchild Jagan Raj Professional Studies, Shipra is repainting the canvass of the skill ecosystem of a diversified country like India, where almost every state has a different set of skill requirements and social-economic setup. Remaining aligned with the current industry requirements, Jagan Raj Professional Studies has a pan-India presence, and under the prolific guidance of Shipra, it has emerged as an innovative platform that designs customized and hybrid models of skilling packages to assist individuals coherently in terms of upskilling and jobs. Starting from training the students of the ninth standard up to conducting classes in cybersecurity, ethical hacking, and cloud computing, Jagan Raj Professional Studies is pragmatically engaged to address the manpower requirements of the country and training people accordingly. Shipra engages in an exclusive interaction with Women Entrepreneur magazine.

What motivated you to establish Jagan Raj Professional Studies? Tell us about the underlying idea behind the venture and some of its most unique features.

India is now becoming the capital of graduated unemployed youth. Since conventional curriculums are being followed in almost all the higher educational institutes and students are not having the relevant industry-specific skills, educational degrees are losing value day by day. In 2010, I was approached by Carnegie Mellon, Harvard Business School in Cambridge University to conduct online classes on data analytics, and cloud computing in Jodhpur and Jaipur for my final year MBA and engineering students. After they received a hike of almost 30-40 percent in their salary, I felt the urge to establish an institute that is pro-industry and fulfils the present industry demands. I laid the foundation of Jagan Raj Professional Studies with a vision to address two problems; to eradicate unemployment from society by providing skilled manpower to the industry, and secondly, to add value to the economy with increased productivity as a result of skilled resources.

Share some of your commendable milestones with us that give you immense satisfaction as an industry leader.

Parallelly, I was approached by NSDC in 2016 and I became an NSDC-funded training partner. This is yet another milestone of my professional career, which gave me an edge over the others. As of now, I am working with 10 different ministries and simultaneously providing training to many destitute persons, including manual scavengers. Till now, we have trained 800 Such people in Uttar Pradesh, and now, they’re working in malls as security guards. I have also trained 7000 prisoners in different jails of Rajasthan, and now, after getting released from jail, they are leading a respectable life while working as barbers or street food vendors with their kiosks. I also trained more than 500 widows in Jaipur, and now, they’re earning quite well by making leather bags and school uniforms. So, this has been my journey for the past 14 years, and I am happy to declare that I have been able to impact almost one lakh people.

“Shipra is repainting the canvass of the skill ecosystem of a diversified country like india, where almost every state has a different set of skill requirements & social-economic setup”

What are the various roles and responsibilities that you shoulder as the founder & CEO of the company?

In terms of my responsibility, I am the link between various ministries and corporates which conduct training by bringing business to the company. For example, there is a project for the Department of Public Enterprises, where we are training the ex-employees in the government of India and then offering them apt jobs after their retirements. As the link between the upper strata of the industry vertical, I get the business and then distribute it to my team to get it conducted. So, my roles and responsibilities include monitoring, selecting the job roles in different states, and then connecting with the employer so that they get placements. Apart from that, designing the curriculum is one of the major job roles that I manage. Since Jagan Raj Professional Studies is my brainchild and I’ve managed to develop it from some 40 students to 200 centers in 14 years, I oversee all of its daily functionalities and take pride in being the Founder & CEO of the organization.

Shipra Bhutani, Founder & Ceo Jagan Raj Professional Studies

A first-generation woman entrepreneur and educationist, Shipra is the Alumani of Birla Balika Vidhya Peeth, Pilani and IIM Calcutta. Commencing her professional career as an economics professor at BIT, Mesra, Shipra’s entrepreneurial ingenuities compelled her to establish two companies Jagan Raj Professional Studies (NSDC funded trainings) and Capacita Connect (NSDC innovation partner).