With an average age of 28 years, India is the youngest country in the world. At 1.4 billion people, it houses about 18% of the world’s population. The country has already overtaken its past colonial masters to claim the 5th largest economy slot.  A report by the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) revealed that a meagre 3% of India’s workforce consists of formally skilled workers, against 24% in China. Although Indian women form a significant percentage of its youth, however, their contribution to India’s GDP is just 17% as against 40% in the case of Chinese women. Thus, the need of the hour is ‘Education and Skill development’ with special emphasis on women entrepreneurship.

‘Covid Pandemic’ starting in March 2020, led to the loss of regular income for a large section of society, specially those in the unorganised sector.  Lack of livelihood displaced millions of families & forced them to return to native villages, denying education to their children in the process. Students of senior secondary classes were the worst affected.

An initiative called SMK Defence Academy was thus born in April 2020. The purpose was to provide free Online coaching for 11th & 12th classes along with coaching for the National Defence Academy entrance exam. Once the Covid threat receded & life returned to near normal by the year 2022, it was time for SMK Institute to shift from being exclusively an online coaching platform to include an ‘in-person’ coaching to its curriculum. The loss of regular jobs by marginalised workers for the last 30  odd months, had adversely affected their vocational skills & a large number of them (age bracket of 20-22 years), hadn’t even gotten an opportunity to develop or hone their vocational skills. A re-evaluation of the prevailing adverse socio-economic environment at that time by SMK Institute, revealed an urgent requirement to restore the livelihood of many families, as their sole bread earners had been lost to Covid. Imparting vocational skills to such families was now identified as the ‘Priority Area’. SHREE MAA CARE FOUNDATION  was thus incorporated on 24th Aug 2022, under Section 8 of the Companies Act, 2013, for the purpose.