New Delhi, Nov 30 (PTI) India has a great culinary culture and mixing international techniques with the country’s food can only be a success, said chief of Sommet Education, a global education group specialising in hospitality management and the culinary arts.
On his first visit to the country, Benoît-Etienne Domenget, CEO, Sommet Education said India has a “great combination of strong food culture and talent”.
He also announced plans to expand the group’s operations in the country.
The global education group recently entered into a strategic partnership with Indian School of Hospitality (ISH) by opening the first India campus of its culinary school Ecole Ducasse in Gurugram.
The group’s hospitality school Les Roches will also be in academic alliance with ISH’s undergraduate and postgraduate programme.
“India has a great culinary culture, you take food very seriously. Food business is booming and as probably everywhere in the world there is a scarcity of talent and it does not mean that talented people are not there. So I think you have got a great combination of strong food culture and talent.
“And as everywhere mixing international techniques with the Indian food culture can only be a success. So I am really excited about what we intend to do today and in the future with setting up multiple Ecole Ducasse campuses across the country. We have plans to expand in the country, north, west south,” Domenget told PTI.
The first step of this plan is to expand the current ISH Gurugram campus, which will feature an additional 25,000 sq. ft of classrooms, training kitchens, and student experience areas.
As per Domenget, this expansion will take up the capacity of the campus to over 500 students. The new facilities will be operational by early-2022.
Talking about the partnership, Dilip Puri, founder ISH, said that the idea of bringing Ecole Ducasse is to “globalise culinary education in India”.
“There are some institutions that do pastry arts but there isn’t any structured formal culinary education institute that offers undergraduate degree to a diploma and even a masters programme. So the idea of bringing in Ducasse to India is to globalise culinary education in India,” Puri said.
He added that the partnership will open up global opportunities for Indian students.
“It will allow the Indian students to export our culinary culture to the European markets, it will similarly allow India to benefit from the rich traditions of French cuisines, pastry, bakery, European cuisine,” he said.
Sommet Education and ISH plan on opening Ducasse studios in major cities such as Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore, Hyderabad, and Ahmedabad.
These studio institutes will cater to the needs of professionals, enthusiasts, and career changers for upskilling and acquiring new skills, they said. PTI MAH RCJ
