Bangalore, December 05, 2016: Rolls-Royce has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Rajiv Gandhi National Aviation University (RGNAU) to build future competencies required by the Indian aviation industry. The signing ceremony took place as part of the Visitor’s Conference at the Rashtrapati Bhawan in the presence of Hon’ble President Pranab Mukherjee, the Vice Chancellor of Rajiv Gandhi National Aviation University - Air Vice Marshall Nalin Kumar Tandon AVSM, VM (Retd.) and Mr. Kishore Jayaraman, President – India & South Asia, Rolls-Royce.
RGNAU was set up to facilitate and promote aviation studies and research. It will start functioning soon at Fursatganj in UP. As India's first aviation university, the university will commence training of aerospace/rocket engineers, aspiring pilots, Aircraft Maintenance Technicians/engineers and cabin/ground crew. The MoU outlines how Rolls-Royce will support RGNAU to help develop curricula and offer international experts for guest lectures to help the maturity of the university. Rolls-Royce will also offer internship positions to qualified students across Rolls-Royce sites in India.
According to IATA, India is expected to be the third largest aviation market with 278 million passengers by 2026. Kishore Jayaraman, President – India & South Asia, Rolls-Royce explains what this means to India in terms of skills development to ensure self-sufficiency:
“India’s aviation sector currently supports 8 million jobs, and with the burgeoning aviation industry, we need to ensure a steady pipeline of highly skilled talent. Rolls-Royce is committed to work with academic institutions to help provide students with ready-employable skills. As such, we are proud to collaborate with RGNAU in pursuit of this objective. Through this collaboration, we will continue to play an integral role in the development of India’s aerospace ecosystem.”
According to Air Vice Marshal Nalin Kumar Tandon, Vice Chancellor, Rajiv Gandhi National Aviation University, “Rajiv Gandhi National Aviation University considers the partnership with Rolls-Royce – a world-class player in the aerospace industry to be a watershed moment in its endeavour to offer world class aviation education in India. This partnership will help our faculty and students develop the most appropriate skills they will need in the aviation industry by gaining access to the global technical experts.”
About Rolls-Royce in India
Rolls-Royce has a deep relationship in India stretching back more than 80 years. Today, we are deeply embedded in India as an investor, a high skills employer and as a supplier of power systems for use in aerospace, marine, power systems and nuclear. India is one of the most important strategic markets for Rolls-Royce and we continue to build on our long-standing partnership with our customers and partners.
About Rolls-Royce Holdings plc
1. Rolls-Royce’s vision is to be the market-leader in high performance power systems where our engineering expertise, global reach and deep industry knowledge deliver outstanding customer relationships and solutions. We operate across five businesses: Civil Aerospace, Defence Aerospace, Marine, Nuclear and Power Systems.
2. Rolls-Royce has customers in more than 150 countries, comprising more than 400 airlines and leasing customers, 160 armed forces, 4,000 marine customers including 70 navies, and more than 5,000 power and nuclear customers.
3. We have three common themes across all our businesses:
· Investing in and developing engineering excellence
· Driving a manufacturing and supply chain transformation which will embed operational excellence in lean, lower-cost facilities and processes
· Leveraging our installed base, product knowledge and engineering capabilities to provide customers with outstanding service through which we can capture aftermarket value long into the future.
4. Annual underlying revenue was £13.4 billion in 2015, around half of which came from the provision of aftermarket services. The firm and announced order book stood at £79.5 billion at the end of June 2016.
5. In 2015, Rolls-Royce invested £1.2 billion on research and development. We also support a global network of 31 University Technology Centres, which position Rolls-Royce engineers at the forefront of scientific research.
6. Rolls-Royce employs over 50,000 people in more than 46 countries. More than 16,000 of these are engineers.
7. The Group has a strong commitment to apprentice and graduate recruitment and to further developing employee skills. In 2015 we employed 228 graduates and 277 apprentices through our worldwide training programmes.