Interview With Anil Kumar Tentu - CEO of AP Information Technology Academy (APITA)

                                                    

1.Describe about your Business and founders ?

Main activity is to undertake skill development, training and placement to the engineering undergraduates so as to make them ready in the emerging IT technologies and also make them highly job ready by associating them with Industry oriented courses, projects and internship programmes.

2.What is the biggest challenge of being a CEO and  how do you overcome it? 

Main challenge is to bring mainly all the Engineering college management and the TPOs ( Training & Placement Officers) on to the same page along with APITA. We have about close to 350 colleges and 36,000 students registered with us. As all the training programs have to be coordinated and run with their participation it becomes a humongous task to coordinate the training and placement activity. Also the management of District administration and regular monitoring and implementation of the training program is the real task to accomplish.

3. Where do you see the company in the next five years and how will you bring about the change? 

APITA wants to touch base and work with all the technical and semi-technical colleges/institutes in AP. The main task would be to accomplish spreading of technological training to not only urban colleges but also to rural tier III & TIER IV colleges so that rural youth will get a chance to learn emerging technologies at a cost effective rate and with world class certifications.

4. Did you ever feel like giving up on being a CEO and what motivated you to pull this off?

It‘s the biggest responsibility and it never ever crossed my mind to give it off. I cherish the activity of spreading training and placements in niche technologies where real transformation is happening. Disruption is the name of the game and what is good technology today is redundant technology tomorrow.  So only constant factor is to keep oneself abreat of current knowledge all the time.

5. Describe your biggest achievement?

Our biggest achievement is securing 4,600 placements for Infosys last year. Moreover, we have trained and placed many candidates in the last few years. Currently collaborating with central IT Dept and also other reputed institutes like ISB and IT Academies like ORACLE, INFOSYS, IBM, TCS etc to work and develop the training activities of APITA. 

APITA has been selected as the Best edtech award of the year by Education Excellence awards committee and also on a personal level I have been adjudged and bestowed with the Best IT Strategist of the Year award by ISSN Network and elsevier journal jointly for 2020-21.

6.From where you get the idea for business?

The lack of proper training centers catering to the training cum placement in emerging technologies in IT. There is no effective Learning Management System (LMS) in place leading to a mass and massive kind of training being conducted.

7.What was your aim to start the company?

The aim has always been strengthening network of training and placements in the IT Sector among the engineering colleges in AP. APITA cherishes and envisions promoting skill development among the youth of AP in core emerging technologies.

8.Tell us some of your failures

Integrating the various training programs and on boarding them with the students has always been a daunting task. Some programs couldn’t take off due to scheduling them during exam periods.

9.What is the role of your family in your successful career?

Family has always been the pillar of strength and support so that I was able to perform my activities and duties to the best of my capabilities. Mainly due to their constant guidance and utmost care I got the energy to sustain my activities without any hindrances.

10.What is your message to the young generations and to their parents?

The Youth of today has to pursue their dreams in a passionate way then only they can truly achieve their goals. Today it is the age of disruption and technologies are becoming obsolete in matter of days. Hence, they have to undertake learning as a constant way of life to keep abreast of happenings whether it’s in the field of education or their life skills.