Entrepreneurs, academicians, policy-makers, philanthropists and representatives of various non-governmental organisations will be participating in a two-day Development Dialogue 2026 in Hubballi starting Friday.
Addressing presspersons at the Deshpande Skilling Campus in Hubballi on Wednesday, co-founder of Deshpande Foundation and entrepreneur Gururaj Desh Deshpande said that this year, the two-day conference will feature two parallel tracks, Startup Dialogue and Skill Dialogue.
The sessions will be organised simultaneously at the Deshpande Startups Campus and the Deshpande Skilling Campus on Airport Road in Hubballi.
“The Dialogue being organised with the theme, Catalysing Collective Impact, will focus on collaboration between the government and the social sector in high-potential areas of societal impact, supported by CSR initiatives,” he said.
Guest speakers at the Dialogue include Vikas Sunkad of Sun Josho Ventures, Arun Raghavan of Arali Ventures, Sridevi Khambhampaty of Shilpa Biologics Pvt. Ltd., Veerendra Patil of Zebu Animation Studios, Kartik Kulkarni of AkashX.ai and Phanindra Sama of redBus and others.
Mr. Deshpande said that as the ambition of the foundation is to work collectively with vice-chancellors attending the event to make North Karnataka the first region in the country to implement the National Education Policy (NEP) in its fullest spirit and achieve maximum impact.
Mr. Deshpande said that industries today are changing and adapting at a much faster pace than in the past, resulting in rapid shifts in market requirements.
And the skills demanded by industry continue to evolve, making it difficult for students, particularly from Tier I & Tier II cities, to keep up. To bridge the gap, a three-month programme has been designed to identify industry-relevant skills and train participants accordingly.
Nearly 90% of those undergoing the programme secure job placements, he said.
However, as the model has not been scalable, the foundation has extended it to colleges to impart training after regular academic hours, he said.
“Rani Channamma University, which initially implemented the programme in five colleges, is now planning to expand it to all its 75 affiliated colleges after seeing its success,” he said and added that the foundation now plans to collaborate with a few more universities.
Co-founder Jaishree Deshpande said that more women are enrolling for the foundation’s programmes and consequently, the approach has been shifted from sending external trainers to villages to identifying and training a girl from within the village to train others.
Women currently constitute nearly 90% of the workforce involved in village-level skilling initiatives, she added.
Published – February 04, 2026 06:42 pm IST
