"The importance of these skills cannot be over-emphasized in the era of globalisation," Rayasam said.

"The survey clearly brings out the huge gap between the requirement of the industry and availability of talent possessed by our engineering and management graduates," senior MCCIA office bearer Anant Sardeshmukh said, pointing out that the industry has to spend huge amount of time and money to train them.

Bajaj said that MCCIA conducted a seminar for industry-institute partnership last year and made a detailed survey of members to assess the exact need of the industry.

RACE will do the training programmes focusing on key areas of soft skills like personality development, communication skills and leadership development. Aspects like team building, decision making and entrepreneurship development as also business etiquettes and corporate culture will also be dealt with, Rayasam said.

"This will help business and industry to get appropriately skilled manpower at reduced cost and save on time for re-training. On the other hand, it will enhance employment opportunities for the fresh graduates," he added.

ACE will also have long term, full time programmes in human resource development, finance marketing, retailing and insurance, Rayasam said.

RACE plans to involve small and medium enterprise sector to conduct executive development programmes, lectures, workshops and seminars to suit its needs and conduct fundamental research for its benefit. I