Classroom to cubicle: filling the digital skill gap

In a residential patch at Puttanna Road in Basavanagudi, a building rumbles with excitement. On the second floor, a class is in session, and students lap up every bit of it. Lessons are wrapped in fun activities. The other classroom on the same floor is relatively subdued: they are now on to a recap of the day’s lessons, primarily around “AWS Shield”. Another striking feature of these twin classrooms is that the educator is as young as the students.

This is one of the 18 Livelihood Centres operated by Magic Bus India Foundation in Bengaluru. The non-profit, which operates in the skilling space, has 114 centres across India. These centres offer digital courses to unemployed graduates from marginalised communities based on the cloud curriculum of AWS re/Start — graduates in BE Computer Science, Information Science, Electronics and Communication, B.Sc. Computer Science and BCA make up each cohort with a three-month run.

Magic Bus India Foundation “pitches tent” in an area after assessing the employability scenario among the underprivileged youth there. First-generation learners are imparted employability skills. At Jayanagar 1st Block, Capgemini’s Digital Academy, run in association with Edubridge Learning, delivers a host of new-age tech courses to enable young people to navigate the world of work. Undergraduates with a degree in any computer application program are the target. Based on their skill levels, they are guided into a course. SQL, Cloud, Cyber Security, DevOps or Machine Learning are among the courses on offer.

Apart from those looking for their first job, there are students looking for an upkilling opportunity.

V. Shweetha juggles a night shift job and, during the day, attends classes at the Digital Academy. Her batchmate, P. Sharley, wants to move from software testing to development. “A majority of the new-age programmes offered outside charge us more than ₹40,000, and credibility is a big question,” says Sharley.

Partnerships with companies

Over the last couple of years, several corporates have partnered with the National Skill Development Corporation (NSDC) to facilitate employment opportunities for youth in digital skills.

Recently, Microsoft announced a major skilling initiative aimed at equipping two million people with AI skills by 2025. The “ADVANTA(I)GE INDIA” initiative, a part of Microsoft’s Skills for Jobs programme, will focus on training individuals in tier 2 and tier 3 cities. As per a communication, Microsoft will partner with the Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship and ten state governments to provide basic and advanced AI training to 5,000 students and job seekers in 100 rural vocational education institutions and training centres.

Amazon Web Services (AWS) India is already running ‘AI Ready’ to provide free AI skills training to two million people by 2025.

Samsung R&D Institute Bangalore (SRI-B) opened its “Innovation Campus” programme at the KLE Institute of Technology in Hubballi to upskill youth in Machine Learning, Artificial Intelligence, and Data Science.

Through Infosys Springboard, the company plans to empower over 10 million learners, including people between the ages of 10 and 22, with digital and life skills by 2025.

Cognizant, IBM, Wipro, and a clutch of other corporates constitute a digital-skilling ecosystem that seeks to make young graduates job-ready.

With the 2024 Interim Budget talking about getting youth ready with skills for the future, especially in AI and robotics, many more partnerships with national and state agencies are expected.

Are these tie-ups translating into employment? Is it helping bridge the huge skill gap? These are major talking points in every industry. Despite the many digital courses offered by organisations to help young graduates enter the corporate world, considerable ground still remains to be covered.

Need of the hour

Through Capgemini’s digital academies, which are present in more than 13 locations in India and run with the support of six training partners, more than 75,000 aspiring job seekers have been trained since they started in 2015.

“This is a small fraction, and we need to do more,” says Anurag Pratap, Vice President and Head of CSR - India - Capgemini. He says more than 80% got the job in a larger ecosystem with a small fraction also joining Capgemini. “The intent of these specialised training programmes in IT capabilities is to prepare them for a larger ecosystem and not to hire them into Capgemini,” says Pratap.

Arun Nalavadi, Executive Director, Sustainability and Livelihoods, Magic Bus India Foundation, says all the programmes the non-profit is running with the support of various corporates are not just for skilling but also to ensure the beneficiary takes up jobs. “Skilling and placement go hand-in-hand. And our placement ratio ranges between 70% to 80%, but not necessarily for digital initiatives because of the cyclic nature of the IT industry,” says Nalavadi.

