Wipro partners with Nasscom to reskill 10,000 engineering students

Bengaluru-based information technology services firm Wipro has partnered with information technology industry lobby Nasscom (National Association of Software and Services Companies) to reskill around 10,000 engineering students under the latter's 'Future Skills' platform.

According to the company statement, Wipro's TalentNext programme will help to enhance the quality of these engineering students from over 20 engineering colleges in India by preparing faculty and academic leaders to train students.

The TalentNext programme is now being extended to students directly through Future Skills, a platform built by Nasscom to bridge the industry-academia skill gap and help students keep pace with the emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI), big data, cloud computing, cybersecurity and the internet of things (IoT) domain.

Wipro said that enhancing these students with these new technology capabilities will make these graduates more employable, one of the biggest concerns of the engineering graduates in the country.

“Future Skills is a collaborative platform that was built on the core ideology of a dedicated technology-powered learning resource being developed by the industry, solely for the benefit of the industry," said Debjani Ghosh, president, Nasscom.

Nasscom is aiming to add 90 million working professionals to the industry by 2030. The Future Skills platform enables students to learn the skills required in emerging technologies. Ghosh hoped that many other companies will follow Wipro's model on partnering with universities.

“The platform allows content and people to come together. It allows curation and learning at one’s own pace. It is nice to see the platform moving downstream to work with students and thus widening the talent pool for the industry,” said Rishad Premji, chairman of Wipro Limited.

Last week saw two such initiatives to enhance the skills of students and engineers in the country.

San Francisco-based cloud customer relationship management firm Salesforce had signed multiple agreements to train 2.5 lakh students in India by 2022. The company had partnered with the ICT Academy, Telangana Academy for Skill and Knowledge (TASK) and ICT Academy of Kerala (ICTAK).

Meanwhile, the Union Minister for Electronics and Information Technology Ravi Shankar Prasad has approved Rs 436 crore for the expansion of Future Skills initiative. This expanded digital platform, called Future Skills PRIME (programme for reskilling/ upskilling of IT manpower for employability), is expected to train more than four lakh professionals over the next three years, according to a statement.