New Delhi, Delhi, India ( Friday, March 03 , 2006 12:00:00 PM)
Artech India (Formerly Softek Pvt Ltd) has decided to sponsor ‘Artech-Dalmia Centre for Information Technology’ at Banasthali Vidyapith, an over 70-year-old complex network of education pursuits for women (upto the tertiary level). The vidyapith would offer Bachelors and Masters degrees and MTech in IT at the new centre.

Planned as a national IT education centre for women, the Artech-Dalmia Centre for IT would also support other departments at the Banasthali Vidyapith. “There are very limited and scattered IT facilities for the rest of the campus,” says Dr Aditya Shastri, Director at Banasthali Vidyapith. “The Artech-Dalmia Centre for IT will meet the dual responsibility of not just honing the future IT professionals but also enabling other streams of education with the power of IT.”

Envisioned to be better than anything currently in operation in India and comparable to the best in the world, the Artech-Dalmia Centre for IT will train women with a judicious mix of software, hardware and communication technologies and also enable research and development in this field. It will provide the right blend of high academic and technological expertise and entrepreneurial attitude through the fivefold education programme of Banasthali.

Says Mr M H Dalmia, Chairman of the Board at Artech India: “We are looking at empowering women with the knowledge of cutting-edge technologies, at giving them an equal footing in this sunrise sector.”

The centre will be equipped with the latest technological aids to impart better/faster education, such as internally networked specialized computer laboratories, communication lab, software engineering lab, VLSI design lab and multimedia laboratory. Equipped with gigabit LAN and high bandwidth Internet connectivity, it will also offer videoconferencing-ready seminar room and hi-tech lecture rooms and library.

“The Artech grant aims at creating an environment, where women find a larger role to play in the socio-economic development of the society,” says Mr Ajay Poddar, Managing Director at Artech India. “It is our way of encouraging women to adopt IT as a vocation, as an enabler towards a more fruitful future.”

Artech, which is a certified women-owned enterprise (and women account for around 60% of its employee base around the globe in USA, India and China), endeavours to bring IT closer to the weaker sections of the society.

The Group is working on another such ‘enabling’ initiative to weld IT into primary and secondary education for the underprivileged. “We are looking to donate 1,000 copies of Akshar Naveen to schools in the rural areas, which offer primary and secondary education to students from the weaker sections of the society,” says Mr Poddar.

Akshar Naveen is a multilingual office suite, which brings computer closer to the users with the help of local language deployment.

About Artech India

Artech Infosystems Pvt Ltd (Artech India), formerly known as Softek Pvt Ltd, is part of Artech Worldwide. Headquartered in New Jersey (USA), Artech Worldwide plans to end the current year with a total turnover exceeding Rs 520 crore, up from approximately Rs 220-crore turnover in the previous year.

Artech India is a 25-year-old, ISO 9001:2000 certified IT company with its core competencies in the areas of software products, turnkey project management, IT consulting and staff augmentation, infrastructure management, and business process outsourcing.

Artech India is the first Company in India to have developed world-class compilers for COBOL, Fortran 77, Pascal and Basic. Headquartered at Noida, the Company has projects going on in numerous cities across the country.

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