Extending the reach

With diverse sectors looking for new-age digital skills, definitions of talent are being revisited.

Last year, the Sector Skill Council at the National Association of Software and Service Companies (NASSCOM) launched ‘Talent Connect’ to help companies find digitally skilled and certified industry-ready talent. Today, the platform has more than three lakh people and 50,000 job postings. Most of the candidates were from tier 2 and tier 3 cities.

Kirti Seth, CEO of Sector Skill Council, NASSCOM, says non-IT companies are also coming on board, as every industry has a tech aspect. The sweet spot, she says, is that the majority of the companies looking for talent are the smaller ones.

“Bigger companies have huge recruitment engines, so this becomes a good aggregator for those who do not have the bandwidth,” she says.

To maximize impact, it is imperative that skilling programmes are closely aligned with industry needs.

Talent Connect, for instance, has been unlike a regular job portal. “We created a gamification tool that would create an aspiration and motivation linked to the skills. If candidates did nothing and were enlisted on the job portal, they wouldn’t get weightage. Those who have completed a course are visible. And, those with certification get the most visibility among employers,” says Seth.

Actions at multiple levels

To overcome India’s digital skilling challenges, a multi-pronged approach is required, covering various stakeholders, policies, and initiatives. The curriculum must be aligned with the industry’s requirements at multiple levels, including school and vocational education.

With the National Education Policy and the National Credit Framework, educational institutions have different avenues to seek support to strengthen training. “Employers are hungry for new skills, and colleges can do a lot to make sure their faculty development programmes are up to date with industry requirements. Those institutions who have all the capability but just need skilling can use the job standards created by the Sector Skill Council to train their faculty,” says Seth of NASSCOM.

She says one suggestion they have for corporates and colleges is to make sure whatever programme they are running is aligned with the National Skills Qualification Framework. Accredited programmes stand to get more benefits.

“If one does courses that are embedded and learner can get credit, then the completion rates will shoot up. Courses can be used for credit equivalence in college, and this is a huge benefit for students as well,” she says.

Seth says Karnataka was the first to initiate various skill initiatives, but the adoption was not as expected. “What we are discussing with them is how we can drive adoption. We need to come up with a joint strategy so that the programmes can be adopted across stages,” she says.

Extending a campus initiative

RV College of Engineering has been investing in internships and micro-credentials to bridge the learning gap among students across branches to meet industry needs. Through the “Women in Cloud Centre of Excellence” set up on the campus, more than 250 students have been trained and certified in the last two years for the internship activity. Supported by RSST Trust, the programme carves a niche in cloud-native applications. The centre also focuses on digital skilling for under privileged PUC students and degree colleges.

“Around 42 Diploma Government college students are trained free of cost,” says Mamatha GS, Professor and Associate Dean PG Studies, Department of Information Science and Engineering, RV College of Engineering.

She says internship or micro-credentials activities increase the learning curve of students. “As they are short-term with proof of specific learning outcomes validated through a reliable assessment process, we have been encouraging engineering students across branches and years to go for it,” says Mamatha.

The road ahead

Many of these programmes, when offered at highly subsidised rates or for free, have seen attrition. “We have a 5 to 7% attrition rate in the first ten days of the course,” says Pratap of Capgemini.

But we need more upskilling programmes to cater to an inclusive segment waiting to enter the workforce. We need companies coming forward to invest in infrastructure and initiatives that improve digital inclusion.

Nalavadi says many engineering colleges with a not-so-strong placement record give them space where they run industry-relevant programmes. When more donor partners come forward, such digital drives can reach more colleges in tier 2 and 3 cities.

“Support need not be only in terms of funds; it could also come by way of building capacity and giving us technical inputs,” adds Nalavadi. He cites the example of Accenture and Mphasis Limited currently supporting Magic Bus India Foundation by sharing insights on what modules to include and skills needed in the coming years. “AWS gives us global insights,” says Nalavadi.

He adds, “Placement is just a pathway, but the real social return on investment is to see these young people embed themselves in the workplace.”