News: MeitY may fund a part of NASSCOM’s FutureSkills platform

Funding & Investment

MeitY may fund a part of NASSCOM’s FutureSkills platform

FutureSkills platform launched by NASSCOM last year may soon have a B-to-C model and the government will fund a substantial part of it.
MeitY may fund a part of NASSCOM’s FutureSkills platform

In 2018, the National Association of Software and Services Companies launched the FutureSkills platform to help companies to skill their employees in new skills. The platform offers training in the internet of things (IoT), robotic process automation (RPA), virtual reality, big data analytics, cloud computing, and 3D printing, among others to participants from NASSCOM member companies. 

Now as NASSCOM plans to open up the platform for general use, it is in discussion with the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology to fund this part of the skilling service platform. 

Further, it is also planning to launch a B-to-C model that would require scaling up the platform and a lot of investment. 

“The next step of the platform is a Government of India-Meity project that is there, to move it into B-to-C mode. The government will fund a substantial part of it to do the B-to-C model. It is in the final stages of discussion and also we need to scale the platform to that level,” revealed BVR Mohan Reddy, Executive Vice Chairman, Cyient and a member of NASSCOM’s executive council. 

While the platform, FutureSkills currently has over 100,000 users, it has the potential to train about 200 Mn people over a period of time. 

Skilling has been a key mandate for the government since quite a few years now. From SkillIndia to initiatives like FutureSkills, it has been working on making the talent of India job ready. But it is still far its aim to train 400 Mn people by 2022, with only about 25 Mn people have skilled under various government programs. 

The government, however, still continues to make efforts towards the mission and continues to invest in various initiatives and engaging with corporates and experts in the tech field to make their programs more relevant. For instance, last year, National Skill Development Corporation (NSDC) announced its association with IT services company Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) to leverage the Learning and Assessment platform of TCS iON to provide speed and scale in skilling initiatives. Later, in the same year, the Karnataka government earlier launched the Kaushalya Karnataka program that aims to provide to provide skills to the unemployed in the 18-35 age groups. Currently, as per the reports, the government is also considering issuing skill vouchers or skill wallets to incentivize young people to be skilled in a program of their choice. 

As most of the development is happening and is expected to further happen in the technology space, a body like NASSCOM can play a crucial role in enabling both companies and talent to capitalize on the demand for new services. The pool of knowledge and experts they have can help the talent be more prepared for the skills that will be demand in the future.  

Read full story

Topics: Funding & Investment, Skilling

Did you find this story helpful?

Author

QUICK POLL

How do you envision AI transforming your work?