Pune: NASSCOM Foundation (NF), the social development arm of NASSCOM (National Association of Software and Service Companies), the internationally recognized trade body of the Indian IT industry, today announced its first Knowledge Centre in partnership with member Company, Zensar.

Zensar Foundation, an independent trust operating under Zensar, today launched its first Knowledge Centre in association with the NASSCOM Foundation to build a self-sustaining Centre which would provide multi-purpose services to the community in Kharadi where it operates.

The Centre has been supported by the School Board of Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) and powered by Suraj Foundation as the implementation partner.

The Centre was inaugurated at a function at the PMC School in Kharadi, by Dr. Ganesh Natarajan, Dy. Chairman and MD, Zensar and Chairman, NASSCOM; Praveen Pardeshi, Pune Municipal Commissioner and Rufina Fernandes, CEO, NASSCOM Foundation.

Also present at the occasion were N.G Kamath, Director, Suraj Foundation and Vandana Chavan, Ex Mayor and Environmentalist.

At the occasion, Dr. Ganesh Natarajan said, "The NASSCOM Knowledge Network (NKN) is a unique approach towards public private partnerships and we are glad to be one the first IT companies to sponsor a knowledge centre. We plan to expand our own efforts to support NF to reach out to Centres in other states to enable education at the grassroots across the country through technology reach-out programmes. We hope that this first effort would lead to many other Corporates coming forward to help bridge the great Digital Divide."

Rufina Fernandes, CEO, NASSCOM Foundation at the inauguration said, "We look forward to a long-standing relationship with Zensar and hope that other member Companies will take their example and come forward and contribute as a vibrant IT Industry to help us expand the network to help meet our 350 mark. There is a dire need to scale this project extensively in a very short span of time to make a large and lasting impact across the Country on under-served communities."

Praveen Pardeshi, Commissioner PMC said that, "We are encouraged by the support that IT companies like Zensar are rendering to enable holistic development in less privileged urban communities in Pune. We are looking forward to many more such Industry-Government-Academia initiatives in creating a true ecosystem of partnership for development."

NASSCOM Foundation's initiative was to make the NKN a community-centric effort designed to engage the industry, the civil society and the government in synergistic interventions through partnership to provide essentials such as education, health, e-governance and other services by facilitating access to information and providing opportunities through capacity building and training tools using ICT as the outreach platform.

Zensar aims to build this as a model Centre for other Companies to forge partnerships to scale this socially relevant service through the NASSCOM Knowledge Network.

In addition to this, Zensar is also associating with the PMC at various levels and is also setting up the IT LAB for the PMC School at Kharadi which will cater to the information needs of children, this is the second such initiative instituted by the Company.

NASSCOM Foundation's vision is to leverage Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) to empower and transform the lives of the under-served.