As part of its Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) initiative, Robert Bosch Engineering and Business Solutions (RBEI) has adopted six villages in the Coimbatore district, to provide education and to empower women.

The unit, which completes 10 year of operations in Coimbatore (which is an important innovation hub for RBEI), has selected six villages in and around Saravanampatti, to be developed as model villages, its President and Managing Director, Vijay Ratnaparkhe told reporters here.

As part of its CSR activities, the company will provide educational facilities to the villagers, occupational and vocational training in addition to taking steps for women empowerment. Depending on the results, the company would adopt another 14 villages.

About REBI’s plans for the next decade, Rathnaparkhe said that the focus would be on innovative technology for customer-oriented solutions. Stating that the Coimbatore Research and Development Centre has become a powerhouse of technology and innovation, he said that it has grown to 6,000 associates from 125 in 2006.

Bosch also works closely with institutes of higher learning to bridge the gap between academia and the workplace, Satyanarayana TK, Vice President, HR, said, and added that the Automotive Electronics Laboratory, set up in PSG College of Technology and Amrita University, are providing hands-on experience in automotive embedded software, and 450 students have benefited until now.