Needed: Up skilled IT talent for the India Inc. landscape

The demand for technology and automation is rising across all sectors in India. India is one amongst the first five largest startup communities and has witnessed a growth of 40 per cent, by the end of 2015. This has led to a more than ever increased demand for skilled IT professionals. According to NASSCOM, three lakh trained professionals are required in the data science field alone by 2020. Each year over 3 million graduates and post-graduates are added to the Indian workforce. However, of these only 25 percent of technical graduates and 10-15 percent of other graduates are considered employable by the rapidly growing IT and ITES segments. Hence it is becoming increasingly important to encourage young boys and girls to join the IT field.

The government has played a major role in this respect by launching various initiatives like National Skill Development Mission, National Policy for Skill Development and Entrepreneurship 2015, Pradhan Mantri Kaushal Vikas Yojana (PMKVY) scheme and the Skill Loan scheme. These initiatives aim at incentivizing skill training, financing higher education and recognizing the skills by way of certifications or awards; thus increasing employability.

This has further led to the growth of innumerable training institutes to skill the unskilled. While these training institutes are increasing every day, their credibility and the kind of training they offer still remains a question. This has previously led to many a qualified unemployable youth. In the IT industry, just knowing concepts is not enough and the talent needs to be able to apply this knowledge in their work. Experiential learning is facilitated by performing practical in a supervised environment. The future of education is hybrid – a mix of online and classroom learning which is not restricted to online or offline itself. Hence it is important to skill in the right manner keeping abreast the technological advancements. Skills like mobile app development, ethical hacking, data analytics and networking have become quintessential in this scenario.  Hence framing a curriculum to enhance these skills is a must.

Currently there are very few women in the top rung of IT companies but given that with imagination possibilities can become limitless, it is essential to encourage more women to join the IT field. It is essential to break the myth that it is impossible for women to make a career in IT.  The late Steve Jobs once said, “Everybody in the country should learn how to program a computer. Because it teaches you how to think.” Believing this, it wouldn’t be wrong to introduce high school students to the basic of coding to inculcate an interest for it right at the very beginning.

While selecting a training program, individuals need to assess the technology requirement in a 60/30/10 format .60% of what is the technology requirement today, 30% of what is its requirement in the near future and 10% being focus on long-term aspirational career objectives. An exponential growth in demand has been observed for data scientists, analytics engineer, social media architects, cloud architects and fraud analysts. Following is the approximate cost to train these professionals:

Data scientist is 15-25k (Online), 60-75k (Classroom based, full time)

Analytics Engineer – Rs 20 to 28k (Online), Rs 6L (Classroom based, full time)

Social media architect – Rs 21k (Online)

Cloud Architect – Rs 18 to 36k

Fraud Analyst – Rs 21k

Currently, there aren’t many institutes offering these courses currently in India. Hence students are considering studying abroad or self- learning online to gain knowledge about these emerging fields. Hence, what we have today is a growing skills gap given the fact that there a few institutes offering quality education in relevant courses. For a country which is growing at a galloping pace with IT as its backbone, it has become increasingly important to plan and prepare to create competent talent to stay ahead on the technology front in the global market place.

^{- by Siddarth Bharwani, Vice President at Jetking Infotrain limited.}

_{Disclaimer: The views expressed here are those of the author’s and do not necessarily represent or reflect the views of Deccan Chronicle.}