Aiming at focused teaching and research on aerospace, Indian Railways’ Gati Shakti Vishwavidyalaya (GSV) Vadodara and Airbus, on Thursday (7 September) entered into a collaboration to significantly strengthen the Indian aviation sector.

Airbus and Tata had recently announced a partnership to design, innovate, make, manufacture and develop in India, the C295 aircraft facility at Vadodara (Gujarat).

Airbus is the world’s largest manufacturer of commercial aircraft and a leading producer of helicopters, defence and space equipment. The company has a long-standing relationship of symbiotic growth with India.

The company recognises India as a key driver of global aviation as well as an indispensable talent and resource hub and is committed to maturing all the necessary building blocks to develop a fully integrated aerospace ecosystem in the country.

Make-in-India is at the heart of Airbus’ business strategy in India and the company is steadily increasing India’s contribution to its global products, the manufacturer maintained.

A memorandum of understanding (MoU) was signed at Rail Bhawan, between president and managing director, Airbus India and South Asia Remi Maillard and Gati Shakti Vishwavidyalaya vice-chancellor Professor Manoj Choudhary.

Speaking on the occasion, Union Railway Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said, “GSV will focus on intense industry-academia partnerships. All its courses will be designed in collaboration with industry. The students who study at GSV will be industry ready. They will be highly sought after for employment in transportation and logistics sectors. Today’s MoU with Airbus is a significant step in achieving this goal.”

Speaking at the event, Maillard added, “As a company that is committed to developing the aerospace ecosystem in India, we realise our responsibility to invest in human capital development. The partnership with Gati Shakti Vishwavidyalaya will develop a strong pipeline of skilled workforce in the country that will be future ready to serve its fast-growing aerospace sector.”

This industry-academic partnership will enable co-development and co-delivery of sector-relevant skilling courses and programs for regular students and working professionals, joint research and industry experiences for faculty, internships and placements for students and scholarship programs.

It will create job opportunities for students as per the industry requirements. It is expected that 15,000 students are likely to be placed in Airbus Indian operations.

GSV Vadodara was established through an act of Parliament in 2022, for creating best-in-class manpower and talent for the entire transportation and logistics sectors.

This central university is sponsored by the Ministry of Railways, government of India and has Vaishnaw as its first chancellor.

Focusing exclusively on transport and logistics sectors, GSV is a “first-of-its-kind” university aiming to fulfil the mandate of the national developmental plans (PM Gati Shakti National Master Plan 2021 and National Logistics Policy 2022) across railways, shipping, ports, highways, roads, waterways, and aviation.

Following a demand-driven curriculum and leveraging state-of-the-art infrastructure of all the centralised training institutes of Indian Railways, the GSV shall create a resource pool of professionals across technology, economics, management and policy comprising multidisciplinary teaching (bachelors/masters/doctoral), executive training and research.

GSV shall also undertake trainings for Indian Railways' probationers and serving officers.

Being an industry-driven and innovation-led university, GSV already has several collaborations with leading institutions and industries across the world.

The MoU was signed in the presence of Railway Minister Vaishnaw, Jaya Varma Sinha, the chairperson and CEO of Railway Board and senior officials of the Board.